Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising

Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising 2016. 

Today marks the 82nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. At exactly 5:00 PM—"W-Hour"—on August 1, 1944, the armed struggle to liberate the capital from German occupation began. The Uprising was part of Operation Tempest (*Akcja Burza*), conducted by the Home Army; its goal was to strike against the Germans before the Red Army arrived and to have the legitimate structures of the Polish Underground State assume authority in the liberated areas 

At this same time every year, Warsaw comes to a standstill for a minute to pay tribute to the insurgents and the city's civilian population. The sound of sirens serves as a reminder of their courage, suffering, and the tragic price paid in the fight for freedom 

Interestingly, the artwork by Kuba Różalski presented today was created a decade ago, yet it remains a powerful symbol of the dramatically unequal clash between the insurgents and the overwhelming war machine of the Nazi regime.

#PolishMastersofArt

The Chronicle of Lerna by Michal Karski

 The Trojan War has been over for many years and the glorious city of Troy is just a memory, but the anti-Trojan propagandists are still at work. There are people who fought with Agamemnon’s army who are intent on justifying Achaean aggression. The truth of what really happened at Troy is already being manipulated for political ends.

At his peaceful home overlooking the bay of Argos, the poet Linos of Lerna, who was with the Argives at Troy and served for a time as Agamemnon’s personal chronicler, decides to set the historical record straight.

Available at Amazon here

The Odyssey of Christopher Nolan Movie Review

 

The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan

 

One movie lover's response

Are Jews "Oppressors" ?

In response to my piece "I Stand with the Jews,"  a comment came in talking about "oppressors." The commenter did not specify what group he meant by "oppressors." 

In case he meant Jews, here's my response. 

Jews? Oppressors? See the above map. Israel is barely viewable, it's so tiny. 

Jews are now, and have always been, LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the world population. Less than one percent. 

Jews live in tiny little Israel, and also in the US, with smaller populations in a few other Western nations. 

Everywhere Jews live, they are subject to arson, shooting, stabbing, rape, and torture, often committed by Muslims, who make up more than one quarter of the world population. 

Islam has always taught murderous contempt for Jews. The founder did more than teach it; he exemplified it, in, for example, committing a genocide of an entire Jewish tribe. 

Massacre of the Banu Qurayza (627 CE): Following the Battle of the Trench in Medina, the entire male population of this Jewish tribe—estimated between 400 and 900 men—was executed, and the women and children were enslaved by early Islamic forces under the prophet Muhammad.

1033 (Fez, Morocco): A violent assault on the Jewish quarter resulted in thousands of deaths

Granada Massacre (1066 CE): A Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela, and slaughtered an estimated 4,000 Jewish residents, destroying the local community.

Almohad Persecutions (1147–1212 CE): The fundamentalist Almohad Caliphate instituted forced conversions and carried out sweeping massacres across Morocco and Muslim-controlled Spain. Tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, driving prominent figures like Maimonides to flee the region.

Fez Massacre (1465 CE): A local revolt against the Marinid dynasty targeted the city’s Jewish population after a Jewish vizier was appointed. Mobs killed thousands of Jews in Fez, leaving only a handful of survivors.

More recently, the Farhud was a violent anti-Jewish pogrom, meaning "violent dispossession" in Arabic, that took place in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1–2, 1941.

An estimated 850,000 to 900,000 Jews fled, migrated, or were expelled from Arab and Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East and North Africa during the 20th century. This mass displacement unfolded primarily in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the creation of the State of Israel, driven by systemic state-sanctioned persecution, violence, and property confiscations

Followed by decades of hideous terror, murders, bombing school buses and pizza parlors, torturing Olympic athletes to death, murdering my friend's aunt, chopping up lost Jews and displaying bloody hands, dumping a wheelchair-bound Jew into the sea ... Murdering babies in their cribs. 

And of course On October 7, 2023, led by Hamas and other armed groups, thousands of militants launched a massive, coordinated surprise attack on southern Israel by land, air, and sea. The assault resulted in the deadliest day for Israel in its history, killing about 1,200 people and leading to the abduction of 251 hostages into the Gaza Strip

Oh, oh, but it's the Jews who are oppressing people. Bullshit. 

I Stand with the Jews Part Two of Two Parts

 

"I Stand with the Jews"

What does that mean?

Second of two parts

A canopy of oaks and maples rose overhead. Green understory surrounded me: pinxter azaleas and thorny Japanese barberry. Bluets – tiny wildflowers – blossomed underfoot. Up ahead, Marc approached me with his typically hale and hearty, "Hello, Danusha!"

I shoved my rosary in my pocket and removed my headphones. I had been cheating. I should have been focusing, with the binoculars around my neck, on the migrating spring warblers that make Garret Mountain famous among birders. Instead I was listening to Gregorian chant and praying the rosary as I hiked. "Hello, Marc," I said, as I migrated from internal contemplation of the eternal to external society and the ingeniously plumaged sprites zipping around us.

"Look at that color!" Marc exclaimed.

I pointed my binoculars in the direction Marc indicated. He had spotted a purple finch.

"I can see," I said, "Why Roger Tory Peterson called them 'a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.'"

Marc is, by many estimates, the best birder in the state. Of course we are all, in our own ways, the "best" birdwatcher in compliance with our own needs and desires, but Marc racks up awesome numbers of the species he sees annually.

Marc's surname harkens back to Chelm, a city in Poland once famous among Jews as a site of folkloric fools. My favorite Chelm story: the local wise men declared that if you drop a buttered slice of bread, it will always fall on the buttered side. This conclusion reflects the pessimistic worldview typical of both Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe. Of course, eventually, someone dropped a buttered piece of bread and it fell buttered side up. The wise men of Chelm debated this astounding event and determined that the slice had been buttered on the wrong side. Chelm stories arose from a culture that valued scholarship enough that it could spoof scholarly folly.

Mindful of Marc's identity as someone other than our state's best birdwatcher, I wondered if I should say something.

I had told myself, if the opportunity arises, I will say something.

Was this the moment, though, to say something?

I felt timid, but also determined. If we keep waiting for the perfect moment, we never say anything.

"Marc," I ventured. "I want to say something about something other than birds."

"Yes?" Marc said, turning his attention from the purple finch to a streamlet that might be playing host to a Louisiana waterthrush.

"There's been a rise in antisemitism."

"You think?" Marc said, his voice rising, in an atypical, for him, sarcastic comment.

"Yes, and I just want you to know that I'm not Jewish…" said the woman who had been praying the rosary and listening to Gregorian chant. "But I want to be an ally. I'm on your side."

I'm glad I said something. If the moment arises when Marc could use some support from someone like me, he knows I'm here.

I Stand with the Jews Part One of Two Parts

 

"I Stand with the Jews"

 

What does that mean?

 

First of two parts

 

The other day, an antisemitic comment came through my social media feed. I didn't want to debate the poster. People who say abysmally stupid things do not deserve the respect implied by debate, nor do they deserve the attention that debate generates. But I did not want his comment to go unanswered. All I said was, "I stand with the Jews."

 

"What does that mean?" the antisemite challenged.

 

This essay offers my response to his question.

Pressure Movie Review. Yes we do need another D-Day Movie

 

Pressure 2026

Yes, we do need another D-Day movie

I walk a lot. I check NOAA's forecast five times before heading out. If there's a ten percent chance of rain, I have a Gore-Tex slicker in my daypack. I'm always over-prepared for weather. One day I was walking down Ratzer Road, a road I've walked hundreds of times. I passed wide lawns and suburban McMansions, some of them costing a million dollars. I felt carefree. That did not last.

Boom. In the time it took me to type the word "boom," everything changed. The sky turned black. Forty-foot evergreens swayed so drunkenly I feared they'd lash me like the tail of a lunging tiger. Pelting hail obscured my vision. With every step I pushed against a locked door – the wind was that determined to prevent me from moving. I recognized that this is the kind of weather that kills. I frantically sought a nook where I could take shelter in this, not my neighborhood, and, again, that fast, it was all over. The sky was suddenly dove-gray. The hail relaxed to a light drizzle. The Apocalypse was canceled.

My best guess is that I was stuck in a dangerous phenomenon called a "microburst." Microbursts damage structures, cause car accidents and plane crashes, and they do kill. Ultimately, though, what it was, was weather.

In Indiana, after a tornado, I heard of a grandfather trying to hold back his grandson, to no avail. The tornado pulled the tyke out the window. In 2011, in Paterson, NJ, I was evacuated during Hurricane Irene. The Passaic River was coming up through the floorboards. Within hours the entire neighborhood, for a mile around, was under water. In 2012, after Hurricane Sandy, for most of two weeks, we had no electricity and substandard tap water. In 2021, thirty New Jerseyans died during Hurricane Ida. One victim drowned on the very non-aquatic Lackawanna Avenue, near a Best Buy and a Barnes and Noble. Two people tried to rescue her, but these Good Samaritans had to themselves be rescued by fire department crews. Her body was never found.

Weather.

We humans have dominated much of nature. We have extended average lifespans, conquered smallpox, and manipulated the landscape to our whim. But we are still mere playthings in the hands of weather. A new film, Pressure, examines the impact of weather on a history-making event: D-Day.

Perhaps no human accomplishment supersedes D-Day as an expression of humanity's power. D-Day was the largest seaborne invasion in history. On June 6, 1944, almost 160,000 Allied troops landed on Normandy's beaches. These included troops from the United Kingdom, Canada, and twelve other Allied nations. Over 7,000 naval vessels and 12,000 aircraft participated. An estimated 100,000 French resistance fighters coordinated, via coded messages, with overseas planners and carried out crucial and meticulous preparatory operations behind enemy lines. For example, the French derailed Nazi supply trains inside tunnels. Repairing a train derailment inside a tunnel is much harder than doing so in an open field. By the end of June, Allies had delivered 570,000 tons of supplies. By the end of August, two million Allied troops were in France.

In spite of this display of human might, D-Day's planners were still subject to weather. The new film, Pressure, makes this vulnerability to weather abundantly clear. If the Allies had attempted D-Day on the wrong day, with the wrong weather, D-Day might have failed, and the attempt to defeat Nazi Germany would have gone very differently.