The legacy I inherited from my father included a hand-me-down Dick Butkus jersey and the last gifts he gave me just before he died: a book by Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War (The Epic Encounter That Transformed The Middle East), and a vintage Panasonic Radio.
I wore the jersey to work this past Friday to honor Butkus, whose death was announced the previous day.
Friday was also the anniversary of my dad’s death. October 6, 2020. Six days after he turned 80 in the hospital, and also the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Anyone close to me knows Pops was a Vietnam veteran. He was also a US military advisor to Israel.
In addition to books like Ethics of Our Fathers, or My People, the Story of the Jews by Abba Eban, he gave me The Tanks of Tammuz by Shabtai Teveth. The book was personally inscribed to him by an Israeli General.
When my dad’s family fled what is now Ukraine, Some went to the British colony formerly controlled by Turkey that became the modern state of Israel. We had cousins in the Irgun. Other family came here. The rest disappeared.
My last name comes from a city in modern Ukraine called Brody (pronounced Brawd-dee). 9,000 to 10,000* Jews lived there before the Nazi invasion. Most** of them were murdered by the Nazis and their Ukrainian auxiliary.
I’ve been trying to write about all this for the past few days, but I’ve been pretty blocked up until I started using my Facebook status as a composition platform.
I was hoping to make some sort of grand statement, but right now I’m just trying to cope and get through the day. The world was really closing in on me a few weeks ago. I dealt with it responsibly and got by with a little help from my friends. My spirits lifted. Now it’s closing in on me again. This is a good opportunity to stop brooding and get out of my own head.
Here’s a prayer for those that mourn, whether they are family, enemies, strangers, or related to departed football players:
Shalom.
The Righteous of all Nations will have a share in the World to Come.
(*Broad note 9/1/2025: I originally cited over 100,000 off the top of my head. Further research indicated that I unintentionally exaggerated the Jewish population of Brody just prior to WW2. Over a decade prior to the original post of this blog, I started a research project on Brody. My error was based on faulty memory of what I had read years earlier. When I resumed studying the history of Brody I realized I made a terrible mistake.)
Wiki: History of the Jews in Brody https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Brody
Holocaust Historical Society UK: Brody https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/ghettosa-i/brody.html
(** Broad note 9/1/2025: Originally I stated “less than 20 survived” There’s a report of hundreds that survived in the woods as partisan fighters. Again, faulty memory and not fact-checking myself while writing off the top of my head. A simple google search would have given me pause.)
Adam Broad 