New York Post - 13.08.2019

New York Post, Tuesday, August 13, 2019

nypost.com

21

WARSAW

A

MERICAN millennials have a lot of complaints about their lot in life.

So here’s a question for them: When is the last time you had to walk

through a sewer, waist-high in human filth, choking on the toxic am-

monia, yet unable to cough for fear of alerting the Nazi SS soldiers on

the street above — knowing that if you did, they would open a manhole

cover and toss in grenades or poison gas?

Here in Warsaw 75 years ago, teenagers did exactly that. Last week, sur-

viving members of the resistance gathered in the Polish capital to mark

the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, when the underground Home

Army rose up, freed the city from Nazi occupation and held it for 63 days.

I came here with my 91-year-old mother, who fought in the uprising.

Before the insurgency began, she

served as an underground courier,

carrying radios and messages

across the city. She and her fellow

girl scouts would sneak out of

their homes after curfew — a

crime punishable by death — to

leave flowers at monuments to

Polish heroes or paint anti-Nazi

graffiti on walls. And during the

uprising itself, she would dodge

German sniper fire as she ran

across barricades to carry orders

and weapons to soldiers fighting

on the front lines.

Only about a quarter of the Poles

had weapons; many went into bat-

tle armed with little more than

rocks. Kids as young as 10 or 11

would sneak up to German tanks

and set them on fire using gasoline

bombs. The Nazis responded with

unbridled fury. In the city’s Wola

district, they executed more than

50,000 civilians. By the time the

Home Army was forced to surren-

der, nearly 200,000 civilians and

16,000 soldiers were dead, and 80

percent of the city destroyed.

In our colleges and universities,

first millennials and now their

Generation Z successors have de-

manded “emotional safety,” insist-

ing on “safe spaces” and “trigger

warnings” to protect them from

ideas they don’t like, because they

tell us that “words are violence.”

No, they aren’t. Violence is SS of-

ficers using flamethrowers to clear

buildings. Violence is defenseless

civilians being put in front of Nazi

Panzers as human shields.

During the Warsaw Uprising,

there were no “safe spaces” — bat-

tles were literally fought house to

house, room to room. There were

no “trigger warnings” — only Ger-

mans pulling their triggers as they

executed civilians and prisoners of

war lined up on street corners.

In Poland, young people under-

stand this. It was remarkable to

watch how young Poles embraced

the nonagenarian insurgents. More

than 10,000 scouts and volunteers

stepped forward to help with the

commemorations, pushing the

aged partisans in their wheel-

chairs, bringing them cups of wa-

ter and soaking in their stories.

On Aug. 1, at exactly 5 p.m. — the

“W” hour, when the uprising began

— the entire city came to a halt. As

air raid sirens wailed, people

poured onto the streets, setting off

flares and car alarms, honking

their horns and chanting in unison:

“Heroes, we will not forget you.”

I brought my teenage kids here

to witness this. I wanted them to

see what real adversity, sacrifice

and heroism look like. I wanted

them to put their fingers in the bul-

let holes that still mark the walls

where the Nazis executed children

their age. I wanted them to under-

stand that they must never take for

granted the freedom, peace and

security they enjoy.

Most of all, I wanted them to

realize that they are growing up in

what is, quite literally, the greatest

time in the history of man to be

alive. At no time since human civi-

lization began has there been more

prosperity, more freedom, more

upward mobility, better life expec-

tancy and less poverty, disease,

hunger, illiteracy or violent crime

than there is today.

This unprecedented moment

was purchased for them by the sac-

rifices of a generation before them

— men, women and even children

their ages, who took up arms,

stood up to evil and gave their lives

so that they could live in a world of

peace, liberty and limitless oppor-

tunity.

Their job is to never forget that

sacrifice, to uphold the values for

which the heroes fought. And most

of all, to be grateful they never had

to trudge through a sewer to avoid

Nazis.

© 2019, The Washington Post

Writers Group

Poland’s WWII Heroes

Had No ‘Safe Spaces’

MARC A.

THIESSEN

T

HE Jeffrey Epstein case estab-

lishes beyond a doubt that if

you’re a sexual predator, it

pays to be a rich and con-

nected sexual predator.

Epstein, now dead of an apparent

suicide before his accusers had

their day in court, worked the sys-

tem and benefited from advan-

tages and breaks unimaginable to

anyone who didn’t jet around with

influential friends.

The multimillionaire financier,

who lived in Palm Beach and Man-

hattan, used his resources to build

a network of sexual predation and

then used the same resources to

escape meaningful legal punish-

ment. Even after registering as a

sex offender, he lived a life of ease

and glamour unavailable to even

most of the 1 percent.

Epstein was the Jay Gatsby of

sexual abuse, relying on his

wealth to perfume over what

should have been the overwhelm-

ing smell of sulfur.

He hired a highly credentialed, ag-

gressive legal team that wooed and

over-awed prosecutors who were

supposed to hold him accountable

for his crimes. A decade ago, the

state prosecutor in Florida took a

pass, and President Trump’s former

labor secretary, Alex Acosta, the US

attorney for Southern Florida at the

time, applied the minimal possible

sanction while affording Epstein

every possible consideration.

There are overzealous prosecu-

tors, then there are prosecutors

overly intimidated by bold-faced

defense counsel. In a letter ex-

plaining his handling of the case,

Acosta described “a yearlong

assault on the prosecution and the

prosecutors.” The proper response

of an office invested with the awe-

some powers of government,

arrayed against a lowlife and his

hired guns, should have been to

double down. Instead, Acosta’s

office buckled.

If any of the nameless victims

had been rich or famous them-

selves and able to hire an Alan

Dershowitz or Jay Lefkowitz, the

result surely would have been dif-

ferent. A couple of years ago, Tay-

lor Swift pursued, on principle, an

assault case against a man who

groped her at a meet and greet and

won a symbolic $1.

But none of Epstein’s victims

were Taylor Swift or anything like

it. They were selected for abuse —

because they were vulnerable. And

failed by their government —

because they were vulnerable.

Having minimized Epstein’s

offense in Florida, his lawyers got

busy minimizing the conse-

quences. They somehow con-

vinced a prosecutor in the office of

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance to

petition a judge to lower Epstein’s

sex-offender status. The shocked

judge rejected it out of hand. Vance

said later that the request had been

a mistake.

This held true to the pattern —

all mistakes always worked in

Epstein’s favor.

It was a mistake that Epstein got

to leave 12 hours a day, six days a

week while briefly in jail in Palm

Beach, so he could pursue his

“work” (including bilking one of

his clients).

It was a mistake that New York

City police didn’t enforce the re-

quirement that Epstein check in

with them every 90 days as re-

quired under his sex-offender sta-

tus. (Don’t you know, Epstein’s pri-

mary residence was a private

island in the Caribbean, not New

York?)

All the while, Epstein continued

to socialize with fancy people, buy-

ing his way into their company and

entertaining the great and the good

at his New York City mansion.

It was only when the Miami Her-

ald unearthed the enormity of his

crimes that Epstein’s world began

to unravel. He got charged with sex

crimes by the Southern District of

New York. Although, still, Epstein’s

lawyers got what they wanted on at

least one key request.

They reportedly asked for him to

be removed from suicide watch

while in custody despite a prior ap-

parent suicide attempt. The authori-

ties assented, and Epstein appar-

ently killed himself, a punctuation

mark on the futility and incompe-

tence of a government that had am-

ple opportunity to bring him to jus-

tice and failed every single time.

It shouldn’t be possible for a hid-

eous monster to game the Ameri-

can system of justice, but it’s ex-

actly what Jeffrey Epstein did,

from loathsome beginning to un-

forgivable end.

Twitter: @RichLowry

Epstein’s Endless Breaks

Our failed system afforded him every benefit

rich

lowry

POSTOPINION

‘

When is the last time you had to walk

through a toxic sewer... unable to cough

for fear of alerting the Nazi SS soldiers?

’