A Tribute To Good… In Auschwitz

Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe OFM Conv. (Raymund Kolbe), was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar, who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in Auschwitz, the Nazi German death camp, as Prisoner #16670.

In Jesus’ day, people had to pay “tribute” — taxes — to their Roman conqueror, which was a way of signifying their submission to his power. When Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was canonized in 1982, a special person was on hand to pay tribute to his greatness. Yes, John Paul II, a fellow Pole, was there to do the canonizing, but equally special, so was Francis Gajowniczek, the Auschwitz inmate Kolbe died for.

Francis Gajowniczek (LEFT), and John Paul II, a fellow Pole, at Maxmilian Kolbe’s canonizing. Before he became Pope, Polish Cardinal Wyszynski said of Kolbe, that, “Whereas people trust in material resources like tanks, planes, and armies, Kolbe shows that only one thing is necessary to gain peace and unity for the world, the practice of love.”

 As they slaved away in the Nazi death camp, a prisoner escaped. Infuriated guards randomly chose 10 men to die in retaliation. When Gajowniczek cried out that he had a wife and children, Father Kolbe stepped forward to take his place. Kolbe paid tribute to Jesus. What truths do we submit to daily?

Francis Gajowniczek, Auschwitz prisoner photo

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A Martyr Of Two Faiths

Edith Stein

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein, 1891-1942) was was born into a Jewish family in Breslau, Germany, and became a philosopher, phenomenologist, teacher, feminist, and translator. She was a brilliant woman who earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Göttingen in 1916, and obtained an assistantship at the University of Freiburg. She was raised as an observant Jew, became atheist in her teens, but during her student years read Saint Teresa of Ávila’s autobiography, and as a result, decided to become Catholic, was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church in 1922, and joined the Discalced Carmelite order in 1933.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein, 1891-1942)

Edith Stein

After the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, she was forced to resign from her teaching post because of Nazi law. And though

Hillary & Trump: Two Deeply Flawed Candidates

By many accounts, the 2016 Presidential Election year is a complete campaign in the ass. Two deeply flawed candidates manipulated and exposed deeply flawed processes in both major political parties, not the least of which is for the GOP, how to vet their candidates more thoroughly, and have the ability to remove them from official party candidacy, and for the Democrats, how to maintain candidate neutrality, and prevent party officials from influencing candidates of the top officials’ choosing toward nomination. I predict many much-needed changes on the horizon for both parties… following the November General Election.

—/—

by Gary Cosby, Jr.
Used with permission

WARNING:  This is a long post. It is also my final political post before the election.

I am not an editorial writer but today I am going to play one on Facebook. First, let me say, everyone is welcome to comment; however, if your comment uses foul language or is abusive to anyone else, your comment will be deleted. One of the great problems we have today is our lack of ability to disagree and still have civil discourse; therefore, we will practice it or be censured. Keep in mind, this is my opinion and you do not have to agree with it. Thank your First Amendment rights for that.

By now, we all know this presidential election cycle has presented us with the two poorest candidates in memory, perhaps in all of American history. Certainly there have been poor candidates running for one party or the other throughout our history but not facing one another in the same election.

They have turned the presidential debates into bad Saturday Night Live skits. In fact, I doubt the writers of SNL would have been able to dream up anything this hideous. The American political scene will never be the same and

On the Bleeding Edge of the Front Line

Uncle Dean never spoke to his blood relatives about his WWII service – even though they inquired – which was for them, perplexing, and they eventually stopped asking. However, he voluntarily spoke at length about it with me.

Perhaps it was because we shared a common bond of military service, I don’t know. They never understood why he didn’t talk about his experience. His Purple Hearts, Bronze and Silver Stars, and other medals of valor that

Alabama Teen Pleads Guilty to Racist High School Bomb Threat

How did all this unfold?

A teacher found a notebook left behind by the teen, in which he had written a detailed plot for bombing the school, and named students who he would kill.

“… apparently, not one faculty member or administrator at the racially mixed school intervened in the blatantly racist behavior until early January, when a teacher found one of Shrout’s notebooks left behind in a classroom. In it, the teacher discovered detailed plans for mass murder.

“Shrout allegedly named and targeted five black students and a black teacher for serious harm in a series of bomb attacks, using improvised hand grenades that authorities say he was assembling in his military family’s home. A white classmate, who Shrout suspected of being gay, was also on the alleged hit list.

“The authorities were alerted to the journal and Shrout was arrested and charged with felony attempted assault. “By his own admission, he is a white supremacist, but we haven’t been able to link him to any specific organization or any organization to him,” Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor told the Intelligence Report in an interview about Shrout and his plans, which Shrout had “obviously put a lot of thought into.”

“When sheriff’s investigators searched the teenager’s home they discovered a couple of dozen small tobacco cans and two larger metal containers marked “Fat Boy” and “Little Man.” The names are apparent references to the code names “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” used for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the United States during World War II. All of the containers were filled with pellets and had holes drilled in them. Sheriff Taylor said other ingredients needed to complete the devices, such as black powder and fuses, were not found.

Top Hitler Aide’s Diary Found

I reiterate:
1.) The only good Nazi, is a dead Nazi.
2.) Once a Nazi, always a Nazi.

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Exclusive: U.S. finds long-lost diary of top Nazi leader, Hitler aide

By John Shiffman
Sun Jun 9, 2013; 7:59pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidant of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War Two.

A preliminary U.S. government assessment reviewed by Reuters asserts the diary could offer new insight into meetings Rosenberg had with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders, including Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering. It also includes details about the German occupation of the Soviet Union, including plans for mass killings of Jews and other Eastern Europeans.

“The documentation is of considerable importance for the study of the Nazi era, including the history of the Holocaust,” according to the assessment, prepared by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “A cursory content analysis indicates that the material sheds new light on a number of important issues relating to the Third Reich’s policy. The diary will be

Nazi War Criminal found hiding in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA… City of Brotherly Love.

AP Exclusive: Philadelphia man target of German Nazi war crimes probe; will fight extradition

By Associated Press, Published: September 23, 2012

BERLIN — Germany has launched a war crimes investigation against an 87-year-old Philadelphia man it accuses of serving as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp, The Associated Press has learned, following years of failed U.S. Justice Department efforts to have the man stripped of his American citizenship and deported.

Johann “Hans” Breyer, a retired toolmaker, admits he was a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, but told the AP he was stationed outside the facility and had nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of some 1.5 million Jews and others behind the gates.

The special German office that investigates Nazi war crimes has recommended that prosecutors charge him with accessory to murder and extradite him to Germany for trial on suspicion of involvement in the killing of at least 344,000 Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied Poland.

The AP also has obtained documents that raise doubts about Breyer’s testimony about the timing of his departure from Auschwitz.

The case is being pursued on

Remembering the Nazi Genocide

Yesterday – Wednesday, 18 April 2012 – began Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012. It is now coming to a close as I write.

For those unaware, the Holocaust refers to the genocide of Jews, primarily, and of Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the crippled, aged, mentally ill, and those with other disabilities, including homosexuals, dissidents and any others whom Nazis sought to eradicate because they thought them either subhuman, or ideological enemies.

In recent years, the word “holocaust” is being replaced in popular usage with another word “shoah,” because the word “holocaust” refers to a burnt offering as sacrifice made to the Almighty. The Jewish genocide was neither 1.) a burnt offering; and 2.) was not an offering to the Almighty. Shoah means catastrophe. Both words, “holocaust” and “shoah,” are Hebrew in origin.

One of the most fascinating stories of Remembrance comes from a tiny town of 1600 in the rural mountains of southeastern Tennessee.

Tucked away in the gentle rolling green hills where coal mining is a way of life for many, is a memorial to the 6,000,000+ people brutally killed by Hitler’s Nazi regime. Even more fascinating is that the memorial was a project by the middle school children of Whitwell. For example, who would imagine that children whom are largely isolated from world events by their location, who are homogeneously white, Protestant Christians, would have any connection to the tragedy that remains one of the most brutal scars in human history?

The 2004 documentary film Paper Clips retraces the steps in the process of bring that memorial to fruition.

Also unbeknownst to many, during World War II, the humble paperclip was a symbol of Norwegian national solidarity, concord and opposition to Nazi German authorities occupation.

But moreover, you may be asking “Why remember?”

For the simple reason that “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it”

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‘Paper Clips‘ Links Town, Holocaust Legacy

April 18, 2012 – Deborah Hirsch, Jewish Exponent Staff

Whitwell, Tenn.The Jewish population of Whitwell, Tenn., increased by 5,300 percent on Sunday as a busload of 53 teens and adults from Har Zion Temple pulled into the tiny, rural town.

Har Zion student Rachel Weiss tours the rail car Photo by Jay Gorodetzer.

The mostly white, Protestant population here has grown accustomed to welcoming tourists since middle schoolers collecting paper clips to represent the Holocaust death toll picked up media attention and eventually built a full-fledged memorial. But this was the first time they’d greeted so many Jews from quite so far away: 27 students plus parents and clergy from the Conservative synagogue in Penn Valley.

“We’re standing in Appalachia and not somewhere you’d expect that people would care, and I feel like they care even more,” said Jordan Gottlieb, a freshman at the Shipley School.

The impetus for the whirlwind overnight trip came from Norman Einhorn, co-principal of Har Zion’s Hebrew high school. He’d been using the 2004 Paper Clips documentary to teach his students its “incredible lesson about taking care of others,” and arranged to have Whitwell teacher Sandra Roberts come to Har Zion in November. So moved by her speech, he vowed — “in the heat of the moment” — that synagogue members would find a way to visit the memorial.

In less than six months, he had more

They kill babies… and women, too. West Philadelpia MD indicted on 8 counts murder

The atrocities of this ONE incident make Nazi madman “scientist” Josef Mengele and madman/mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer almost pale by comparison. Body parts and bodies in freezers and refrigerators, corpse mutilation… all in the “City of Brotherly Love.” Read on.

Black Children are an Endangered Species - Modern American Genocide - (Photo by Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times)

The majority of abortions are performed in ethnic minority communities.
A 30-year study by the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute revealed that “Black women account for 37% of abortions, non-Hispanic White women for 34%, Hispanic women 22% and women of other races 8%.”
Minorities account for 67% of all abortions, while those same non-White populations account for about 1/3 (33%) of the American population.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 57.4% of the abortions performed in Georgia in 2006 were performed on African-American women, but Blacks make up only 30% of Georgia’s population. Nationwide, the pattern is similarly stacked against Black babies — Black women have approximately 37% of all abortions each year, while Blacks make up only 13% of the national population.
Genocide?
You decide.
(Photo by Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times)

DA: West Philadelphia abortion doctor killed 7 babies with scissors

Updated at 0214 on 19 January 2011

By PATRICK WALTERS and MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

WEST PHILADELPHIA – January 19, 2011 (WPVI) — A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Another one bites the dust: Ex-Nazi dead in Huntsville, AL

I have nothing good to say about Nazis, ex-Nazis, or dead Nazis.

Remember Operation Paperclip – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip –

It was because of the mercy of God, and good American people that he lived, while millions of others died in ovens, or in dark, cold, wet subterranean chambers making the V2 – Vergeltungswaffe 2, e.g. “Vengeance” weapon.

The V2 rocket was Hitler’s Nazi terror weapon of mass destruction.

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Rocket pioneer, von Braun team member Walter Haeussermann dead at 96

Published: Saturday, December 11, 2010, 6:00 AM

HUNTSVILLE, AL – Dr. Walter Haeussermann, a key member of Dr. Wernher von Braun‘s German rocket team and pioneer of the American space program, died Wednesday in Huntsville.

Haeussermann, 96, died at Huntsville Hospital of complications from a fall. He is survived by his wife, Ruth.

Haeussermann’s death leaves five surviving members in Huntsville of the team that took man to the moon and put Huntsville on the international map. A sixth survives on the West Coast.

Haeussermann was with von Braun at Peenemunde, Germany in World War II and helped develop the V-2 rockets that were launched against London and later formed the basis of the American rocket program.

This is Nazi brutality

This evening, while viewing “Antiques Roadshow” on KQED, I was utterly flabbergasted when I saw a series of posters a collector had brought for appraisal.

A relatively young man shared how his mother had collected WWII posters for the WOW (Women Ordnance Worker) program, in which support for war efforts were promoted at home by manufacturing, especially.

In the middle of the two was a 1942 poster by artist Ben Shahn, which was entitled “This is Nazi brutality.”

Perhaps your shock will be as evident as mine when you see it… and then the photograph below it.

1942 USA WWII effort poster by Ben Shahn

U.S. Army atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq