Read the following story and then answer the questions that follow.

Henry Kissinger

    Henry Kissinger was born in a small town, located in the south German province of Franconia, on May 27, 1923. His father was a professor at a local high school, his mother was a housewife; the setting was typical German middle class.

    But the Kissingers were a Jewish family in a Germany that was on the brink of Nazism. He and his younger brother were often beaten by anti- Semitic youngsters on their way to and from their school; finally they were expelled and forced to attend an all-Jewish institution. Their father was forced to resign his professorship. After years of social torture, the family emigrated to the United States in 1938.

    In America, the Kissinger family lived in New York City, in a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan among thousands of other German and Austrian refugees. Henry Kissinger was never assimilated by the culture and society that made up America; in taste and style, he would always be distinctly European.

    After four years in a New York City high school, where he had shown special talent in mathematics, Kissinger began to study accounting at night sessions of the City University of New York, earning his tuition during the daytime. But then, in 1943, he was drafted by the U.S. Army, an army which was at war with the Axis powers.

    After the war, his friend Kraemer got him a job as an instructor in an Army training school that paid $10 000 a year. "That was real purchasing power in 1946," Kraemer would remark later. But Kissinger was not interested in that materialist lure; he felt he wanted an education of his own. And so he won a New York State scholarship, gave up his well-paying job, and enrolled at Harvard in September 1946.

    Since the Civil War, Harvard had carefully nurtured its pipeline to the nation's capital. In the postwar years, the Department of State was small and unsteady; in many situations, its first reflex was to turn to Harvard's area specialists. In late 1965, Kissinger was invited to Saigon to investigate American involvement in Vietnam. In the following decades he became a famous activist of political and diplomatic affairs.

Questions:

    1. What facts do you know about Kissinger?

    ( He was born into a Jewish family in Germany, his family suffered under the Nazist rule and were forced to leave for the United States. Kissinger then lived among German and Austrian refugees but he was not assimilated by American culture. He had special talent in mathematics at school and joined the army in 1943. After the war he could earn a lot of money , but he chose to study at Harvard. Then he became an area specialist and became a famous activist of political and diplomatic affairs. )

    2. What do you think of the person in the story ─ Kissinger?

   ( As a Jew, his life was not easy. He was talented and far-sighted. He was not money-minded and loved politics. )

TOP