Right Wing Terrorist Tantrums

The Right Wing Christian Fundamentalist Norwegian terrorist who killed 93 of his countrymen and youths, in the belief it would promote his radical cause, described his acts as “outrageous” but “necessary,” much as Timothy McVeigh had done before him in Oklahoma City.  Anders Breivik took it upon himself, apparently together with a small group of fellow radical members of the European Military Order and Criminal Tribunal of the Knights Templar, to change the direction of his government, no matter the views of those in elected power nor the vast majority of citizens of his own country.  Indeed, like a petulant teenager outraged with his elders because they hadn’t granted him what he wanted, he threw a terrorist tantrum.

When a minority holding radical views attempt to impose their will upon their countrymen, whether by physical terrorism, as in this case, or by economic terrorism, as is being carried out by the Tea Part wing of the Republican Party, the principal is the same. The goal is to impose their will by acts of physical violence or threats of acts having similar effects, such as bringing the United States to economic collapse.  Bin Laden’s terrorist goal was to bring the US to economic ruin, and the Tea Party is helping him achieve his goal even after his death by causing the US Government to default on its debt obligations.  In addition to precipitating another Great Depression, the Tea Party’s current act of economic terrorism would have disastrous consequences on the health and well being of Americans.

If Paul Ryan’s Republican Budget Plan were enacted as proposed, it has been predicted based on years of health care research evidence, many more elderly, poor and disabled Americans would ultimately suffer and die due to lack of minimally adequate health care via Medicare.  Kanuk in Open Salon, April 29, 2011 calculated that over the first ten years of the Ryan Republican Budget plan, vulnerable people in the US would experience approximately 500,000 premature deaths due to lack of Medicare services.  That’s obviously a lot more people than Anders Breivik, Timothy McVeigh and Bin Laden killed directly. I know that sounds unbelievable, but the numbers are based on solid estimates from many years of actuarial research on medically preventable deaths (see Decker and Remler, 2004 in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy 3(4), pp 205016).   To paraphrase Shakespeare, a terrorist by any other name is still a terrorist.

Decker, S.L., Remler, D.K. (2004) How much might universal health insurance reduce socioeconomic disparities in health? A comparison of the US and Canada. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 3 (4), pp. 205-216.

Fibonacci Republican Policy

Republicans politicians figuratively favor an economic system in which our (but not their) efforts are paid off under a variable ratio reward schedule composed of randomly arranged numbers from the Fibonacci series. For non-Behavior Analysts, in a typical VR 5 schedule, the numbers 1,2, 3, etc. to 10 would be scrambled up randomly so you never now how much work you’re going to have to do for the next payoff (or reinforcement occurs), but on average it would be five responses.  Leonard Fibonacci was a 12th century mathematician who discovered this phenomenon of rapidly escalating numerical values while sipping grappe and contemplating his navel in the shade of a Cypress Tree protecting him from Tuscan sun.

According to my version of the Republican Fibonacci Series plan, with each passing year of one’s life, an additional number corresponding to the sum of the two preceding numbers in the sequence becomes an additional value making up the average amount of work imposed upon a person before being rewarded.  By the time one reaches 40 years of age, suddenly the value corresponding to 102,334,155 responses becomes part of the sequence of numbers (up from 63,245,986 the previous year), making up the average amount of work that we face, which is really a stinker.  But then you already know that.  You probably thought you were no longer being rewarded for your efforts, but “fortunately” you only have 102,334,154 responses to go, i.e. pairs of shoes to sell, hotel rooms to clean, driveways to shovel, etc. the kind of work lots of Americans do. One of the reasons Republicans hate unions is that smart employees insist on having some say in these pay off schedules.  If you’re a Republican politician, on the other hand, their average Fibonacci value never exceeds that of a five or six-year old, or 8-13 responses until the next pay off…golden spoon in the mouth, and all of that, don’t you know.

This recursive property of numbers is the basis for the old trick your math teacher pulled on you in school. She said, “Which would you rather have, one penny on day, plus two pennies on day two, plus three pennies on day three and so on for 30 days, or $100? Kids nearly always pick $100, but they would better off taking the recursive penny sequence that totals $35,245.76 at the end of a month.

Related are the consequences of tax cuts as a function of income level.  If the size of tax cuts remain the same, but income increases, the absolute amount of money balloons at incomes above $500,000 (see enclosed graph from Rachel Maddow comparing tax cuts proposed by Democrats and Republicans. Now you see why the Right Wing in Congress so strongly favor keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich.  It makes them a lot richer and has limited advantage for the rest of us and has devastating effects on the budget deficit.

During the earlier budget fiasco, the last time Barrack Obama caved in, he said, that never again would he allow continuation of the Bush Tax cuts for the rich… that is until next time, now.

If you find this stuff about the Fibonacci sequence confusing you can read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number\

By the way, I'm aware most Republicans have never heard of Leonard Fibonacci but they are thoroughly familiar with the concept of imposing outrageous escallating work demands upon American workers nonetheless, as well as the tax advantage of rapidly escalating values at higher incomes.

See also: J R MIllenson (1963) Random interval schedules of reinforcement. J. Exp. Anal. Behavior 6: 437-43

 

The Great Fire of 2011

The Great Fire of Rome occurred in AD 64.  Only four of the fourteen districts of Rome  escaped the fire; three districts were completely destroyed and the other seven suffered serious damage. It was said that Nero, the emperor sang and played the Lyre as the city burned.  Substitute Eric Cantor or Jim deMint for Nero and that pretty much sums up the current situation regarding the Great Fire of Washington DC of 2011.  While President Obama offers realistic solutions, some Democrats might say overly generous solutions,  Cantor and Bachman shout, "My way or the highway!"  Protect the rich at all costs.

Eric Cantor, Rand Paul, Michelle Bachman, Louie Gohmert and a couple dozen or so other radical Right Wing House politicians stubbornly dig in their heels like two year olds in the midst of a tantrum, while the nation teeters on the brink of economic disaster. They say utterly stupid things in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.  Despite the fact that there will be insufficient monthly revenue coming in to cover actual expenses, for example, to pay the nation’s monthly checks for members of the arms forces, for social security and Medicaire payments for elderly in nursing homes, and other expenses beginning in August, Bachman and others say “there is plenty of money.”  That amounts to political malpractice.

Nearly all economists agree that while it is important to reduce the federal deficit in the long run, slashing the Federal budget at this tenuous time will greatly worsen the recession, further undermining jobs and eliminating essential services to economically disadvantaged and elderly people and those with disabilities.  These are the same people who ran for office in 2010 on a platform of producing jobs for Americans, but instead have pushed legislation to ban abortions in more than half of the states, bills to undermine voter rights in 32 states and increase subsidies to oil and other large corporations.  And now this. 

Here in Minnesota early behavioral intervention programs for children with autism are reeling from the financial consequences of such cuts. School districts are deciding which personnel will need to be laid off and programs eliminated.   Some community autism treatment  programs may not survive without Medicaire funding to cover the cost of their therapy employees’ wages. Their therapist have to pay their rent and buy food for their own families.  Such essential service programs cannot afford to go into debt and survive very long.  That is one of dozens of examples of services to people with disabilities, the elderly, battered women and other disadvantaged groups that face disaster because of these House members’ ignorant intransigence.  

Is it really worth bringing the nation to economic ruin in an attempt to defeat Barrack Obama in 2012, which as Senator Mitch McConnell has stated is the Republicans’ number one legislative priority?  Shall we wait for Washington to burn, this time not at the hands of the British during the War of 1812,  but instead the Republican Tea Party?

Two Cheers for “Double Hit” Autism Theory

A recent study in the July 4^th Archives of General Psychiatry by Joachim Hallmeyer and colleagues at Stanford University indicates recurrence of strict autism within both identical and fraternal twins is lower than found in previous studies.  This suggests that a larger component of the cause of autism in such individuals may be exposure to something either prenatally or after birth that increases autism risk, but mainly in the more severe forms of autism.  Reports in the popular press would have you believe the study indicates genetics are not a major cause of autism, and some kind of "environmental" factor, is likely responsible for autism.  To put is succinctly, hokum.  That is not what the evidence showed.

The study showed that for Autism Spectrum Disorder (including PDD-NOS, Asperger and higher functioning autism not meeting the more severe cutoff score) recurrence in males was 0.77 for identical and 0.31 for fraternal twins; for female the concordance* was 0.50 for identical pairs and 0.36 for fraternal pairs.  The recurrence of ASD within twins reported here is similar to earlier studies, but somewhat lower, while the findings for “strict autism”(i.e.more severe autism) are not.  For example, Ritvo, Freeman et. al (1985) ) [Am J Psychiatry. Jan;142(1):74]  reported concordance for autism of 95.7% in the identical twins and 23.5% in the fraternal twins, and a more recent study reported concordance was 31% for fraternal and 88% for identical twins. Female and male identical twins were 100% and 86% concordant, i.e. if one had autism so did the other (Rosenberg et.al, [2009] Arch Ped Adolesc Med 163:907)

So the long and short of it is, for people who would like to believe there is a significant non-genetic contribution to autism, they can point to the Hallmeyer findings for the more severe forms of autism and shout “Whooopeee!”   For those who think the primary causes of autism are of genetic origin, they can point to the findings for people with the less severe Autism Spectrum Disorder phenotype, and say, “See, I told you so,” though there is evidence of another factor in autism outcome in this latter group as well. By the way, few experts ever doubted that. 

It’s important to note that the Hallmeyer study provides no evidence concerning what kind of non-genetic factors may be involved.  The vaccine and mercury folks will no doubt find this encouraging for their cause, though there could be other far more plausible explanations.  

It possible the “non-genetic” effect is actually a different type of gene effect called epigenetic.  The best-known case is called imprinting. Angelman syndrome and Prader Willi syndrome can both be caused by the same genetic error on Chromosome 15, and the particular syndrome that will develop depends on whether that genetic error is inherited from the child's mother or from their father.  Such “parent of origin” effects modify the way other genes function. Various chemicals, such as some cancer causing toxins can also cause epigenetic changes leading to bad developmental outcomes.  There is no direct evidence at this time that any of those factors are related to autism, but it is possible. There are laboratory
animal studies that show severely stressful conditions can change the way some genes function, another example of an epigenetic influence.  This is a very plausible idea, but the evidence isn't in yet. 

However, in a companion study to the Hallmeyer article it was found there was increased risk of giving birth to a child with autism among mothers taking SSRI antidepressants (like Prozac or Celexa) during pregnancy. The authors say they controlled for whether the person had a mental health problem or not.  But there are several types of mental health problems that might be expected to yield very different results, e.g. OCD vs. major depression.  Depending of how many of one versus the other "mental health condition" were included, the results could vary. There have been numerous studies of prenatal effects of antidepressants, and this is the first to come up with this finding.  It is widely known that anticonvulsants during pregnancy can lead to adverse developmental outcomes, but this is the first strong evidence linking antidepressants and autism.  So if you are taking antidepressants and pregnant, talk with your doctor before stopping medication or thinking about starting an antidepressant. 

The fact that these two new studies have yielded quite different results from similar types of earlier studies warrants further examination of the study methodologies and samples. For the time being, it’s “Two Cheers for the Double Hit Theory, ” the notion that genes alone do not cause autism, but must be impacted by another factor, such as an environmental condition or an epigenetic condition. 

* Concordance or Recurrence measures how likely it is if one pair of a twin has a condition, the other will as well (blue eyes).

Spurious Correlations: Bars and Churches

You've likely heard that there is a positive correlation between the number of bars and the number of churches in small towns, which raises the question, "Do churches drive people to drink?"  Or maybe drinking causes people to attend church?

Periodically I receive email messages from helpful people commenting on the connections they see between autism and other conditions or events, usually vaccines, but sometimes other health conditions, most often gastrointestinal problems but occasionally other neurological conditions as well.

I received a very touching note recently from a person who read one of my blog entries in which I mentioned I have Meneire’s Disease, a progressive disorder of the inner ear associated with ringing of the ear, severe vertigo, vomiting and loss of low frequency hearing.  The empathetic email writer suggested that Meniere’s is related to autism, B12 deficiency, herpes virus infection, including chickenpox and shingles, candida infection, celiac disease, thyroid insufficiency, migraine disorder (Migraine-Associated Vertigo), Lyme Disease and Vitamin D deficiency.  Another website suggested Aspartame, MSG, HVP, Cysteine, HSV-1 virus and Lack of lipase enzyme are all causes or probable causes of Meniere’s (and by implication, may also be related to autism).  Many of such helpful people believe Meniere’s Disease and Autism are autoimmunie disorders, which while an interesting idea is far from proven to be the case.

While it is possible autism and Meniere’s Disease may be related (I received another message from an English physician suggesting such a connection), it seems unlikely damage to a centimeter of my inner ear could be selectively caused by all of those very different factors. There actually is a correlation between susceptibility to migraine and susceptibility to Meniere’s Disease.  That may make a little more sense since they are both related to blood vessel diameter in the head, which seems to be regulated by the release of the neurochemical, serotonin inside the brain and also among blood vessels on the surface of the skull, like the temporal artery.  Some Meniere’s correlations make sense, like consuming too much sodium increases fluid retention (including in your ears), drinking too much coffee or alcohol tends to increase blood vessel diameter, same deal.  Those are not causes, they are non-specific exacerbating conditions.  These are a bit like the admonition, “If you have a headache, stop banging your head against the wall.”

I mention this because it is very easy to get snookered into seeing correlations between things that are entirely spurious and reveal nothing regarding the cause of the condition of interest, such as autism. There is a professional journal devoted to such issues, the Journal of Spurious Correlations.  There are also correlations that are epiphenomenal, i.e. they are caused BY the condition rather than being a cause OF the condition.  Example: Children with autism are often very finicky eaters and fail to eat a balanced diet, which makes them prone to gastrointestinal problems, such as constipation, or in some cases when too much juice is consumed, loose-stools.  Parents see the gastrointestinal problem and conclude that a GI disorder is a biological cause of autism, rather than a result of having autism.

So, thanks for your thoughts about Meniere’s Disease and autism and other possible related conditions.  In the meantime I’m going to keep an eye on research being reported by the Meniere’s Society, a scientific organization devoted to diagnosis and treatment of the condition based in the UK and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders in the US.

Voter Suppression: Thoughts on Independence Day

US Independence Day, is an apt time to give serious thought to attempts currently underway to abridge our most important right as Americans, the right to choose our elected representatives, including the president of the United States.  Thirty Republican-controlled State Legislatures within the United States have either already passed, or are in the process of pushing through legislation that would dramatically restrict the voting access of racial and ethnic minorities, college students, rural voters, senior citizens, people with disabilities, anyone who has moved within the past year, and those who are homeless. 

The US Constitution allows for election of the President, members of the House of Representatives and Senate by a process of election by the People (i.e. you and me).  In the case of the President, the use of electors for each state based on population is used instead of direct election of the president.  The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (i.e., slavery). It was ratified on February 3, 1870.  the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."

 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, recognizes the integral role that transparent and open elections play in ensuring the fundamental right to participatory government. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 21 states: Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his/her country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot or by equivalent free voting procedures.

 As part of an effort to suppress voting, new photo identification laws that would suppress turnout of Hispanic and other minority voters are in the process of being passed.  In some states people who have moved or changed addresses or names (e.g.married women) will be unable to vote. Plans are being developed to systematically deny large segments of the United States electorate access to free and unfettered voting in the 2012 elections via organized state action led by the Republican Party and their wealthy donors.

Laws in several states, such as Arizona, would even make it difficult for President Obama’s name to appear as a candidate on the ballot. This has arisen from false claims that he is not a U.S. Citizen.  While those claims are absurd on their face, some states may nonetheless make it very difficult for the President to satisfy all of the criteria required to be a candidate for president. That is yet another way to attempt to rig the election.

Republican state legislators are screaming warnings about alleged voter fraud.  A 2007 thorough study by the Brennan Center for Justice of New York University concluded "It is more likely you will be struck by lightening than that someone will impersonate another person at the polls."

Within the United States, a variety of techniques are being greatly expanded again for the 2012 Presidential and Congressional elections, including:

Creating Unrealistic Hurdles to Voter Registration:  In Florida, a new law is making its way through the legislature that would make it nearly impossible to conduct voter registration drives, which greatly affects voter registration in Hispanic, racial minority and other low income areas.  Same Day registration is being outlawed in many states. 

Voter Deception: Deceptive practices include misinforming voters about whether they can vote, where to vote, when to vote and how to vote. A Common Cause report on the 2008 election pointed out that these practices have expanded from flyers and phone calls to include online practices. From the report,

"Most of these emails said that given the high turnout expected, Republicans were to vote on Tuesday, Democrats on Wednesday. An email went to the entire student body of George Mason University that appeared to be from the provost of the school making this same claim.”

Partisan Election Administration: In many states, the officials responsible for overseeing elections are themselves partisan elected individuals, some of whom also hold positions of responsibility in the same campaigns they are charged with overseeing. This creates a natural conflict of interest. The most well-known instance of this is Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in the 2000 election, who was also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida; she oversaw the removal of tens of thousands of names from the voter rolls based on admittedly-inaccurate lists, the vast majority of whom were minorities or from primarily Democratic precincts. Many Americans continue to believe George W. Bush was not legitimately elected president because of partisan interference with the electoral process in Florida.

Inequality in Election Day Resources:  By providing more polling places, poll workers and/or voting machines in some precincts than others election officials can create long lines that discourage people from voting, while making voting easy for others. In Ohio during the 2004 elections minority areas were provided with fewer resources than areas that tended to vote for conservatives, resulting in very long lines.

Felon Disenfranchisement , the policy of not allowing those with felony convictions to vote. The United States is one of the only democracies in the world with this system, and laws vary from state to state. It disproportionally affects African American men, with approximately 13% of the total population nationwide unable to vote, seven times the national average for other groups.

Voter Purges: Officials strike voters from the rolls through a process often shrouded in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation.  Manipulation of the process can be a way to deny potential opposition voters access to the polls. Partisan election officials have been known to use the process to remove large numbers of targeted voters from districts that heavily represent the opposing party from the voter rolls.

What can you do?  (1) Write to your Senators and Congressional Representatives expressing concern about these limitations being placed on the voting (2) Write to Honorable Erich H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20530-0001 with a copy to your Congressional representative and Senators (3) Write a letter to the editor of your newspaper expressing concern about this infringement on voting my millions of Americans, (4) Email President Barrack Obama expressing your concerns: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

References

Justin Levit (2007) The truth about voter fraud,  Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law http://brennan.3cdn.net/e20e4210db075b482b_wcm6ib0hl.pdf

Common Cause, Deceptive Practices 2.0: Legal and Policy Responses  http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7Bfb3c17e2-cdd1-4df6-92be-bd4429893665%7D/DECEPTIVE_PRACTICES_REPORT.PDF

Right to Vote, Human Rights Library, University of MInnesota; http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/edumat/studyguides/votingrights.html

  

Four Fathers

My father, William R. Thompson was born February 26, 1904 in Berlin, ND, a forbidding flat plain mostly populated by German immigrants, unlike his family that had come from Ireland in 1764 setting originally in upstate New York.  Prior to their time in Ireland they had lived in Scotland but clashed with locals over their religious beliefs. My father Bill Thompson was the sixth William Thompson.  His family moved to a rock pile of a farm in north central Minnesota south of Milacs Lake where he grew up and until he was 26.  His father RR Thompson made him quit school in 8^th grade to work full time on the farm.  My father was soft-spoken with handsome features my mother likened to the actor Clark Gable.   My mother later told me that my father was frequently whipped by his father with a razor strap when he as a child. When I was a teenager my father told me that he didn’t think “the Race problem” in America would be solved until everyone was light brown.  In the 1930s he was beaten up every Friday night as he came out of the Union Hall by goons hired by the Citizens Alliance, a businessmen’s organization. They were eventually unionized.  I learned most of my basic values from him, altruism, the virtue of hard work, tolerance toward others, persevering in the face of adversity and honesty.  For many years after his death, when faced with a difficult decision I would ponder, “What would Dad do?”

My wife had three fathers, her biological father, Erich Kohnke, Johannis Blacquiere, a Dutch Christian man who took Anneke into his family during WWII and saved her from the Nazis, and Erich Leyens who brought her to the US and served as her surrogate father in New York when she was growing up having been orphaned during WWII.  Erich Kohnke was born in Berlin, December 1, 1900.  Erich Kohnke studied music with several of the foremost musicologists, composers and music professors in Germany.  Erich Kohnke graduated from the Berlin Conservatory. From August 1926 through early April 1933 Erich Kohnke resided in Chemnitz at Henriettenstraase 42, (a Stolperstein, i.e. a memory stone, will be placed in front of his residence in his memory in October 2011 by the City of Chemnitz) approximately a mile and one half from the municipal theater where he performed (Jürgen Nitsche, personal communication, 6-8-11). He was initially recruited to perform as a solo pianist with the Chemnitz Theater Orchestra.  His job at the Municipal Theatre also included solo vocal coach. As such, he rehearsed with the musicians and singers on stage works, he was transferred to the musical director for shows at the Playhouse. In operas and operettas, he was responsible for the choir, so including in the new production of Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" (1932) and Paul Abraham operetta "Flower of Hawaii" (1932). His contract was 1926-1933 extended several times, increasing his salary. As an active member of the Jewish community, he also became involved as a choral conductor in the synagogue choir club, who devoted themselves to the care of Jewish song in worship.  Erich Kohnke was forced to leave Germany with most other Jews at the beginning of the Nazi era.  Later he and his Wife Leni Leyens Kohnke sought help from the Dutch resistance to hide their  18 month old child with a Dutch Christian family, Johannis and Jacoba Blacquiere. That child grew up to be my wife.  Erich and Leni Kohnke went into hiding in rugged eastern Netherlands, but were capture by the SS, eventually murdered in Auschwitz about 9 months later.  Our son Peter resembles Erich Kohnke and he and my wife Anneke, like her father has musical gifts.

Anneke's third father was Johannis (Jan) Blacquiere, Jan (Johannis) Blacquière, a 31 year-old man when he took Anneke into his family, originally from Geertruidenburg, in the far south of the Netherlands. Jan had married Co (Jacoba) Henriëtta Tissot van Patot, 30 years of age, who was from  Halsteren, in southwest Netherlands.  Jan had  several technological jobs before the war.  Co had been a teacher before her marriage with Jan and continued to use her training and commitment to young children in her daily care for Anneke and her own children. Theirs was a remarkable act of courage and kindness by taking this young Jewish girl into their family.  The Blacquière’s daughter Ron was 8 months older than Anneke, son, Fred, who was 11 months younger than Anneke, and Christa, three years younger than Anneke.  The Blacquière family told neighbors that Anneke, was a Dutch child orphaned in the Nazi bombing of Rotterdam, which was one of the more common ways of hiding Jewish children.  Anneke nominated Johannis and Jacoba Blacquiere for recognition by Yad Vashem as Righteous of the Nations for non-Jews who saved Jewish people during WWII, a ceremony will be held in their honor August 4, 2011.  Here is Jan in his backyard in 1944. 

My wife Anneke’s third father, Erich Leyens was born in Wesel, Germany in 1898.  He was Anneke’s uncle, his mother Leni’s brother.  His father was a successful commercial building contractor and mother was a benefactor of human service organizations.  Erich Leyens and his brother Walter fought for the Kaiser in WWI where he won the equivalent of the Silver Cross for valor and a Purple Heart.  He was 16 years old when he enlisted.  After the war, he and another Jewish German man purchased a department store in Wesel, which was confiscated by the SS within a year after the Nazi Boycott day April 1, 1933.  Eventually he narrowly escaped to Switzerland, then Italy, then Spain, then Cuba and finally was permitted entrance into the United States in 1942.  He lived in New York City most of the rest of his life until a year or two before his death in Konstanz, Germany.  His sister, Greta served as my wife Anneke’s “mother” and he as her “father.”  He was an exceptionally bright man with enormous courage,  broad interests and vitality until shortly before his death.  I have very fond memories of Erich who shared a great interest in art with me. Here he is in Konstanz around his 100th birthday.

We remember our fathers with great affection and admiration.