| « Previous | Home | Next » | Entry 40 - May 4, 2004 00:56 |
 The first ever gay pride parade in Saint John (July 2003). Most of the celebrations took place at Queen Square in South End. Gay parades are these days more of a celebration then a political rally, but not so in Saint John. When your Member of Parliament says this, then it’s political. Anyways, it was a fun thing to attend and make photos of. If you are interested to read what I think of The Fall of Berlin 1945, click on more. I am finishing the The Fall of Berlin 1945. The narrative is compelling and the mass of facts and historic tidbits is truly impressive. Quotes from letters of ordinary Russians and Germans to their family and friends offer a personal view of the war that makes it all the more real: “A fragment of a platoon from the Grossdeutschland, which has escaped amid nightmare scenes from the final evacuation of Memel…found a doctor delivering a baby by the light of a couple of lanterns. ‘If the birth of a child is usually a joyful event,” wrote one of the soldiers, ‘this particular birth only seemed to add to the general tragedy. The mother’s screams no longer had any meaning in a world made of screams, and the wailing child seemed to regret the beginning of its life.’ The soldiers hoped for the child’s sake, as they made their way down to the port, that it would die.” Diary entries, letters and notes of the German and Russian top military and political leadership reveal unimaginable lunacy, paranoia and greed. The book also has a detailed military action plan and, if you are into that kind of thing, I am pretty sure you could use the book to replay a fairly accurate battle on you tabletop. I have to admit that after 300+ pages I simply skip over the unit numbers and descriptions of various weapons at their disposal. The savagery on all sides is truly astounding: “..a sixteen-year old Berliner called Dieter Borkovsky described what he witnessed in a crowded S-Bhan train from the Anhalter Banhof. ‘There was terror in the faces of people. they were full of anger and despair… Suddenly someone shouted above the noise ‘Silence!’ We saw a small dirty soldier with two Iron Crosses and the German Cross in Gold. On his sleeve he had a badge with four metal tanks, which meant that he destroyed four tanks at close quarters. ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he shouted, and the carriage fell silent. ‘Even if you don’t want to listen to me, stop whining. We have to win this war. We must not lose our courage. If others win this war, and if they do to us only a fraction of what we have done in the occupied territories, there won’t be a single German left in a few weeks.’ It became so quite in that carriage that one could have heard a pin drop.’” Mass rapes, looting and destruction were the norm. Propaganda machinery on both sides did an excellent job at dehumanizing the enemy. The disturbing part are Beevor’s occasional attempts to somehow justify the rapes and crimes committed by the Russians as an understandable part of a war in which Russians suffered so much at the hands of the Germans. He is trying to understand and explain why these things happened, but I don’t think that is quite possible. As one of my colleagues once said referring to a mass grave in eastern Croatia with remains of Croatian civilians killed by Serb paramilitary forces: “Don’t try to understand. You can’t. It’s a sign of being normal. Once you start understanding, it is time to seek help.” Respecting a human life is a big part of being civilized. I think that is worth remembering – especially these days with recent images of torture streaming from Iraq into our living rooms. | |
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Posted by Bojan Archived under: South End |
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