Abe

[David T. Cole]

Your Abe topic.

[Kromm]

Here's a spoiler.

 

He's going to look a lot like Alex Reiger! Only a lot older!

Edited May 14, 2014 by Kromm

[Trini]

How come Abe doesn't have a last name??

[shapeshifter]

How come Abe doesn't have a last name??

I hope that doesn't mean he's being written out!

For his first 10 years or so he would likely have gone by Abe Morgan.

[Gregg247]

I hope Henry and Abe have worked this relationship story out, so that when the Detective finally asks what's their connection, they won't be hemming and hawing in a "comedic" manner.  Are they posing as father-son/nephew-uncle/mentor-mentee/pals?  Since Henry is technically Abe's father (not biologically, but he raised him for 70+ years!), pretending to be romantic would be really weird.

 

Also, shouldn't Abe talk with a slight English accent and dress well, since a dapper Englishman raised him with his lovely, cultured American wife?  Where'd the Brooklyn accent come from?

 

Also, when Abe was born in the concentration camp (!), was he placed into Nazi daycare while his parents worked as slave labor?  I didn't realize Nazi's tattooed arms of newborns who are sentenced to death.  That part of the story bugs me more than the whole immortal thing for some reason.

[tribeca]

When Henry tried to leave his wife & she told him "life is a journey"  she reminded me of Abe there. 

[wanderingstar]

I didn't realize until this show that I had missed seeing Judd Hirsch on my TV regularly.

I really like Abe, especially his relationship with Henry.

[rereader2]

Also, when Abe was born in the concentration camp (!), was he placed into Nazi daycare while his parents worked as slave labor?  I didn't realize Nazi's tattooed arms of newborns who are sentenced to death.  That part of the story bugs me more than the whole immortal thing for some reason.

 

Someone in one of the other threads (maybe the Pilot thread?) suggested that babies that were going to be used in Mengele's experiments would be tattooed--and yeah, probably. (Sorry I can't remember who you are, "someone"!)

[derryth]

Our local TV station had a report on a real-life Abe, born in a train on the way to a death camp. Only he's not an orphan (his mother survived), and I don't think he has an immortal adopted father. No mention of a tatoo either.

 

If you google Channel 3000 and do a search on Mark Olsky, you can see the video. I can't find a way to do a link. Here's the written story:

 

{{MADISON, Wis. --It was an answer that would determine the fate of two lives. Rachel Friedman stood before Dr. Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Friedman had been sent to Auschwitz from her home in Lod, Poland. Mengele asked her a question that would decide if she lived or died.

 

“He came up to my mother and asked her if she’s pregnant because pregnant women were just sent off to the gas chamber immediately,” said Mark Olsky, Friedman’s son. “But she knew by then why they were asking the question and she said no.”

Rachel Friendman was pregnant, but only by a few weeks. Her husband, Monik Friedman, was shot and killed by a German soldier before boarding the train to Auschwitz.

After Mengele was satisfied Rachel was not pregnant, she and three of her sisters were sent to a labor camp to make parts for Germany’s air force.

 

With her sisters' help, Rachel was able to hide her pregnancy from the Nazis for months. The sisters gave Rachel some of their rations of food to keep her and the child healthy.

Eight months they were sent to a concentration camp, the Nazis decided to close the factory where they were working. Germany was losing World War II and the air plane parts factory was no longer needed. The Nazis loaded Rachel and the other women into a train boxcar and sent them to the Mauthausen death camp in Austria.

 

But on the way to meet death, they met life.

 

“I was born on the way to the death camp at Mauthausen,” Olsky said.

The train trip to Mauthausen took 17 days and, without a calendar, no one is certain of Olsky’s true birth date. But a German guard who filled out the birth certificate made the choice for them.

 

“Actually the date of April 20 was assigned by the German guard as a favor to my mother. April 20 was Hitler’s birthday. The German people were still celebrating his birthday as a great holiday,” Olsky said.

The 17-day trip may have saved the life of every prisoner on that train. By the time their journey came to an end, the war was over.

 

“When we arrived at Mauthausen on April 29, April 28 was when the gas chambers stopped working,” Olksy said.

Within a few days, on May 5, U.S. soldiers liberated the Mauthausen death camp.

 

Olsky went on to become a physician and moved to Madison in 1981. He has returned several times to visit Mauthausen and will do so again on the 70th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.

“It continues to be a sense of sadness. I wonder about the people that didn’t make it and what it would have been like to know them,” Olsky said.

 

The story of his family's survival, and that of two other children born at Mauthausen, is the subject of a new book entitled, “Born Survivors,” written by Wendy Holden. The book is scheduled to be released on May 5, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen.}}

[shapeshifter]

Our local TV station had a report on a real-life Abe, born in a train on the way to a death camp...

Wow. If just one of several junctures of that story had gone the other way, he would not have survived. It makes Abe's story seem more realistic.

[zannej]

I wonder if anyone ever overheard fully grown adult Abe calling Henry "Dad" and thought that Abe was delusional.

[shapeshifter]

I wonder if anyone ever overheard fully grown adult Abe calling Henry "Dad" and thought that Abe was delusional.

Or confused in an Alzheimer's kind of way? It would depend on context. A few times one of my adult daughters has tried to tell me what to do or think, and, if I agreed (or to end the discussion), I deadpanned, "Yes, Mom."

[theatremouse]

I wonder if anyone ever overheard fully grown adult Abe calling Henry "Dad" and thought that Abe was delusional.

Plus he tends to call him Henry, I presume, to avoid that very scenario. Pretty sure all the "dad" mentions we've seen have been in a jokey-could-easily-be-read-as-sarcasm-if-needed way. Other than that we've gotten indirect references such as calling himself "a doctor's son" whatnot. So I'm guessing either, no, no one has, or, someone did once a verrrrry long time ago, but not so long that it wouldn't get them funny looks, and that's when the calling him Henry began to avoid future issues.

[zannej]

I was thinking more along the lines where something very stressful happens and Abe forgets and calls Henry "Dad" in a totally serious manner. I know he's gotten into the practice of calling him "Henry", but its possible for him to slip up. Or maybe if Abe is injured and  is being taken to a hospital and barely conscious and is calling out to "Dad" and Henry goes over.

[shapeshifter]

I was thinking more along the lines where something very stressful happens and Abe forgets and calls Henry "Dad" in a totally serious manner. I know he's gotten into the practice of calling him "Henry", but its possible for him to slip up. Or maybe if Abe is injured and  is being taken to a hospital and barely conscious and is calling out to "Dad" and Henry goes over.

It could be fun to see them explain it away with Abe being an older jazz fan (which he is) who (they would claim) uses the exclamation "Dad!" instead of "Shit!" because he's a gentleman from the previous generation.

[zannej]

I want to see something go down where Jo watches Henry and Abe interact and then comments that Henry is acting as if he's Abe's father or something. :P