In search of the Father

For the first time ever, scientists in a New York medical university were able to observe in real-time how dendrites are formed.  Neural dendrites are tiny branches from the neurons of brain cells that are responsible for long-term memory storage.

In a future government, which will with delight strip naked its citizens at airports on the screens of X-ray scanning machines, will eventually get a tool for intervening directly into the person’s brain: first, to screen for terrorism, then to screen for any tendency towards opposition. From there it will follow, that as with a flash memory drive, it will erase original content and replace it with a new one.

In the summer of 2012 I went to Belarus to visit the place where my father came from. I traveled the whole of the Slutsky district in search of my father, even in search of some memory of him.  When he left these parts and his home just after the war, he never returned.

In 1942-43, the Germans organized the forcible relocation of people from the occupied territories to forced labor in Germany. They were called «Ostarbeiter» (eastern workers). In accordance with German regulations, authorities were to insure that "all workers should receive the food and shelter and be subjected to such treatment which would insure the greatest possibility of exploiting them to the maximum extent possible at the least amount of cost."

My future father and Vera, my mother, had both turned sixteen when they were slated by the Germans to be shipped to Germany. They liked each other. They went dancing together. Their parents even wanted to get them married in order to avoid being taken to Germany. The parents somehow managed to negotiate with the warden for this to take place. With the arrival of the Red Army, all able-bodied males were called to active duty including my future father who was by this time already eighteen.

"We must combat religion. This is the alphabet of all materialism and consequently of Marxism. But Marxism is not materialism, remaining solely with the alphabet. Marxism goes further. It says: we need to know how to fight religion, by using materialism to explain the source of faith and religion among the masses". This famous saying of Lenin was the program for the subsequent war on religion. And without scientific discoveries, communist ideology was able to wash out the long-term memory of the Soviet people about religious life and about God as a spiritual father.

It so happened that my mother and father divorced when I was about a year old.

I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your.