FROM THE MAELSTROM
A PILGRIM’S STORY OF DISSENT AND SURVIVAL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
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The struggle for personal authenticity can be understood, I believe, against the background of these currents and their ideological pressures. This is my story, a story of one among the millions of my generation. All stories are unique, and yet they participate in the common human condition and destiny, within certain variables of space and time. One lies and one is lied to. It is painful to discover that one was playing just an extra in the drama of which one did not know the plot or the author. After certain events, my only firm goal remained to get to the West, by any means possible, out of the cauldron of the bloody revengeful Tsunami of post World War II chaos. I may not have known it then, but it must have been because “the west” always espoused the ideal of political, academic, and religious freedom. But freedom itself was never the goal or the end; rather it was and has always been a means to truth and truth itself yields the state of being free. Living with freedom does not make one free. Ultimately only truth and truthfulness make one free with the personal responsibility of living in truth. The road from the shackles of lies and self-deception, once allowed to swallow an individual, a group, a nation, is not easy to shake off, and the successful walking on this razor’s edge is never to be taken for granted. One day we have to realize that we were trapped in our own self-deception...We humans live in nature as well as in history. The balance between necessity and freedom remains precarious. Only we make choices and live their consequences. In the evening of one’s life, one needs to sort out the account of one’s life and action. It may be here where, with humility, the road to Salvation might begin. This was and remains the reason for my personal narrative of the Maelstrom.
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About the Book
From The Maelstrom: A Pilgrim’s Story of Dissent and Survival is, above all, the very personal memoir of a humble, but sometimes painfully intelligent and reflective man.Dr. Lubomir “Lubo” Gleiman began the memoir a few years after retiring as a Professor of Philosophy from Salve Regina university in Newport, Rhode Island. Lubo stated the original purpose of the memoir was to, “… provide my children and grandchildren a better understanding of the events that brought me from rural Slovakia to the United States. In writing the book, however, Lubo found himself imposing the critical and philosophical methods that he had developed over years as a scholar and professor. Thus, a book that was supposed to be just about events and a personal story became a deeper reflection on their meaning. Sheltered from the realities of the century and the first years of the Second World War, Lubo Gleiman and his family quickly realize that they are on the wrong side of history and begin a desperate journey shared by so many displaced people. Thus, this memoir takes the reader on a journey through events and ideas from his conscription into a strange pseudo military labor unit, to his “liberation” of sorts at the hands of the 101st Airborne, to his attempts at fomenting anti-communist insurgency, to his struggle to “get to the west”, to his immigrant experience, and finally to his fulfillment in the promising but flawed world of academic and intellectual freedom.
About the Author
Dr Lubomir Gleiman was a philosopher, a refugee, a revolutionary, a professor, a family man and a witness to history. He lived through, touched and observed the tumultuos events and ideas of the twentieth century with a critical eye and a reflective mind. Born into the detailed ethnic mosaic of central Europe and uprooted by the second World War, Lubo Gleiman struggled to build a new life in the west where he could explore the importance of ideas, events, and truth.