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I teach high school in South Florida...one of the biggest Jewish communities in the nation. Fourteen years ago I was a brand new teacher and sent by my then principal (since retired) to the seminar offered by the Holocaust Museum on Miami Beach. They always have a death camp survivor come speak to the academics for use in the classroom. I made sure that I was sitting front and center to the podium in the first row for the lecture.

The presentation was chilling to say the least. At the end there was a Q & A session and a little lunch served. My hand was the first one up! I specified that I had three questions. The audience waited. I was the new kid on the block...an unknown commodity.
Q: "When the nazis came for you in the middle of the night...why didn't you take up arms? Why didn't you FIGHT?"
A: "Well see, the nazi regime passed these GUN CONTROL LAWS years before they put the first JEW on any cattle car bound for a death camp!"
Q: "I see. Okay when were you last in Israel?"
A: "I live there. It has been my home since it's founding."
Q: (THE KICKER!) "UH-HUH. So tell me, what is the incidence of personal firearms ownership in Israel?"
A: (SLAMS FIST ON THE PODIUM...making every teacher jump!) "EVERYONE who is able has a GUN!!! NEVER AGAIN!!!"

Without waiting for a moment I spun to face the audience and said loudly: "Do you see the NEXUS? Do you understand the connection between the personal, individual ownership of FIREARMS and FREEDOM? If you do not now go back to your classes and make this clear, you not only condone the FIRST Holocaust, you invite the SECOND!!!"

The survivor just realized he was in the middle of a PACK of gun haters when nobody said a word to me in reply and refused to meet my eyes. So to add insult to injury he spoke ONLY to me at the coffee and snarled at anybody who approached. We talked guns. At one point he said to me: "You DO realize that you're probably in a lot of trouble with THEM, right?" and I told him that I used to be a Second Lieutenant in the army so I was "used to having my A$$ chewed...and that once you've been nibbled on by a general...any principal...even the entire school board is no big deal."

He was in fact correct. I was in B-I-G trouble but my principal was in fact pro-NRA and so he did as HE had been told he chewed me out for about two hours in his office, but took no further action. The lasting effect was that I was banned from ever attending the seminar again....until THIS past year. The difference? It is now being run specifically by the Israelis. That survivor had returned and spoken of the incident to those in charge and they remembered. Iwas specifically invited if I was still a teacher and still interested. At the seminar, I was invited to share my point of view and got a polite response from those assembled.