JOURNAL PROMPT: Creating a clear picture in the reader's, as Potok does, write a description of a person who changes remarkably after some devastating experience.
I am predominately of Jewish and Belgian decent. It is thus that throughout the years my family/ancestors have gone traumatic experiences during the course of their lives, mostly that of the Holocaust. My father’s father lost all of his immediate family, and has only one remaining distant cousin since the war. This happened because his was Jewish living in Poland, but he survived because he came to America seeking a better lifestyle a few short months before the war. But he is not the one I am writing about in this journal. The one I am writing about is my mother’s father, a Catholic man during the Holocaust. However his life has not been any easier because of his religion.
He is known as Willy Florquin to his friends, but I call him Grand-pere. Although he was of Catholic decent he was anti-Hitler, and thus was discriminated against. As a young stout eighteen year-old he was captured by the German army. Then was sent to a concentration camp on a train. After he got off the train he saw many people walking one way, but he was aloud to walk the other, because he could work and he was a Catholic. As he learned later, the people that walked the opposite way of him were Jews sent to the gas-chamber. He found this because, the next day he was sent to work digging graves of the people that had lost their lives. He also had to do many other horrific jobs. But he did them without much energy as well, because he was only fed a single loaf of bread per week and one glass of water a day.
He grew very sick with the cold long months at the camp, and became very week. It grew to the point where my grand-father could not breath one day. A Jewish doctor examined him, and saved his life due to great medical experience. The doctor saw that he could not breath, and immediately found a piece of hose and performed a tracheotomy that saved my grandfather’s life. The doctor was soon killed before grand-pere could even say he was thankful. But because of that heroic effort my grandfather survived the concentration camp.
After the war he found a wife, and settled down in Belgium with her. They were, and still are, happily married together. My grandparents succeeded to have four beautiful daughters, one being my mother. This however includes another low point in his life. His oldest daughter, Jaclyn, committed suicide after overdosing on her prescribed pills due to the death of her husband. I never got a chance to meet her, because she died before I was born in her early thirties. What I have heard about her has been inspiring, because of all the great things she did for others as a missionary in Africa. This time period must have been seemingly insurmountably for my grandparents, and aunts. But as this family always did, and always will do, they pushed on under my grandfather’s supervision. But this is not all the incredible feats my grandfather completed.
Unfortunately, he was a smoker for a long time period of his life. This habit took a great toll on him and his weak heart. After many years of smoking he had a minor heart attack that took a minor toll on him. But then soon after, another one took place, and as his heart was growing weaker, he decided to quite smoking. These traumatic experiences fazed him, but after awhile of not smoking he began this devastating habit again. Soon after another more severe heart attack occurred. This time he was not so lucky, and he needed bypass surgery. It took a lot out of him, and a long time to recover. He continued smoking, because he felt that nothing worse could have happened to him, but again soon after he had another heart attack. This time he had to have another bypass surgery, and this scared me for his life. His heart was weak, and he was pretty elderly at this time in his life. I was told he would have a very thin chance of surviving the surgery; but he did as he always did.
These things that my grandfather has gone through are things that I would not wish upon anyone. But in some mysterious way he was always able to overcome them. The things that happened to him would have driven many people insane, or many people would have died. But after looking back on these incidents I realize that he is special. The doctors I have spoken to that have thousands and thousands of patients had never had one single patient live through four heart attacks. Although these problems were self inflicted it remains a mystery how he is on this Earth today. But finally he has stopped smoking, and will never smoke again. I feel he could have survived anything. Willy Florquin is a inspiring man. He is a man of incredible strength, and he grew stronger after every traumatic experience. I can only dream to be as strong, determined, and as inspiring as he is to me to someone else. He is a great man, and a role model.