Doug said:

“How ironic that I would lose my maternal grandmother (92 years old) on the 7th anniversary of the attacks of September 11.”

Sorry about your grandma. It’s tough losing a grandparent. I’m down to one grandparent, my maternal grandmother. She’ll turn 99 in March, 2009. I’m hoping she can make it to 100. I’ve been told that if the President’s staff are informed beforehand, a presidential birthday card will be sent for a person’s 100th birthday. If Grandma can hang in there and McCain wins, I’ll arrange for him to send Grandma a birthday card (I won’t bother if the Messiah wins).

Doug said:

“My grandmother was one of the last Jewish people on earth who came face to face with Josef Mengele, and lives to tell about it.”

That’s a major achievement. I presume she went through “selection” and Mengele sent her to the “left column” rather than to the “right column” and a horrible death.

Doug also said:

“In addition to surviving one of humanity’s most disgusting killing machines at Auschwitz, she also survived a Nazi death march and near starvation before being liberated from the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp…”

This is the typical story. The Nazis did a rapid evacuation from Auschwitz in the face of the advancing Soviet Army. The surviving prisoners ended up in Bergen Belsen to eventually be liberated by the Allies. Anne Frank went through that whole ordeal only to die in Bergen Belsen. One of my mentors (a brilliant aeronautical engineer) had the same experience as Doug’s grandma. My mentor (who was a young boy at the time) survived because an SS officer took a liking to him and made him his orderly. My mentor’s entire family were slaughtered in the gas chambers.