Friday, April 2, 2010

Tom Petters and Danish Fishermen

Two articles ran side-by-side in a local Twin Cities paper today.

One was about a small group of Danish fisherman during World War II. Hitler's Germany had occupied Denmark and had begun to extract Jews back to concentration camps. Knowing full well what would result if captured, these Danish fishermen filled their small fishing boats full of Jewish families and motored them to neutral Sweden. They rescued about 7200 souls from certain death.

The other article was about how Tom Petters, ponsai schemer extraordinaire, was requesting that his sentence be reduced to four years of prison.

I was struck by the enormous difference that these two stories represented.
In one, in order to save a few people, a few men were willing to risk everything they had spent their lives to build.
In the other, a man spent his life taking advantage of a lot of people in order to make millions of dollars.

When push comes to shove, I sure hope that I would be a Danish fisherman.
My wife would kill me if I'm not!

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