Channels
Photo: Ofer Amram
Dori Klasgsbald
Photo: Ofer Amram

Un-careful driver, avoidable death

When you are on a road, please remember that we have lost enough Jews in the Holocaust, in wars. We do not need to lose any more

On the morning of April 11 2006, Doctor Victoria Wexler was the proud mother-in law of promising athlete Yevgenia, age twenty six, and the grandmother of Arthur, age six. By the end of the day she was mourning the loss of her loved ones.

 

Well known attorney Dori Klasgsbald speeding down coastal highway killed Yevgenia and Arthur while their car was standing still at a red light. The cause of the accident was found to be human error by Klasgsbald.

 

The prosecution decided to charge Dori with the lesser crime of negligent homicide and not manslaughter. But there was no agreement on the sentence. That will be decided by a judge on September 28.


Wexler family (Photo: Ofer Amram)

 

By all accounts, Dori Klasgsbald is a nice man and a good lawyer. A split second mistake on April 11, 2006 caused him to kill Yevgenia and Artur Wexler. This action destroyed permanently not one but two families, the Klasgsbald and Wexler families

 

I am grateful that I am not the judge that has to sentence Dori. If I was, I would be spending my nights pacing the floors instead of sleeping. I would have no idea of how to decide the appropriate sentence. But since my Uncle Yankel was killed in a car accident shortly after he made Aliyah to Israel, I do have some idea of the pain that the Wexler’s senseless death has caused their family.

 

Shock to the family

We humans need time to prepare for death. When it comes unexpectedly, it tears out our insides. We also need to assign blame. It is easier if we can blame cigarettes, genetics, or Mother Nature. (Everyone likes to blame their mother for everything.) But it excruciating when the fault lies with another individual.

 

My mother watched her four brothers be shot by the Nazis before the family fled to France. There, my grandmother died from an infection. If it had not been war time, she most likely would have lived. My mother was placed in an orphanage so that her father and brothers could work.

 

After arriving in America and finding that the streets were not paved with gold, my uncle Yankel and his brothers opened a kiosk which became a mini mart and then a full blown supermarket. Yankel worked hard six days a week, 15 hours a day. After 25 years, the brothers were able to sell the supermarket for a nice profit and Yankel was able to realize his life long dream of moving to Israel.

 

Sadly, he was not able to settle in or enjoy his retirement. He was killed shortly after arriving in Israel in a car accident. Although my aunt did most of the driving, Yankel was driving on this particular day. He was the only one that was killed. The passengers survived.

 

Yankel was the glue that held ours and his family together. Without him, our family scattered like the wind. I have never really seen my aunts and uncles and cousins since that day. One person may have died that day but an entire family unraveled.

 

After hearing of the news of his tragic death, my mother took to her bed for days. By then her father was dead. Yankel had become her protector. Without him, the world seemed like a less safe place to her. Yankel was the only one that my mother would listen to. Sometimes, I wonder how different things would have been if he was still alive.

 

Yankel’s immediate family fared even worse. My aunt, his wife, has married him right after high school. She had gone right from her father’s house to my uncle’s house. She had never been alone. Now she was alone with three children, one a baby, in a foreign country where she did not speak the language.

 

My aunt did what she thought she had to do to survive. She married again and again looking for another Yankel. But she could never find one because he had been one of a kind.

 

Life in a house of revolving door marriages was chaotic. As soon as my cousin was eighteen, she ran from the house the only way a girl from Bnei Brak can leave the house. She got married. Sadly, she did not have the luxury of waiting to find her prince charming. No one in the family even knows where her brother is.

 

I wish that I could visit my uncle instead of his grave. I wish I could thank him in person for letting me run down the aisles of the supermarket picking out candy. When I knew that I was going to the supermarket, I would wear special clothes with extra pockets so I could fit as much candy as possible.

 

Avoidable tragedy

I share the pain of the Wexlers. Like my uncle’s accident, this one was also avoidable. When I made Aliyah, my mother made me promise not to drive in Israel. By and large, I have kept that promise out of duty to my mother and because it was easy to do.

 

Dori Klagsbald had 21 traffic offenses. It is clear that he did not have a future as a Nascar driver. It was even clearer that he was a ticking time bomb. Statistically, he had already beaten the odds by not having a serious traffic accident by now. It was only a matter of time.

 

If he was overwhelmed with work or so stressed out that he could not concentrate on driving, why didn’t just take a cab? Mr. Klagsbald was a well paid lawyer who certainly could have afforded a cab. Depending on where he was going, the trains might have been even faster than a car. One of the largest bus companies in America, Greyhound, had a slogan. “Leave the driving to us.” Mr. Klasgsald, I wish you had taken their advice.

 

No one knows why he failed to brake. Maybe he was on his cell phone. If he was on his cell phone, then all of us who use or talk to someone who is driving are responsible for this senseless death.

 

I am always in a hurry and everything is very important. But I refuse to talk to anyone that is driving. I am not going to be the cause of their accident. I say, “Are you in the care? I will call you when you get to the office.” If we all followed the simple rule of not talking to someone who is driving, the roads would be safer and Yevgenia and Artur will not have died in vain.

 

When you are on the road, please remember that we have lost enough Jews in the Holocaust and in wars. We do not need to lose any more.

 


פרסום ראשון: 09.19.06, 18:16
 new comment
Warning:
This will delete your current comment