CALISTOGA — Nick Hope, at 100 years old, looks back on his long life and chooses not to focus on the atrocities he has endured at the hands of evil men.
“Somebody suffers their whole life. I don’t. I don’t,” Hope said.
Hope is his chosen name. He was born Nikolai Choprenko in 1924 in Ukraine.
There are times his dreams take him back to horrendous, starving nights in Germany at Dachau concentration camp.
“I say, ‘No, no, no. Everything is over. Everything is over,’ ” Hope said.
Both in name and in life, he has chosen a future of promise over pain
Before the war
“I was born in a little town, Petrowka,” Hope said.
Fond memories from Hope’s childhood on his family farm were real, but short-lived; soon, everything changed.
“We were rich. Rich. But it was not long,” Hope said.
He was just a child when Joseph Stalin came to power, communist dictator of the Soviet Union.
“My father’s house, they said ‘You are rich, you capitalist. You exploit other people.’ They confiscate it. Lands. House,” Hope said.