When I was a little kid in Warsaw, before WW II, my Catholic nanny, Kiki, taught me, as she had been taught, herself, that only Catholics went to Heaven. This raised an immediate question regarding the current whereabouts of my late, Jewish father. And it was something to which Kiki did not have a ready answer. Because he had been a very good man, he certainly wasn't in Hell, about which she had told me numerous stories and even shown me pictures -- which I took to be actual photographs. But, as to where he actually was, Kiki drew a blank.



This question did not stay long unanswered in my mind. When Kiki and I had to travel a distance in the city, we took the trolley, and on hot summer days, the Warsaw trolleys took on an atmosphere that wasn't altogether pleasant. One of the features on these trolleys were the black-coated, black-hatted, bearded Hassidic Jews, of whom Warsaw had a large population. On the street, these were just odd looking people who walked past, but on the trolley, I could watch them. I could look at their strange appearance, listen to their odd talk, and observe their unusual body language. And so I came to associate the trolleys with things Jewish. And the picture that I formed in my mind of my later father's whereabouts was him riding one of these Warsaw trolleys into eternity.



When my book came out, three years ago, and I put together a talk I could give in libraries, churches, and synagogues, about my WW II experiences, including this account of the trolleys, I titled it "A Streetcar named Eternity."