Jack Edgerton

My Time: Thousands Went to Broadway--millions Went to Auschwitz Jack Edgerton

Having known very little about the life of his own grandparents, Jack takes us on a memorable trip of his childhood where horse-drawn vendor wagons were common and television had yet to arrive. It is his attempt to educate his grandchildren and anyone else, for that matter, on how it was to grow up in the Central New York area during the time when life was "simple". Jack grew up in a predominately Jewish neighborhood, but he never realized until years later the horrors that his friend's parents and relatives had experienced in Europe during the Holocaust. Part Two explores life in America while he is a youth and the effect of the war years on families. The term "swell" used in Broadway plays and movies of that time, pretty well sums up the feeling of America. We are not aware of the atrocities in Europe. Broadway is experiencing tremendous growth, the restaurants and movie houses are full. Life is good, or so we think. He'll show us in Part Three that Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen were completed in the same year that he was born-1943. A trip to Europe and a tour of Bergen-Belsen in 1958 leaves an indelible impression on a 14 year old. Two years of in depth research leads to the roles that Ford Motor Co., I. G. Farben, Bayer AG and others played out in the destruction of millions of innocent lives.