|
|
Gerek Hechelbaum
Gerek is a resident.
The major milestones of his life were
Born in 1900,
Married when 22 in 1922
First child, David, was born in 1923 and her second child three years latter.
Both children died from a bad flu season in 1933.
Survived WWII in the Kaufering Nazi work camp. Spent two years after the war in a placement camp in England, He managed to secure a travel visa to America due to the efforts of a 2nd cousin who lived outside of Chicago. Havening lost his whole family Gerek did his best to start over. Becoming a driven and successfully businessman. He made and sold fancy buttons for ladies dresses and latter owned several small tailor shops. Gerek died from natural causes late in 1964.
His wife Jolan died during the war, and though he dated other woman and several distant relative and friends tried to hook him up again, he never married again.
Though both Jolan and Gerek were Jewish and raised their kids in a traditional manor, they were in their personal beliefs and behaviors very 'secular' and in a latter time and place they would have been described as 'progressive' or 'reform.'
During their lives together, both Jolan and Gerek were very 'worldly' for eastern Europe and traveled far, spending several summers in Paris and other western Europe cities. Gerek was 'cutting edge' and saw himself as very 'hip' and were full participants of the wild 1920's jazz and art scene in the clubs of Paris. But they never became full time residents of any of the western Europe countries and traveled frequently back 'home' to their village near the polish Hungarian border.
After the children died and Gerek's button business started to fail, they returned to their home village and got caught up in the worse of the 1930's prewar anti semitism. Not able to escape both Jolan and Gerek were drawn deep into the darkest part of WWII.
Gerek is smart, quick and oddly bemused by the strange world they are in. Its nothing like the afterlife he faintly believed in but having already lived though many personal storms, he is taking the new world in stride. But he is keeping a close eye on some of the discrepancies and is deeply offended by the 'residents' vs. 'citizens' rules of the Havens.
Though Gerek was no scientist or technical engineer, he was an avid 'science fiction' fan and preferred 'hard science fiction' which at least pretended to be grounded in science. The result is that he has already been exposed to idea that were very futuristic for the 1960's such as computers, Einstein and quantum physics. He may not know much about any of those subject but at least some of the language and terminology is familiar as buzz words.
|
|
