Wwii Women's Quotes

When you go home Tell them of us, and say For your tomorrow, We gave our today.

These days I keep noticing how my feelings towards men - and the feelings of all the other women - are changing. We feel sorry for them; they seem so miserable and powerless. The weaker sex. Deep down we women are experiencing a kind of collective disappointment. The Nazi world - ruled by men, glorifying the strong man - is beginning to crumble, and with it the myth of "Man". In earlier wars men could claim that the privilege of killing and being killed for the fatherland was theirs and theirs alone. Today, we women, too, have a share. That has transformed us, emboldened us. Among the many defeats at the end of this war is the defeat of the male sex.

But most of these women -- the famous and the obscure -- had one thing in common: they did not think of themselves as heroes. They followed their consciences, saw something that needed to be done, and they did it. And all of them helped win a war, even though many of them paid the ultimate price for their contribution. But their sacrifice was not in vain, especially if their courage continues to inspire others to fight injustice and evil wherever they find it. --From Women Heroes of WWII

The road of the pass was hard and smooth and not yet dusty in the early morning.

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.

We ate, did our homework, got good grades, kissed our parents goodnight and always had the secret door and shared experiences to go to. It was truly remarkable, and doing it as a group made us feel invulnerable. As soon as the drums and amps were set up and Jean and Kathie hit it, I tell you there was nothing more to say. Conversation stopped, and the magic carpet ride took off. I’ve never felt anything more powerful in my life.

The German occupation had changed the once beautiful Dutch spirit into a land of minefields containing hatred and cruelty that stripped a person of basic human rights that all should have and enjoy

The power of words does not lie in the stories we tell, but in our ability to connect to the hearts of those who read them.

Ironically, a side effect of war was learning how to live each day as it came while hoping and believing in a better tomorrow

This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.

Are you willing to hand over your daughters to complete strangers to provide them with a place of safety? Are you willing to do so without the promise that you will ever see them again?

We cannot control who gets killed in this war. War is full of hate, blood, and destruction. We can only try to help as many as we can. We must let go of certain misfortunes and proceed on

One of the toxic traits of prejudice was that people wielded it as a sword to attack others without fully taking the time to get to know the accused. More aggravating was that the attackers didn't want to know the target of their hatred in the first place

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States entered into World War II to protect our way of life and to help liberate those who had fallen under the Axis occupation. The country rallied to produce one of the largest war efforts in history. Young men volunteered to join the Armed Forces, while others were drafted. Women went to work in factories and took military jobs. Everyone collected their used cooking grease and metals to be used for munitions. They rationed gas and groceries. Factories now were producing airplanes, weapons, and military vehicles. They all wanted to do their part. And they did, turning America into a war machine. The nation was in full support to help our boys win the war and come home quickly. Grandpa wanted to do his part too.

The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. 'That'll keep the gals out of trouble.

Men tell stories", I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.

That was what made friendship special, nearly sacred, and worth nurturing - understanding the other and accompanying them through good times and bad

Why people turn against each other and cause unnecessary chaos, I'll never understand. It takes more effort to hate than it does to love

We're all fragile, Isabelle. It's the thing that we learn in war

She was now ready. Diarrhea pills, speed, sleep dope, lethal pill, and beauty aid. Bring on the Germans.

Is that what war accomplished, making enemies from many and friends from a few?

She didn't need to ask him to explain himself. That was the oddity of living under threat: communication became tangible without the aid of the spoken word

Zofia's heart remained splintered over how people weren't treated equally, depending on their finances. If the world functioned on love rather than on monetary value, all would benefit

This not knowing who was on which side - the Nazi side or the Nazi's enemy side - was too complex for her. She just wanted to love her fellow human beings - if only each person could behave humanely

This time it is not a simple, understandable war, within the same culture. This time it is an assault of the animal world upon the house of the human being. I don’t know what you saw in Africa and Italy, but I know what I saw in Russia and Poland. We made a cemetery a thousand miles long and a thousand miles wide. Men, women, children, Poles, Russians, Jews, it made no difference. It could not be compared to any human action. It could be compared to a weasel in a henhouse. It was as though we felt that if we left anything alive in the East, it would one day bear witness against us and condemn us. And, now, we have made the final mistake. We are losing the war

Ad they entered Berlin, while still killing off the last of its German defenders, The Russians indulged in an orgy of rape and rage beyond the bounds of human Imagination. Over the course of ten days, about 130,000 women were raped---

The guilt is blazing within me like a fever. I hate lying about who I am and who I'm supposed to be. I'm torn up with guilt for denying my heritage and my native country while well aware of how so many people have suffered illness, torture, or death, or all three, because, like me, they failed to live up to Aryan standards

The Lutz heck that emerges from his writings and actions drifted like a weather vane: charming when need be, cold-blooded when need be, tigerish or endearing, depending on his goal. Still, it is surprising that Heck the zoologist chose to ignore the accepted theory of hybrid vigor: that interbreeding strengthens a bloodline. He must have known that mongrels enjoy better immune systems and have more tricks up their genetic sleeves, while in a closely knit species, however "perfect," any illness that kills one animal threatens to wipe out all the others, which is why zoos keep careful studbooks of endangered animals such as cheetahs and forest bison and try to mate them advantageously. In any case, in the distant past, long before anyone was recognizably Aryan, our ancestors shared the world with other flavors of hominids, and interbreeding among neighbors often took place, producing hardier, nastier offspring who thrived. All present-day humans descend from that robust, talkative mix, specifically from a genetic bottleneck of only about one hundred individuals. A 2006 study of mitochondrial DNA tracks Ashkenazi Jews (about 92 percent of the world’s Jews in 1931) back to four women, who migrated from the Near East to Italy in the second and third centuries. All of humanity can be traced back to the gene pool of one person, some say to a man, some a woman. It’s hard to imagine our fate being as iffy as that, be we are natural wonders.

Uncertain times brought out the best and worst in people. This was not the first time she'd behaved boldly. That was a positive aspect of being a deaf person in a hearing world - you had to have confidence, or at least, act in a fashion that led others to believe you were courageous. And she'd perfected her acting abilities a long time ago for the sake of survival

These boys would be better off hog-tied than playing for a woman!” shouted another. The discordant men gathered at the back exit. Moonshiner opened the door and they poured out, while inside we could hear in the distance the sound of a plane flying into our airfield. We knew another body was likely on board, this time carrying the remains of a soldier from a neighboring town.

The war ended for us in August of 1945. Most anyone who lived in Japan during this time will tell you that it was the very bleakest moment in a long night of darkness. Our country wasn't simply defeated, it was destroyed and I don't mean by all the bombs, as horrible as those were. When your country has lost a war and an invading army pours in, you feel as though you yourself have been led to the execution ground to kneel, hands bound, and wait for the sword to fall. During a period of a year or more, I never once heard the sound of laughter unless it was little Juntaro, who didn't know any better. And when Juntaro laughed, his grandfather waved a hand to shush him. I've often observed that men and women who were young children during these years have a certain seriousness about them; there was too little laughter in their childhoods.

I felt so much more than horror. I was so afraid, shocked by what I saw. There were hundreds of men, women and children hanging from the trees ... there was blood everywhere! We all saw that every person had been gutted, like a fish. My instinct was to run, but where to ... I was on a train. As I watched those around me on the train, so many others also looked like they had explosions in their eyes and they too wanted to flee.

Judging Pius by what he did not say, one could only damn him. With images of piles of skeletal corpses before his eyes; with women and young children compelled, by torture, to kill each other; with millions of innocents caged like criminals, butchered like cattle, and burned like trash—he should have spoken out. He had this duty, not only as pontiff, but as a person. After his first encyclical, he did reissue general distinctions between race-hatred and Christian love. Yet with the ethical coin of the Church, Pius proved frugal; toward what he privately termed “Satanic forces,” he showed public moderation; where no conscience could stay neutral, the Church seemed to be. During the world’s greatest moral crisis, its greatest moral leader seemed at a loss for words. But the Vatican did not work by words alone. By 20 October, when Pius put his name to Summi Pontficatus, he was enmeshed in a war behind the war. Those who later explored the maze of his policies, without a clue to his secret actions, wondered why he seemed so hostile toward Nazism, and then fell so silent. But when his secret acts are mapped, and made to overlay his public words, a stark correlation emerges. The last day during the war when Pius publicly said the word “Jew” is also, in fact, the first day history can document his choice to help kill Adolf Hitler.

The train, I was later told by my mother, only had about ten carriages to it, and there were hundreds of people fighting to get on. I don’t think anybody knew where the train was going, only that it was leaving Strausberg and would take us away from the Russians, who were now arriving on the far end of the platform. Some German SS soldiers and Police were shooting at the Russian troops, and many people – men, women and children – were hit by the flying bullets.

The Second World War created the need for a new generation of female heroes. Where could these women look for role models? The women of the previous war had by this time been largely forgotten. Although efforts had been made during the 1920s to memorialize the war's heroes, both men and women, with monuments, books, and films, most Europeans, impatient to forget the war, also forgot its heroes. But now the memory of their courage was needed and eagerly recalled...

Although there were serious attempts to unify the various strands of the French Resistance, the political situation remained somewhat complex throughout the war. It was into this complicated state of affairs that the first F Section agent of the SOE was parachuted into central France on the night of May 5-6, 1941. In the end, more than 400 SOE agents were sent into France during the course of the occupation, and 39 of them were women. Pearl Witherington was one of those women. Although the SOE trained her to be a courier for a Resistance circuit called the Stationer network, nothing but her own strength, intelligence, and determination could have prepared her for the drastic change in roles that occurred while she was working in occupied France, a change that has made her one of the most celebrated female agents in SOE history

In October 1941, Mahilue became teh first substantial city in occupied Soviet Belarus where almost all Jews were killed. A German (Austrian) policeman wrote to his wife of his feelings and experiences shooting the city's Jews in the first days of the month. 'During the first try, my hand trembled a bit as I shot, but one gets used to it. By the tenth try I aimed calmly and shot surely at the many women, children, and infants. I kept in mind that I have two infants at home, whom these hordes would treat just the same, if not ten times worse. The death that we gave them was a beautiful quick death, compared to the hellish torments of thousands and thousands in the jails of the GPU. Infants flew in great arcs through the air, and we shot them to pieces in flight, before their bodies fell into the pit and into the water.' pp. 205-206

Antanas eased up on the accelerator and pulled the truck onto the shoulder. The sound of the soldiers' footsteps crunching in the snow made Maria sit up straight. The truck had driven about thirty metres past the patrol, but none of the soldiers had fired upon them. Antanas hoped fervently that the transport documents that Peter had furnished him would pass inspection. Maria reached down and touched a metal pipe concealed beneath her seat. She was prepared to use it. Jadwyga continued to pray quietly. "Mother Mary, spare me, Maria, and the other women from rape, and Antanas from death." As a sergeant approached the truck, Jadwyga's stomach cramped, sweat broke out on her forehead, and her arms began to shake. Then she fainted. Maria propped Jadwyga up to make it look as though she was sleeping, and then smiled at the sergeant who was rapping on the glass. Antanas rolled down his window.

In Healing the Masculine Soul, Dalbey introduced themes that would animate what soon became a cottage industry of books on Christian masculinity. First and foremost, Dalbey looked to the Vietnam War as the source of masculine identity. The son of a naval officer, Dalbey described how the image of the war hero served as his blueprint for manhood. He’d grown up playing “sandlot soldier” in his white suburban neighborhood, and he’d learned to march in military drills and fire a rifle in his Boy Scout “patrol.” Fascinated with John Wayne’s WWII movies, he imagined war “only as a glorious adventure in manhood.” As he got older, he “passed beyond simply admiring the war hero to desiring a war” in which to demonstrate his manhood. 20 By the time he came of age, however, he’d become sidetracked. Instead of demonstrating his manhood on the battlefields of Vietnam, he became “part of a generation of men who actively rejected our childhood macho image of manhood—which seemed to us the cornerstone of racism, sexism, and militarism.” Exhorted to make love, not war, he became “an enthusiastic supporter of civil rights, women’s liberation, and the antiwar movement,” and he joined the Peace Corps in Africa. But in opting out of the military he would discover that “something required of manhood seemed to have been bypassed, overlooked, even dodged.” Left “confused and frustrated,” Dalbey eventually conceded that “manhood requires the warrior.” 21 Dalbey agreed with Bly that an unbalanced masculinity had led to the nation’s “unbalanced pursuit” of the Vietnam War, but an over-correction had resulted in a different problem: Having rejected war making as a model of masculine strength, men had essentially abdicated that strength to women. As far as Dalbey was concerned, the 1970s offered no viable model of manhood to supplant “the boyhood image in our hearts,” and his generation had ended up rejecting manhood itself. If the warrior spirit was indeed intrinsic to males, then attempts to eliminate the warrior image were “intrinsically emasculating.” Women were “crying out” for men to recover their manly strength, Dalbey insisted. They were begging men to toughen up and take charge, longing for a prince who was strong and bold enough to restore their “authentic femininity.” 22 Unfortunately, the church was part of the problem. Failing to present the true Jesus, it instead depicted him “as a meek and gentle milk-toast character”—a man who never could have inspired “brawny fishermen like Peter to follow him.” It was time to replace this “Sunday school Jesus” with a warrior Jesus. Citing “significant parallels” between serving Christ and serving in the military, Dalbey suggested that a “redeemed image of the warrior” could reinvigorate the church’s ministry to men: “What if we told men up front that to join the church of Jesus Christ is . . . to enlist in God’s army and to place their lives on the line? This approach would be based on the warrior spirit in every man, and so would offer the greatest hope for restoring authentic Christian manhood to the Body of Christ.” Writing before the Gulf War had restored faith in American power and the strength of the military, Dalbey’s preoccupation with Vietnam is understandable, yet the pattern he established would endure long after an easy victory in the latter conflict supposedly brought an end to “Vietnam syndrome.” American evangelicals would continue to be haunted by Vietnam. 23

Hello Readers! I look forward to adding to my author page. I

While women had worn wedding rings for centuries, it wasn’t common for men to wear them until WWII when they’d taken to wearing the rings to remind them of home. A man wearing a wedding ring in the 1920s wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare.

They [soldiers WWII] were so young, so very young. A whole generation of young men died, leaving a whole generation of young women to weep.

Children of the Stars is a tribute to the power of everyday men and women to change reality.

A long, dark shadow was stretching over the valley: the shadow of death and fear, darkness and hatred, which bided its time for the chance to overtake each home, field, and byway until it devoured the last ray of hope in the hearts of the women and men of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

The souls of men and women make a country great.

From the green valleys of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon , were a village of men and women set their faces against the horror and showed that, armed with the Spirit, the noblest hearts are always capable of overcoming and that there shadows of evil will finally be dispelled until light invades everything once more — for a new generation to believe it can change the world, or at least try.

During WWII, as men and women fought overseas to save the world, prostitutes, pedophiles, elitist homosexuals, and rapists were metamorphosed into graphs of masturbation, adultery, homosexuality, early sexual activity, bestiality, etc., that purported to represent the Greatest Generation. Sabotage, not science.

riverbank towards her; women and children, mothers and fathers, grandparents, babies. They came with all their belongings strapped to their backs, slung over shoulders, or pulled along in makeshift carts. Some carried babies, children, and even old people on their backs. Many were very thin, dressed in filthy rags, their bodies and clothes matted with dirt. To her surprise, some of them were dressed in finery. Dinner jackets and evening gowns, now torn and streaked with mud. As they advanced along beside the river and drew level with Olive,

Before the war, a Parisian woman could not vote, work, or even open a checking account without her husband’s say so. To humiliate her now, propaganda posters fed the lie that she and her children had been abandoned in the necessities of life by the French men who’d run off to play savior by fighting a war they couldn’t possibly win. Now it was only the German soldier who could save her. It was not by a blitzkrieg that Hitler sought to take over. It was by a prolonged methodical effort to win the ravaged minds of the women left behind and to appropriate all that was distinctly Parisian - the arts, Haute couture, the very spirit of the French people - and repurpose it to become a higher form of the German ideal. In all of this flowed the callus and crafty undercurrent of fear.

I was sleeping on the couch one afternoon when suddenly I sensed that someone was leaning over me. When I opened my eyes I saw the burly farmer standing there, unbuttoning his pants. Instinctively, I knew what he was up to! Hans wouldn’t be as easy to dissuade as the sturdy young man who had guided me up the mountain. With no time to think I let fly with my foot, kicking him in the groin. The force from the kick caused him to inadvertently fall forward, hitting a small end table with his mouth. When this happened he bit his lip and broke his dentures. A dreadful row ensued, especially when I assured him that I would tell his wife Clarissa that he was the one who hung her lover. Bleeding from his lip, he threatened me, shouting that he would throw me out into the snow along with my children. Determined, I ran out into the kitchen shouting for her. When Clarissa appeared, I turned, telling Hans that I would tell her what I had heard about this sordid mess; and tell her I did! Of course he instantly dismissed me and told me to get out, but his wife knew him for what he was. Clarissa knew that what I had said was true and sided with me. She added that the killing had been uncalled for and that in many ways what had happened between her and the Russian was her husband’s fault. This event seemed to have evened the score for them and she was pleased that a woman had stood up to her husband. Although in this instance she was the one who had played, it was Hans that had a reputation for being a well-known womanizer and bully. With Hans out of the room, she assured me that it would be all right to stay another night. Their relationship was very strange and I was certain that there was more to the story, but for me it was time to leave. The next morning she arranged for transportation down to Überlingen for me and my children, and was I ever glad!

According to the Treaty of Versailles, the post World War I German Navy was only permitted to have six light cruisers. One of these was the Emden, with a length of over 508 feet and a draft of 17 feet 5 inches. She was launched on January 7, 1925 and commissioned over nine months later on October 15, 1925. The light cruiser had a standard displacement of 5,400 tons, and was the only ship ever constructed in her class. She was built by the Reichsmarine shipbuilding company in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. As a new ship the Emden became the German Navy’s training ship and conducted several world cruises to train future naval officers. In September of 1934, Kapitan Karl Dönitz, the future commander of the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine, took command of the ship and remained her master until the following year. The Emden visited Cape Town in December of 1934 and was there for the Christmas celebration at the Cape Town German Club, described on page 30 of “Suppressed I Rise.” It was then that Adeline danced with the renowned Captain Dönitz, who would later replace the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, as the head of state in Germany. The cruiser Emden was severely damaged by British bombers in February of 1945. On May 3, 1945, the Germans scuttled the ship, to prevent her from being captured by the Allies. Ultimately in 1949, the ship was taken for scrap. Her bow ornament is still on display at the popular Deutsches Museum in Munich.

The Uberlingen Chief of Police Jakob Graf, was severely wounded in this explosion. It has now become questionable as to whether the weapons he collected were for the Gestapo or the invading French troops.

Caine, Philip D. Aircraft Down! Evading Capture in WWII Europe. Virginia: Potomac Books, 1997. Champlain, Héléne de. The Secret War of Helene De Champlain. Great Britain: Redwood Burn, Ltd., 1980. Chevrillon, Claire. Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance. Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. Coleman, Fred. The Marcel Network: How One French Couple Saved 527 from the Holocaust. Virginia: Potomac Books, 2013. Eisner, Peter. The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Fitzsimons, Peter. Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Foot, M.R.D., and J.M. Langley. MI9: Escape and Evasion, 1939–1945. Boston: Little Brown, 1979. Humbert, Agnés. Résistance: A Woman’s Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2004. Jackson, Julian. France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Litoff, Judy Barrett. An American Heroine in the French Resistance. The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. Long, Helen. Safe Houses Are Dangerous. London: William Kimber, 1985. Moorehead, Caroline. A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Neave, Airey. Little Cyclone. London: Coronet Books, 1954.

Of the eight million WWII veterans who used the GI Bill, only about sixty-five thousand were women.34 That’s 0.008 percent.

Caine, Philip D. Aircraft Down! Evading Capture in WWII Europe. Virginia: Potomac Books, 1997. Champlain, Héléne de. The Secret War of Helene De Champlain. Great Britain: Redwood Burn, Ltd., 1980. Chevrillon, Claire. Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance. Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. Coleman, Fred. The Marcel Network: How One French Couple Saved 527 from the Holocaust. Virginia: Potomac Books, 2013. Eisner, Peter. The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Fitzsimons, Peter. Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Foot, M.R.D., and J.M. Langley. MI9: Escape and Evasion, 1939–1945. Boston: Little Brown, 1979. Humbert, Agnés. Résistance: A Woman’s Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2004. Jackson, Julian. France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Litoff, Judy Barrett. An American Heroine in the French Resistance. The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. Long, Helen. Safe Houses Are Dangerous. London: William Kimber, 1985. Moorehead, Caroline. A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Neave, Airey. Little Cyclone. London: Coronet Books, 1954. Ideas for Book Groups Dear Readers, I truly believe in book groups.

I understand. Jabez and you have close ties to Aanya Gerszon and her family. The Nazis don't care. Association with a Jew is almost as bad to their way of thinking as being a Jew

Her statement shouldn't have caused amazement, but since it was popular belief that the deaf were unable to function as well as normal people, news of her acquiring a profession contradicted quite a few preconceived notions

Sometimes everything has to come crashing down for us to understand what we have built our lives upon.

Youth is much more persuasive than maturity, reminding us of what we have forgotten, that the present is the only thing that actually exists.

Hopes are just wishes we cast into the wind. And the only thing that can bring them back to us are the inscrutable whims of fate.

European perfumery started in earnest around the turn of the twentieth century, and developed apace with the discovery of aroma chemicals: coumarin, vanillin, cyclamen aldehyde, the great nitro musks. The Great War left industry and cities largely intact and killed countless males. Many factors then conspired to make the period 1918-1939 the golden age of mass perfumery: working women vying for the remaining men, cheap aroma chemicals, cheap labor to harvest the naturals, flourishing visual arts and music, the obsolescence of prewar bourgeois dignity, replaced by irreverence and optimism. The WWII destroyed the great engine of European chemistry (Germany). The tail end of German chemistry on the Rhine lay in the neutral Switzerland and was untouched, which is wy today two of the biggest perfumery houses in the world (Firmenich and Givaudan) are Swiss. Postwar France stank. In 1951, six years after the Liberation, only one household in fifteen had an internal bathroom. The Paris Metro at rush hour was famous for its unwashed stench. Given cost constraints, French perfumes in those years ('50) had an air de famille, a perfumey feel based on then-cheap drydown materials like sandalwood oil and salicylate esters. Being able to smell someone's fragrance was a sign of intimacy. When a perfume left a trail (called sillage) it was remarked upon, usually unfavourably. It is a strange coincidence, or perhaps a hint of the existence of God, that skin melanin is a polymer spontaneously formed from phenols, and that the perfumery materials that defined American perfumery were also in good part phenols.

The Nazis and their friends had been defeated, but in view of the scale of their crimes this was obviously not enough. If post-war governments' legitimacy rested merely on their military victory over Fascism, how were they better than the wartime Fascist regimes themselves? It was important to define the latter's activities as crimes and punish them accordingly. There was good legal and political reasoning behind this. But the desire for retribution also addressed a deeper need. For most Europeans WWII was experienced not as a war of movement and battle but as a daily degradation, in the course of which men and women were betrayed and humiliated, forced into daily acts of petty crime and self-abasement, in which everyone lost something and many lost everything.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.” TRAUMA IS EVERYWHERE It’s not just veterans, crime victims, abused children, and accident survivors who come face-to-face with trauma. About 75% of Americans will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than they are to get breast cancer.

septuagenarian

U.S. and Australian WWII archives hold many files detailing numerous acts of Japanese army cannibalism. For example, of those 157,646 sons of Japan sent to New Guinea, only 10,072 survived. Allied bullets killed relatively few. The vast majority were felled by disease and starvation. General Aotsu was aware of the plight of his men. He wrote that incidents of cannibalism in New Guinea were "frequent". Japanese boys were starving and had to eat whatever they could find. Often, all they could find was one another. Harumich Nogi, the chief of a Japanese naval police force stationed in the South Pacific, later recorded in his memoirs a story told to him by an army lieutenant: "There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost would be killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him. He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women. But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were regarded as the object of our hunger. ... I met some soldiers in the mountains who were carrying baked human arms and legs. It was not guerrillas but our own soldiers who we were frightened of.

It is the fight of his life - of our lives - to defend our country and maybe it will show white people that we can also belong to and defend this place. We built it too, after all. It is as much our country to defend as anyone else's.

acquiescence,

In the summer of 2002, I embarked on a mission that had been a goal of mine for many years. That mission was to write about a group of American servicemen who fought for our country. I was naturally drawn to WWII as a subject. I had read numerous accounts of how America led the effort to defeat the twin evils of Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan. A visit to a local bookstore, however, opened my eyes to two realities: 1) many books have been written about the heroes of WWII; 2) few books have been written about the heroes of the Vietnam War. The reasons for this discrepancy were obvious to me. Conventional wisdom tells us that the men and women of WWII were heroes who won our last great war. The deeds of our heroes should be recorded for posterity. Conventional wisdom is correct. Yet, that same “wisdom” has two faces. The men of WWII were treated as heroes. The men of the Vietnam War were not. Instead of receiving ticker tape parades, many were greeted with shouts of “baby killer” and “war monger”. Thrown tomatoes, rocks, profanities and,in some cases, being spat on by fellow Americans was a common occurrence. That “wisdom” tells us that the men and women who fought in Vietnam were not heroes. They fought an immoral war, a war which they did not “win”. Not only were they immoral, they were losers as well. The conventional wisdom about the men and women who fought in Vietnam could not be more wrong. The heroes of Vietnam fought for the same reasons as every other American in every other war: for freedom, for country, for family and for the buddy holding the line next to him. That visit to the bookstore opened my eyes. My mission was crystal clear: I was to write a book about the heroes of the Vietnam War. That book was to tell a true account of combat, an account that had been ignored by historians up to that point. I wanted to tell a story that might be lost to posterity forever but for my efforts. The book was to set the record of “conventional wisdom” straight for good: that the men and women of Vietnam were and are heroes who won the war they were told to fight. That, as heroes, their deeds should be recorded for posterity. Conventional wisdom should get it right. Lions of Medina is a true account of Marine courage at its best. Courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Courage that defined the generation of men and women who fought in Vietnam. This book is a tribute to those who fought the Vietnam War, a reminder that freedom is never free, and a testament to the valor of the American soul. Doyle D. Glass May, 2007 Acknowledgments Lions of Medina would not have been possible without the contributions of many dedicated individuals.

We're three women from two different centuries, trying to save the world from oblivion. I don't know about you, but that's way above my pay grade.

When I began writing, I did not realize that the Holocaust would become a critical part of the story. During and after WWII, neither the survivors of the Holocaust nor the combat solders were diagnosed or treated for what is now known as PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). Many of the characters in this book were victims of this now well-known disorder.

After Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe had turned its sights onto England. We’d seen the destructive force of German military might playing to universal horror across cinema screens up and down the country, and with our army gone, Hitler and Göring’s eyes turned west to the white cliffs of Dover. Warsaw, Rotterdam… was London next? Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh? They bombed us relentlessly for a fortnight, even before France signed her official surrender. Night-time bombing raids on London, now called “The Blitz”. Fires in the night sky, women and children screaming, the shriek of the bombers, the deathly silence that briefly, fatefully follows. And then dust, blood, sirens. Noise and smells and screeching yells, panic and terror. The rising panic of a people under fire, who knew they had no army left to defend them when the enemy came.

Suppressed I Rise” is the true story of a courageous mother from South Africa and her two daughters. It started when Adeline, the granddaughter of missionaries from Germany, met and fell in love with a handsome young teacher, Richard Beck. They were married in the Cape Province of South Africa and would have been able to enjoy a normal life if it hadn’t been for the dark clouds of World War II. Their first child Brigitte was born in Cape Town in 1936, just as Germany was ordering its citizens to return to Germany, the Vaterland. Richard Beck obeyed his country’s call and returned to Mannheim bringing his family with him.

On September 28, 1870, after heavy bombardment, during the Siege of Strasbourg, the French were forced to surrender the heavily fortified fortress. The Municipal Library housed in the Dominican church, with its unique collection of medieval manuscripts, rare Renaissance books and historical artifacts were destroyed by fire, as were many other Gothic buildings in the city center. Of the population of 150,000 people, over 600 were left dead and 3,200 were wounded and left without shelter. Strasbourg was surrendered to the Prussian General August von Werder and thus became part of the German Empire. In 1919, following the Treaty of Versailles, the city was returned to France in accordance with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points." With this many Germans left Strasbourg and went back to Germany. It wasn’t until in June of 1940 during World War II and after the Fall of France, that Alsace was annexed by Germany again. The final Liberation of Strasbourg took place on 23 November 1944, thus returning the Alsace district to France.

Plodding along what barely passed for a trail, I had an eerie feeling. There was still snow on the ground but the air had become warmer, causing a mist to form. We trudged under large trees to a place that I finally recognized. The thick forest ended as we continued, walking across an open field up the side of a hill. Once again our trail entered the woods, however now there were only low bushes, which surrounded the limestone quarry. I hadn’t really noticed but the snow was getting deeper, and now almost obliterated the worn pathway. The young man told me that I was close to my destination and that he would turn back now. I think he felt it would be better if we were not seen together, since the locals loved to gossip and seeing me with a single young man would certainly cause them to talk. Swinging his lantern as a farewell gesture, he disappeared into what had now become a heavy fog. I really felt uneasy now that the fog had settled in. There I stood, knowing that I still had to walk through the rock cut and past some trees before I could get back onto the paved road. There wasn’t anything I could do except continue on!

Just as Nietzsche appealed to the Nazis as a way to formulate a right-wing anti-moralism, it is precisely the transgressive sensibility that is used to excuse and rationalize the utter dehumanization of women and ethnic minorities in the alt-right online sphere now. The culture of transgression they have produced liberates their conscience from having to take seriously the potential human cost of breaking the taboo against racial politics that has held since WWII. The Sadean transgressive element of the 60s, condemned by conservatives for decades as the very heart of the destruction of civilization, the degenerate and the nihilistic, is not being challenged by the emergence of this new online right. Instead, the emergence of this new online right is the full coming to fruition of the transgressive anti-moral style, its final detachment from any egalitarian philosophy of the left or Christian morality of the right.

You are not alone, she thought. Don't be afraid. You are beloved.

On the other hand, the government had just passed a law making it illegal to blame Poland for any crimes committed in the Holocaust, and that doing so could result in incarceration. After decades of Soviet repression and Nazi conquest before that, the Poles were in a new nationalist phase. Their own victim status in WWII was important. The Polish underground was hugely popular; its anchor symbol graffitied across Warsaw buildings. People wore T-shirts with sleeve decorations that mimicked the Resistance armbands.