Thanksgiving 1947-2024

By Branko Terzic

On November 22, 1947 Eleanor Roosevelt published the following in her newspaper column “My Day”

“NEW YORK, Friday—In less than a week now Thanksgiving Day will be with us and members of our family and friends will we hope be with us on that day. A committee called the American Silent Guest Committee has been formed to encourage the buying of CARE packages and they are asking that each one of us who can afford to do so entertain a "silent guest" at our table on Thanksgiving Day…The slogan for this drive is, "Thanks With Giving." The churches all over the country will cooperate, and Mr. Basil Harris, who is Chairman of the general committee, has promised priorities on all his ships for food being sent to Europe. Many of us cannot afford the cost of a whole CARE package but in this way we can join with others…”

A few months earlier that year a young mother, a displaced person from Yugoslavia, had given birth to her first child, a son, in a refugee camp in Allied Occupied Germany. The Care packages came as welcome food deliveries to the refugee inhabitants of the DP camps all over Germany.

I was that child born in June 1947 in the German DP camp. On this Thanksgiving Day in 2024 I pause to honor the memory of Eleanor Roosevelt, Mr. Basil Harris and all the gentle Americans who responded to her missive. Thank You.

Happy Thanksgiving 2024.

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