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John’s corner

Extreme Courage In The Midst Of Ultimate Horror

A column of personal opinion by John S. Rinaldi, founder and owner of Real Time Automation

There are countless heartbreaking stories of terror, cruelty and mass death associated with World War II Europe. I’ve told a few here and learned a few more on my recent tour of Polish World War II historical sites.

No matter what I read, what I see and what stories I’m told, I continue to be mystified by the savagery, inhumanity and callousness exhibited, not only on the battlefield, but behind the lines in Eastern Europe. It’s impossible to understand cruelty on that extreme scale. It truly is unimaginable.

Even more perplexing is how some people found the courage to fight that barbarism. I was very lucky on this trip to learn the story of Irena Sendler and visit her memorial. While camp guards were stomping out Jewish lives at extermination camps around Poland, Irena, less than 50 miles away, was rescuing every Jewish child she could lay her hands on.

In 1939, Warsaw and the rest of Poland fell quickly to the Germans from the West and the Soviets from the East. The Germans immediately began their plan of Nazification by turning much of the city center to rubble and confining over 460,000 Warsaw Jews to a cramped, 1.3 square mile Ghetto with limited access to food and water. Some were deported to extermination camps. Others were killed in the uprising of 1943. A mere 20,000 escaped. Parts of that Ghetto wall still stand today. It’s eerie to stand before that tall 20ft wall, imagine it ringing the Ghetto, contemplating the human suffering it represents.

Irena, with her Warsaw social services job, was one of the very few who had permission to enter and exit the Ghetto at will. She used that permission to smuggle out Jewish children; some estimates are as high as 2,500. She would tell a mother, “I can’t save you, but I can save your child.” To sneak babies and young children past the guards, she would often chloroform them. Once outside the ghetto, she forged documents, gave them Christian names and taught them Christian songs to avoid detection. She placed them in convents or with families all over the countryside. Hoping for reunification after the war, she buried jars with both the original and new children’s names under her apple tree.

In May of 1943, the Nazi SS brutally exterminated the remaining 50,000 Jews in the Ghetto. Even though the penalty for assisting Jews was death – not only your own but that of your entire family – Irena assisted many who escaped the slaughter, but her luck ran out in October of that year. She was arrested by the Gestapo, taken to the brutal Pawiak prison and nearly beaten to death. Even under relentless suffering and incessant interrogations, she steadfastly refused to betray her comrades or the children she rescued. She narrowly escaped execution only because the Jewish underground bribed a prison guard.

After the war, she continued her efforts, establishing the Warsaw’s Children’s Home under the Communist regime. For her wartime efforts, she received numerous awards, including the Gold Cross of Merit. In 1965, she was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. That award is the highest given by the state of Israel and it is reserved for those exemplary individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Irena Sendler’s achievements were largely unknown in North America until 1999, when students at a high school in Kansas produced a play based on their research into her life story, titled Life in a Jar.

You have to wonder what drives someone to risk life and limb for strangers. Irena wasn’t a Jew. She was a Catholic. She had a comfortable government job. Probably had access to water, food and a comfortable apartment. Yet she risked her life for strangers.

Her words shed some light on this:

“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.” — Irena Sendler

A new voice at RTA

Meet Roy Kok, The New VP Of Sales And Marketing

By Roy Kok

My name is Roy Kok, and John says I can’t hold a job…I beg to differ. Wonderful opportunities keep coming my way, and I am very proud to say I am now heading up an incredible team of sales and marketing professionals at Real Time Automation.

John said to tell you about me. We run a personal business – our customers are more than that. They’re our friends.

Truth be told, I could consider retiring, but I don’t often act my age. I still have a lot of game left in me and too much love for this industry. My 40-year career began at Kaye Instruments, where I spent 13 years, earned an electrical engineering degree from Northeastern University and pivoted from engineering to programming and global applications. From there, my career became a dynamic back-and-forth between sales and marketing. I joined Intec Controls (later acquired by Nematron), managed marketing at Imagination Systems and served as VP of Marketing at VenturCom until the .COM bubble burst.

Thanks to good friends, I bounced back at SyTech, which led to a Product Marketing role at Intellution (acquired by GEFanuc), where I managed major product lines like iFIX and CIMPLICITY. Kepware then approached me to head their sales and marketing, driving major growth until the 2010 global recession hit. Ever adaptive, I transitioned to market research as the marketing head for ARC Advisory Group, before being recruited to lead sales and marketing for Dream Report. When COVID-19 disrupted that role, I pivoted to managing marketing for CESMII, focusing on smart manufacturing data modeling. Most recently, my long-time friend Thomas Burke recruited me to Mitsubishi Electric, where I ran their e-F@ctory Alliance and CC-Link Partner programs.

I could have ridden off into the sunset from there, but my two kids are grown and successfully launched, and my wonderful wife of 37 years doesn’t mind me getting out of the house—which also leaves plenty of time for pickleball! I’m eager to make one more big difference by applying my decades of expertise.

Thank you to John Rinaldi for this exciting Real Time Automation opportunity! I can’t begin to tell you about all our opportunity for growth today – but I will in future newsletters.

What do I do for fun? When not working, I’m often enjoying my grandson, or tinkering with some technology, or teaching my grandson how to tinker with some technology (I get to buy so many toys now, using him as an excuse).

I bought a trawler 15 years ago. She was built in 1987, steel hull and lots of work. But that’s my big toy and my hobby. If I had to pay for all the work, I couldn’t afford it. So I’m really good at scraping and repairing rust. The ship’s bridge has a Windows computer with open-source charting software. I’ve added Modbus compatible I/O modules for monitoring all key temperatures and voltages with a SCADA package. If you want to know more, here’s an article I wrote a long while back. https://passagemaker.com/technical/pc-on-board-now-what/

Enough about me. I love the new features of the RTA Historian. We just released it with additional Modbus connectivity in addition to the Rockwell Automation PLC connectivity. There’s new MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectivity so AI can make use of the stored data. We have many more enhancements on the way. This is a little h historian, for embedding in a machine or use in small applications. With up to a terabyte of memory, it’s quite the workhorse. It doesn’t replace the need for an enterprise Historian (H), it becomes a front-end to it. Think of our historian as the black box flight data recorder with high fidelity data for equipment troubleshooting. This is an awesome addition to our Gateway and Stack business.

I look forward to getting to know all our customers and I’d love to hear from you. Email me at rkok@rtautomation.com or connect with me on LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/roykok.