Oh!... that the world would have more like Irena Sendlerowa...and Hallelujah for our youngsters...

Irena Sendlerowa’s story is poignantly moving, and there are many versions in print now that she has finally gone to meet her Creator. What struck me about her story, is how forgotten it was by the world at large, including her native country.

And here is where I discover the power of good that young people can generate just because they found an inspiring story and became determined to undo an injustice! If it had not been for these American High School students, Irena Sendlerowa’s story might have stayed in the dusty annals of history.

Irena Sendlerowa is now in the company of all those tortured parents who know that it was thanks to this Polish citizen that their children, grand-children and great-grandchildren could go forth and multiply.

And from Andrew Bostom:

A remarkably brave and noble woman, Irena Sendlerowa left us yesterday, at the age of 98. Although recognized by Yad Vashem in 1965, Sendlerowa’s heroic story only became widely known when re-told and popularized 9-years ago by Kansas schoolgirls. Unlike proud Antisemites such as the murderous pederast Yasser Arafat, and or his increasingly grotesque supporter Jimmy Carter, Sendlerowa was actually quite deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, for which she was nominated last year, but did not receive.

Megan Felt, one of the Kansan authors of the play, recounted the unparalleled exploits of Sendlerowa (“Sendler”), this so-called female Oskar Schindler....

Read it all here.

Tags: Irena Sendler Irena Sendlerowa Holocaust Jewish Ghetto Poland

The banality of evil - Continued.

There's a good article in Spiegel about the Nazis' horrors being brought about by ordinary Germans:

From doctors to opera singers, teachers to truant schoolchildren, the extermination of European Jews was the work of roughly 200,000 ordinary Germans and their helpers. Years of research -- not yet complete -- reveal how sane members of a modern society committed murder for an evil regime.

More about the banality of evil here.

Tags: Nazis Germany ordinary people Holocaust

How Hitler seduced the German population....

Here's an interesting 5-part article from Der Spiegel that tackles the question as to why the Germans embraced Hitler. "Führer propaganda and military success soon turned him into an idol. The adulation helped make the Third Reich catastrophe possible."

There were many reasons: media manipulation, inflaming the masses, finding stereotypes to blame for everything... Even though long, it's worth the read. I recommend that, after reading the Der Spiegel piece, one should read Andrew Bostom's Hitler and Muhammad piece.

Tags: Hitler Germany Muhammad

BMW's major shareholder, slave labor, and their German Nazi past.

"Germany's wealthy and reclusive Quandt family, a major BMW shareholder, has gone on the defensive. For decades the family repressed its Nazi past, but a new documentary film provides new photos of old revelations that have prompted the Quandts to confront their own history of using slave laborers in factories during World War II."

Read it all at Spiegel Online.

BMW slave labor Quandt World War II Germany Nazis

Documenting the murder of 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews.

Father Patrick Debois is helping document the Holocaust in Ukraine:

His subjects were mostly children and teenagers at the time, terrified witnesses to mass slaughter. Some were forced to work at the bottom rung of the Nazi Germany killing machine - as the diggers of mass graves, as cooks who fed Nazi soldiers, as seamstresses who mended clothes stripped from the Jews before execution.

The witnesses live today in rural poverty, many without running water or heat, nearing the end of their lives. So Patrick Desbois has been quietly seeking them out, roaming the back roads and forgotten fields of Ukraine, hearing their stories and searching for the unmarked common graves. He knows that they are an unparalleled source to document the murder of 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews, shot dead and buried throughout Ukraine.
...
The Nazis began killing the Jews in Ukraine following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. But with few exceptions, most notably the 1941 slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, much of that history has gone untold.

Unlike Poland and Germany, where the Holocaust remains visible through the searing symbols of the extermination camps, the horror in Ukraine was hidden away, first by the Nazis, then by the Soviets.

Holocaust Ukrainian Jews Ukraine Nazi Germany Patrick Desbois

The banality of evil.

"Newly released photos of SS officers sitting in canvas chairs, participating in sing-alongs and enjoying their free time at a recreation home near Auschwitz have shocked many in Germany this week."

Read more at Spiegel Online, then move on to here and here. If you want to look at all the photos, go to The Holocaust Museum, here. And more about Auschwitz here.

World War II Germany Auschwitz Holocaust

"You don't have to be a "neocon" to fight for freedom."

A friend brought this commentary to my attention. The former Der Spiegel's Berlin bureau chief, Mr. Gabor Steingart, wrote an interesting article in the online Wall Street Journal comparing the current Baghdad with his city of Berlin. Excerpts:

When I was born the war was already over. The mission was accomplished, as we would say today. But the aggression was still alive. The interior of my hometown was divided into four sectors, and there were occasionally clashes at the borders between the sectors, resulting in injuries and even loss of life. Sometimes as a child I heard the rattling of machine-gun fire. My bedroom was less then 2,000 feet from one of the checkpoints.

Whenever my father and I came within earshot of a border post, he would always remind me of the iron rule of the early days after this war: Keep your mouth shut! A wrong word or even a silly grin was enough to cause big trouble for an entire family.

The situation worsened year after year of what was called "peace." There was no "progress on the ground," as we would say today. The rival groups in my city were absolutely irreconcilable, which is why the men with the Kalashnikovs ended up building a massive wall down the middle of our street. They tore down the houses behind the wall to make room for watchtowers and automatic shooting devices.

The city where I was born is called Berlin, not Baghdad. Thanks to the perseverance and patience of American soldiers and their commander in chief, Berlin is one city today, a free city truly at peace. But if pollsters, focus groups and other "strategic advisers" who don't answer to the electorate had existed at the time, freedom probably wouldn't have stood a chance in my city. The operative terms in those days were not "withdrawal" and "timetable," but "solidarity" and "strength." The most important word was "freedom" -- not "benchmark" or "exit-strategy."

If the supreme commander of the U.S. Army in Berlin had been subject to the same requirements Gen. David Petraeus is subject to today, the Americans would have had to turn the city over to the Soviets. Baghdad today and Berlin in those days are more similar than some would like to believe. The general contention is that the Iraqis, unlike the Germans, never had a democratic culture. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque, these people argue. There is nothing in between -- no civil society, no real labor unions, no real parliament or press.

That's the situation in Iraq, but that was also the situation in postwar Germany. There was no flourishing democratic tradition in my country before the Allies marched in. Adolf Hitler came to power, not by overthrowing a government, but through elections, because the Germans were poorly equipped to handle their young, fickle democracy. A majority considered discipline and order to be more valuable than parliamentary representation. Germany was a republic without republicans.

Iraq, so the argument goes, is a wild, mixed bag of ethnic groups and religious communities. Speaking strictly off the record, critics say that fanaticism is practically part of the human genetic code in this part of the world. What a contradiction! If there were ever a hotbed of fanaticism, it would be somewhere between Berlin and Munich. The Baath Party and its leaders couldn't hold a candle to the Führer in Berlin and his followers. Millions marched through the streets chanting: "Führer command, we will follow!"

Something to think about: In trying to win World War II we aimed to demoralize the German people, so they would accept total defeat. In this war, we have tried to help the Iraqi people.

global war on terror Iraq Germany World War II Berlin Baghdad

Wajda's Katyn.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend the Warsaw premiere of Andrzej Wajda's "Katyn".

Even though my Polish is minimal, there was no need to be fluent in order to understand the film's terribly powerful and poignant depictions of fear, frustration, love, anger, despair, revulsion, and propaganda lies .

The story is very personal. Mr. Wajda's father was one of the victims of Katyn, and Mr. Wajda based the story on the women who waited in vain for their men to return, just like his own mother had done.

Although many VIPs and the "gliteratti" were present at the showing of the film in the Polish National Opera, the mood was somber, and at the end of the film, the silence was truly pregnant with emotion. I could not see him, but I believe Cardinal Jozef Glemp said a prayer at the very end.

Also at the end of the movie a German lady said to me how lucky I was to be an American. Indeed. The burden of history is huge. These are atrocities that we can never, ever forget.

Go here to read about President Kaczynski's visit to Katyn yesterday, as well as to see some beautiful photos of the victims of the massacre.

And go here to see photos of the premiere.

Katyn USSR Stalin World War II Wajda Germany Nazi Poland

September 1: Who remembers?

It's the 68th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland.

[Poland] [World War II] [Germany] [Nazi]

Something Worth Defending - Food for Thought.

“New life has risen from the ruins."

"While we have the image of 50 years ago before our eyes, we must once more repeat the word Monte Cassino, a name that has a far older meaning than the one attributed to it in 1944. We must go back 15 centuries to the time of St Benedict. Precisely at Monte Cassino one of those Benedictine abbeys that was to initiate the formation of Europe arose. Historians show that on the basis of the Benedictine principle "ora et labora", after the decline of the Roman Empire of the West and after the migrations of peoples, this Europe began to emerge, whose civil and cultural foundations have been preserved to this day. This is Christian Europe. It was St Benedict in the West, like Saints Cyril and Methodius in the East, who contributed to the Christianization of Europe in the first millennium. Moreover, the European nations are indebted to them for the very beginnings of their own culture and of this Western civilization, which has continued to develop over the centuries and has also spread to other continents.

"From this standpoint, what does the battle of Monte Cassino represent? It was the clashing of two "projects": one, both in the East and in the West, aiming at uprooting Europe from its Christian past linked to her Patrons, and in particular to St Benedict, and the other, striving to defend the Christian tradition of Europe and the "European spirit". The fact that the Abbey of Monte Cassino was destroyed has a symbolic value. Christ said: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit" (Jn 12:24). Evidently, the ancient Abbey of Monte Cassino had to be destroyed so that a new life for all of Europe could rise from its ruins. And in a certain sense, this is what happened."

MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF MONTE CASSINO

Monte Cassino Pope John Paul II
St. Benedict Christian Europe World+War+II