"Each moment in history flashes by us. Many are precious and unique, yet some are vile, some vulgar and some are ugly ones."
As I sit here in my #COVID-19 Safe-space, in front of the Facebook prompt "What is on my mind". I sit here in deep contemplation of human existence -mortality if you may-and the direct link between historical incidents and the human mind to remember those fleeting moments in History and the fickle memory of man
When I first sat down, after making my morning cup of coffee, in front of my computer. I had noticed a post on Facebook this morning regarding today being the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald near Weimar in Germany. A camp that was judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners it was "Liberated" on the 11th of April 1945 the newspaper headlines glared at that time: "US Army reaches Buchenwald ... It was the very first camp to be liberated by American troops".
WOW...
And then I remembered as a historian that some four months before on January 27th, 1945, the horrific Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive.
And as I sat there, with the coffee in front of my computer I began to contemplate just how many reading this post know this or even care to know this?
I then thought of the "first person human memory" link to Yom HaShoar (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and specifically those Holocaust survivors, who experienced first hand the horrors and how they are slowly dying away. That the physical link to the actual experienced events; the scenes, the smells, the emotions, the human touch those factors of humanity are being slowly lost to eternity.
As I was sitting here, I the son of a "baby boomer" a child of a GI who served his country in WWII, realized we are also getting nearer to VE Day. VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on the 8th of May 1945.
THAT day that was the long anticipated day of the defeat of Nazi Germany. It was, according to the allowed Western point of view, what "ALL" the Allies aspired for in Europe in WWII.
For those Jews in hiding in Nazi Occupied Western Europe they prayed and looked forward to "D-Day", that needed first step to Victory in Europe and defeat of the dreaded Nazi Regime.
Those of occupied Europe especially the Jews lived day by day in deep and agonizing anticipation to their "deliverance". We can read these feelings expressed to "Kitty" in the "Diary of Anne Frank". For Anne and for very many other Jews regretfully D-Day was already too late.
For those too young to know, WE privileged Jews, the "baby boomers" the son's and daughter's of the greatest generation in America, Canada, Great Britain. WE can still hear the voices. Those voices of our Momma's or Dad's sometimes speaking in somber tones of "it". That "IT" which is mark of Cain on humanity.
As a young child I remember helping my grandfather with his millinery business and how one day I found him sitting in the office holding a letter sobbing. As he saw me quickly removed the letter and pictures and stuffed them in a drawer of his large roller top desk. When I asked him, "Why are you crying?" I never learned why but I can guess that like many of "US"-"WE" the "luckier" Jews, those whose grandparents who had left the "Pale of settlement" in the 1880's or before had family members somewhere in Europe whom our families never heard from again. Those family members who oh so desperately tried in vain to leave Europe but were not given visas to enter many countries and above all the Homeland promised to us in Eretz Yisrael, where the gates where sealed by Arab hatred and British complicity in their "White Paper".
As to history -You, our son's and daughter's and especially our grandchildren. YOU DO know the meaning of (...-) dot dot dot dash the 'V' for victory” motto derived from the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the famous message in two parts in the poem broadcast by the BBC to the FFI or French Forces of the Interior which referred to the French resistance fighters in France from Paul Verlaine's poem "Chanson d'automne."
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
"When a sighing begins / In the violins / Of the autumn-song".
Then, on June 5, to signal that sabotage efforts should begin, the next three lines were sent:
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone
"My heart is drowned / In the slow sound / Languorous and long."
You may not or may never have heard the infamous line, "The Longest Day"; those words uttered by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel recalled in a book by Cornelius Ryan published in 1959, telling the story of D-Day, the World War II invasion of Normandy and later in the classic black and white movie.
Ask any millennial today, "What do you know about WWII? or What is the importance of June 6th? and at the most they will show an uncaring or unwillingness to listen...to grandpa....
With the wave of Jews finally allowed to leave Russia in 1990 the full extent of the Russian military's participating in the capturing and releasing of some of "OUR" family members became fully known. Very few are aware of the extent of the Jewish "Resistance"- the "Partisans" made famous recently in the 2008 movie "Defiance" with Daniel Craig.
For many of us raised in the school systems in the West we do not know of the contribution of our fellow Jews of the Soviet Union. We do not fully know the true importance of WHAT this day means to "US". Not just ALL freedom loving people but specifically to "US" ...."WE" Jews the wandering Jews.
What this day means is expressed here in this rare BBC recording from April 20th 1945, where inmates at Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp freed from death sing what they now longed for in OUR anthem of hope 'Hatikva' to finally have a land of our own.
As I sit here in my #COVID-19 Safe-space, in front of the Facebook prompt "What is on my mind". I sit here in deep contemplation of human existence -mortality if you may-and the direct link between historical incidents and the human mind to remember those fleeting moments in History and the fickle memory of man
When I first sat down, after making my morning cup of coffee, in front of my computer. I had noticed a post on Facebook this morning regarding today being the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald near Weimar in Germany. A camp that was judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners it was "Liberated" on the 11th of April 1945 the newspaper headlines glared at that time: "US Army reaches Buchenwald ... It was the very first camp to be liberated by American troops".
WOW...
And then I remembered as a historian that some four months before on January 27th, 1945, the horrific Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive.
And as I sat there, with the coffee in front of my computer I began to contemplate just how many reading this post know this or even care to know this?
I then thought of the "first person human memory" link to Yom HaShoar (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and specifically those Holocaust survivors, who experienced first hand the horrors and how they are slowly dying away. That the physical link to the actual experienced events; the scenes, the smells, the emotions, the human touch those factors of humanity are being slowly lost to eternity.
As I was sitting here, I the son of a "baby boomer" a child of a GI who served his country in WWII, realized we are also getting nearer to VE Day. VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on the 8th of May 1945.
THAT day that was the long anticipated day of the defeat of Nazi Germany. It was, according to the allowed Western point of view, what "ALL" the Allies aspired for in Europe in WWII.
For those Jews in hiding in Nazi Occupied Western Europe they prayed and looked forward to "D-Day", that needed first step to Victory in Europe and defeat of the dreaded Nazi Regime.
Those of occupied Europe especially the Jews lived day by day in deep and agonizing anticipation to their "deliverance". We can read these feelings expressed to "Kitty" in the "Diary of Anne Frank". For Anne and for very many other Jews regretfully D-Day was already too late.
For those too young to know, WE privileged Jews, the "baby boomers" the son's and daughter's of the greatest generation in America, Canada, Great Britain. WE can still hear the voices. Those voices of our Momma's or Dad's sometimes speaking in somber tones of "it". That "IT" which is mark of Cain on humanity.
As a young child I remember helping my grandfather with his millinery business and how one day I found him sitting in the office holding a letter sobbing. As he saw me quickly removed the letter and pictures and stuffed them in a drawer of his large roller top desk. When I asked him, "Why are you crying?" I never learned why but I can guess that like many of "US"-"WE" the "luckier" Jews, those whose grandparents who had left the "Pale of settlement" in the 1880's or before had family members somewhere in Europe whom our families never heard from again. Those family members who oh so desperately tried in vain to leave Europe but were not given visas to enter many countries and above all the Homeland promised to us in Eretz Yisrael, where the gates where sealed by Arab hatred and British complicity in their "White Paper".
As to history -You, our son's and daughter's and especially our grandchildren. YOU DO know the meaning of (...-) dot dot dot dash the 'V' for victory” motto derived from the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the famous message in two parts in the poem broadcast by the BBC to the FFI or French Forces of the Interior which referred to the French resistance fighters in France from Paul Verlaine's poem "Chanson d'automne."
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
"When a sighing begins / In the violins / Of the autumn-song".
Then, on June 5, to signal that sabotage efforts should begin, the next three lines were sent:
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone
"My heart is drowned / In the slow sound / Languorous and long."
You may not or may never have heard the infamous line, "The Longest Day"; those words uttered by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel recalled in a book by Cornelius Ryan published in 1959, telling the story of D-Day, the World War II invasion of Normandy and later in the classic black and white movie.
Ask any millennial today, "What do you know about WWII? or What is the importance of June 6th? and at the most they will show an uncaring or unwillingness to listen...to grandpa....
With the wave of Jews finally allowed to leave Russia in 1990 the full extent of the Russian military's participating in the capturing and releasing of some of "OUR" family members became fully known. Very few are aware of the extent of the Jewish "Resistance"- the "Partisans" made famous recently in the 2008 movie "Defiance" with Daniel Craig.
For many of us raised in the school systems in the West we do not know of the contribution of our fellow Jews of the Soviet Union. We do not fully know the true importance of WHAT this day means to "US". Not just ALL freedom loving people but specifically to "US" ...."WE" Jews the wandering Jews.
What this day means is expressed here in this rare BBC recording from April 20th 1945, where inmates at Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp freed from death sing what they now longed for in OUR anthem of hope 'Hatikva' to finally have a land of our own.
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