Wounded Warriors Need Assistance

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan present unique challenges to the soldiers who fight in them. No longer do opposing armies meet us on the battlefield; instead, small groups deposit explosive devices near roads and meeting places. Suicide bombers throw themselves into buildings and/or formations of troops. Small units fight exclusively from ambushes, and enemy fighters force ugly house-to-house fighting in cramped urban environments. Many soldiers come back missing limbs or with other disabilities that make it difficult to survive in the world, and they need help. The group Disabled American Veterans aims to ease the transition of each of these wounded heroesback into the civilian world.

The Year of Jan Karski

The five cities with the largest Polish populations are, in order, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Los Angeles. These communities, along with Poles everywhere, join together in 2014 to honor JanKarski. Karski, at great risk to his own life, struggled to deliver reports of the Holocaust to British and American authorities in 1942. He even spoke with President Roosevelt and presented his findings to Hollywood movie moguls. No one did anything; in fact, most of the people with whom he spoke didn’t believe him. Whether this is indicative of a hidden anti-Semitism among the British and American people or simply an inability to grasp the mass extermination of groups of people is at this point moot. Polish people in the United States and in Poland itself honor this patriot by naming 2014 as the Year of Jan Karski.

2014: 70th Anniversary of Important World War II Battles

The year 2014 heralds 70 years since some of the most notable battles in history. In Italy, the decisive battles of Anzio and Monte Cassino sealed the fate of the Axis in Southern Europe, and D-Day, Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge led to the undoing of the Axis in Western Europe. By the time the Bulge failed, Germany was in full retreat on both fronts; its unequaled military had been undone not only by pressure from all the Allied nations but also by a series of bungles by incompetent military leaders like Hitler. In a way, it is arguable that it was lucky the "man at the top" in Germany was crazy. The combination of an incomplete grasp of military strategy and tactics and a belief in his own infallibility doomed Germany.

Luckily, the saner heads of the Allied commanders prevailed, and 1944 was a year full of keystone victories over the evils of the Axis powers not only in Europe but in the South Pacific too. Guam and Saipan fell in 1944, and the war’s end was now just a matter of time in both theaters as the full air power of the Allies could be brought to bear. Recently, modern governments of countries involved in World War II have planned many commemorative events honoring these battles and the soldiers that fought in them.

Holocaust Survivors and Their Untold Stories

World War II was an open wound on the body of humanity. More than 60 million people were killed. Whether in battle or by the orders of maniacal, egotistical leaders with insane policies, their deaths stand in testament to "man’s inhumanity to man." Part of that crucible of fiery and unnecessary death was the wholesale slaughter of "undesirables" known as the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler’s pathological and unfounded hatred of anyone who wasn’t a white Aryan fueled the fires of the crematoria and drove the shovels and machines that were digging the mass graves. It wasn’t just Jews who were killed. Hitler and his Nazi ideology despised gypsies, homosexuals, developmentally disabled people, crippled people, political and religious dissenters and, in some cases, people who just happened to live somewhere other than Germany, such as Poland. In all, some estimates indicate the Nazi machine of annihilation engineered the deaths of 17 million.

With such a swath of destruction in its wake, the Holocaustleft survivors who were so scarred, both physically and mentally, that they found it difficult even to think about what had happened, let alone discuss it. Scholars and historians alike agree that these stories must be told in order to reinforce not only the horror but also the resolve that keeps such monstrous destruction at bay. Researchers continuously find new, almost stomach-churning records and information. Perhaps most insidious, the survivor’s guilt that comes along with having stayed alive is the most soul-crushing kind. Who knows how many surviving mothers had to make a Sophie’s choice?

Ironically, the meticulous records kept by the Nazis of their extermination efforts led not only to their undoing at the hands of the hangman but also to an easier path for finding survivors, reuniting families and repatriating people back to their proper places in the world. The Holocaust had intrigued authors and filmmakers alike and their works, both fiction and nonfiction, have done much to spread awareness of what actually happened. Sometimes, it’s difficult to grasp that the straw-thin, naked apparitions in the liberated camps were actual people. Each person in those photos, however, has a significant story to tell.

Now, in the 21st century, the survivors who were adults at the time are all approaching or exceeding 90 years of age, and the children are now in their 70s and 80s. When it comes to finding out and telling their stories, time is of the essence. There is so much more that needs to be told beyond the number tattoo, and more people must become interested and strive to gather and collate information. The work of the gatherers is beginning to bear fruit, however. In addition to the Holocaust Museum on the National Mall, other museums and organizations around the country are making inroads and telling the stories.