MY SAY: ON FATHER’S DAY
My father Mardoqueo Isaac Salomon was born in Poland in 1905. He was a physician who obtained his medical degree in Geneva, Switzerland where he met and befriended Zeev Vladimir Jabotinsky who persuaded him to leave Europe. When he graduated from medical school, he was denied visas to Palestine and America. Desperate to leave Europe he enlisted in the Bolivian Army which needed doctors for the Chaco War with Paraguay (1932-1935). My lovely and reluctant mother followed him. They lived in military tents in snake infested jungle where he went on patrols in a muddy river on boats encircled by piranhas. He rose in the ranks, was promoted to Surgeon General, changed his name from Mordechai to its Spanish equivalent Mardoqueo and after the Chaco War he settled into a peaceful life in Bolivia where we were saved from the horrors of Europe where all our relatives – grandparents, aunts, cousins- were herded into camps and killed.
At the age of forty, he obtained visas for our family and we came to America where we took buses throughout the United States in an effort to find a place to settle. We crisscrossed cities- Omaha, Chicago, New Orleans, El Paso, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Huntington, Alabama, and finally the Bronx where he passed his medical licensing exam and he opened a medical office and practiced until he had a stroke in 1979.
My brother and I reflect on Papi on Father’s day. He was loving, but pedantic, strict and demanding. But, most of all he was brave and adventurous and unique. rsk
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