My parents were part of the generation that witnessed first hand the horrors of World War II in Europe. I grew up as a kid in West New York, learning English on the streets and German at home. My mother raised me. My parents were separated. I grew up hearing the stories of bombs falling from the skies, the horizon darkened by bombers, hundreds of thousands burned to death by phosphorescent bombs.

Several of my friends were also children of survivors of the war, brought to America so that they would never have to live through another terrible war. My closest friend, to this day, is herself the child of a Holocaust survivor; her husband, a veteran, is my best friend. On my father's side, I had several people in Concentration Camps.

Yet, growing up in Clifton, I was called derisively"Nazi" by other kids in my fifth grade class. 

What I do know is that neither I nor my elderly friends want to see another war, one that will not stop in Europe. But we also do not want to see another totalitarian regime impose it's will on free thinking peoples. Putin is as much a dictator as was Hitler or Stalin.

Does any leader have the wisdom to move beyond appeasement? I find it ironic that the current European security meeting is being held in Munich. "Peace in our time?" A wish and a prayer.