Last month I watched the series “Band of Brothers” which was set during WW2. Episode 9 had one of the most powerful scenes I have ever seen in a tv show. The Americans liberate Dachau concentration camp.
The US Holocaust Museum has posted Letters from Liberators On May 3, 1945, US soldier Elmer Joachim recorded his reactions to visiting Dachau after liberation. The letters have been scanned and you can view below the video. POWERFUL. MOVING.
Watch:
In April and May 1945, Allied forces liberated thousands of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps. Soldiers who had read and heard reports of Nazi crimes now confronted the evidence first hand. Shocked, angered, and horrified by what they saw, they recorded their observations in reports to their superiors and letters home to loved ones so as to ensure that others would know the truth about what they had seen. Historic film footage, artifacts from our collections, and oral histories provide further documentation of liberators’ experiences at the end of World War II.
Today’s trip down the history path was about the Archibald Fountain in Sydney Hyde Park because it plays a part in my new novel – “Mabel of the ANZACS” I’ve lived in Sydney for 50 years and I didn’t know this bit of history. My novel is set in 1948 and I wanted to know when the fountain was created
The Archibald Fountain is located in Hyde Park North at the centre of ‘Birubi Circle’, and at the intersection of the main avenues crossing Hyde Park. The fountain, by French sculptor Francois Sicard, commemorates the association between Australia and France in World War 1. It draws its themes from Greek antiquity and is an important example in Sydney of the classical revivalist sculpture of the 1920’s and 1930’s, known as Art Deco. The fountain is approximately 18 metres in diameter and is in the shape of a hexagon. A bronze Apollo, the central raised figure standing approximately six metres high on a central pedestal, dominates the other mythical figures of Diana, Pan and the Minotaur. Behind Apollo a large arch of fine spray represents the rising sun and accentuates his dominant position. At Apollo’s feet, water sprays from horses’ heads into a series of three basins. Tortoises in the large hexagonal basin, and dolphins in the middle one, direct jets of water towards the centre. Apollo was surrounded by three groups of figures, the first featuring Diana bringing harmony to the world; the second, Pan watching over the fields and pastures; and the third, Theseus conquering the Minotaur, symbolic of sacrifice for the common good.
A tablet attached to the large base supporting the figure of Theseus reads: This fountain is the gift of the late / J.F. Archibald / to his fellow countryman and is intended in terms of / his will to commemorate the association of Australia / and France in the Great War 1914-1918. It was erected in / 1932 and is the work of Francois Sicard, Sculptor, Paris.
The following is from the ANZAC Memorial here in Sydney. It’s a place I have visited often. It’s an emotional place and this statue reminds me of the sacrifice that was rendered. Duty. Honor. Sacrifice. It’s not the glory of war because there is no glory in war but in the sacrifice of those that served and died.
The details below are from the Anzac Memorial Page describing why this statue was created and why it’s in the Memorial:
The sculpture ‘Sacrifice’ encapsulates the message at the heart of the Anzac Memorial. Designed by sculptor George Rayner Hoff the sculpture is based on the story of the Spartan warrior from ancient Greece. Spartan men were raised as warriors from boyhood and, when marching to war, were told to come home with their shield or on it – a warning to be victorious or die in the attempt. Rayner Hoff has created an image that depicts the weight of the dead young warrior carried on his shield by his mother, sister and wife nursing infant child. The sculpture Sacrifice uses the analogy of the Spartan warrior being returned to his loved ones dead on his shield to evoke the emotion experienced by the families of the young men who died in the Great War 1914-18.
In the BOOK OF THE ANZAC MEMORIAL published in 1934. The sculpture Sacrifice is described “with great dramatic power it portrays the recumbent form of an Anzac whose soul has passed to the Great Beyond, and whose body, borne aloft upon a shield by his best loved – mother, sister, wife and child – is laid there as a symbol of that spirit which inspired him in life, the spirit of Courage, Endurance and Sacrifice. There is no pomp, no vain glory, no glamour in this group; rather is there stark tragedy, grim reality and bitter truth. But it is the truth which tells not only of the brutality of war and of the suffering it engenders, but of the noblest of all human qualities – self-sacrifice for duty.”
The New Yorker magazine has a very interesting article. The Root of All Cruelty? Perpetrators of violence, we’re told, dehumanize their victims. The truth is worse.
A recent episode of the dystopian television series “Black Mirror” begins with a soldier hunting down and killing hideous humanoids called roaches. It’s a standard science-fiction scenario, man against monster, but there’s a twist: it turns out that the soldier and his cohort have brain implants that make them see the faces and bodies of their targets as monstrous, to hear their pleas for mercy as noxious squeaks. When our hero’s implant fails, he discovers that he isn’t a brave defender of the human race—he’s a murderer of innocent people, part of a campaign to exterminate members of a despised group akin to the Jews of Europe in the nineteen-forties.
The philosopher David Livingstone Smith, commenting on this episode on social media, wondered whether its writer had read his book “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others” (St. Martin’s). It’s a thoughtful and exhaustive exploration of human cruelty, and the episode perfectly captures its core idea: that acts such as genocide happen when one fails to appreciate the humanity of others.
When I was doing research for my first book “In The Blood of the Greeks” – I wanted to give my character, Zoe Lambros, a role model that she was inspired by. I just love research and this led me down a whole different rabbit hole.
I discovered the heroic Laskarina Bouboulina – with a name like that you have to be special. Laskarina Bouboulina was a Greek naval commander, heroine of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, and allegedly first woman-admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy. Pretty nifty.
On this day in 1945, the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. 6 MILLION innocent Jews and others such as gyspies, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexual men (lesbians were not imprisoned), political prisoners and other people had lost their lives.
1.1 MILLION were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau alone. January 27 was designated by the UN as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
My friend Steven L Sears posted this on his Facebook page. Please read “This Room At Dachau”.
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The New Yorker magazine has a very interesting article. The Root of All Cruelty? Perpetrators of violence, we’re told, dehumanize their victims. The truth is worse.
When I was doing research for my first book “In The Blood of the Greeks” – I wanted to give my character, Zoe Lambros, a role model that she was inspired by. I just love research and this led me down a whole different rabbit hole.
On this day in 1945, the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. 6 MILLION innocent Jews and others such as gyspies, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexual men (lesbians were not imprisoned), political prisoners and other people had lost their lives.
