Yesterday we celebrated Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when the Union troops reached Galveston Texas with the news (belated by over two years) of the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery and granting freedom to all.
Freedom. Individual freedom. I wonder how the news was received and how the concept must have been incorporated into the psyche of each individual.
 My thoughts take me to what my Mother, a Holocaust survivor, told me about the moment she knew she was free. After being moved from the Lodz Ghetto to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen, she escaped from a forced march, not knowing where she was going. She was walking and saw a German soldier approaching her. She continued to walk. She and the soldier passed each other without incident. At that moment, she knew she was free.
The message of Juneteenth is knowing that we, as individuals, are all free .