A Professor's Lessons on Democracy
Another memory surfaces now, as we live and breathe in troubled times.
The meaning of Aristotle's "Constitution of Athens" was not like our constitution. It meant the health and strength of the body politic, in the world's first democracy, he explained.
How timely is that? How's the health of the world's oldest democracy, our own?
Writing papers was always a bit of a drama and challenge. At Swarthmore, they were a life event. I called the professor's home once on a weekend and spoke to his wife, Lore.
She reassured me not to worry about calling. "He's quite human."
I remember the day Mr. Ostwald asked if any students were Jewish. Two of the four said they were. I always wondered why he asked. He never said.
In twists and turns in time, I recently became friends (on Facebook) with his son David, a New Yorker musician and jazz bandleader.
We met at an Israeli cafe when he was in town visiting family.
There the unanswered questions awakened.
Mr. Ostwald and his family were victims of the Holocaust. When he was a handsome youth of 16, he was arrested with his father and brother by the Nazis on the morning after "Kristallnacht," the Night of the Broken Glass. Hitler's government inflicted violence and terror on Jews throughout Germany.
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