Learning from a Terrible Past

http://www.xtra.ca/public/Toronto/Learning_from_a_terrible_past-5948.aspx

"I heard, 'We're going to kill the faggots.' When they ran up the streets there seemed be 100 of them, though there were really only 14. I got up to run and they caught up to me in an alley. They started punching and kicking me until I was unconscious. I don't know how long but I came to sometime later to find no broken bones, just a lot of severe injuries. They had razor blades glued to their boots so there were a lot of cuts and bruises."

Today Boger works as manager of operations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in LA. He was in Toronto on Nov 6 speaking at Adath Israel Synagogue as part of Holocaust Education Week.

But he was not speaking alone. He was with his friend, Tim Zaal, the former LA director of operations, recruitment and propaganda for the White Aryan Resistance, the man whose kicks left him unconscious that awful night nearly 30 years ago.

Amazing story.

These two paragraphs were especially powerful:

Eventually Zaal left his former wife, who today is in jail for committing a hate crime, and married a Jewish Texan. In time he found the job at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is how he crossed paths again with Boger. The two were talking about LA and trading notes on their experiences. It wasn't long before they realized they had met before. After several agonizing moments Zaal apologized but initially it wasn't enough for Boger.

"First I had to understand what forgiveness is," says Boger. "Forgiveness is healing from the incident and regaining your power. When my mother did what she did and Tim did what he did, they both took away something that was very important: my power and self-esteem. In order to gain that back, so they could no longer hold that power over me, I had to forgive. The process for me was to write out everything that happened and all my feelings surrounding it. I did not call Tim. I did not sit down and talk this out. I simply did it on my own."

Very powerful article, all around.