In the spring of 1945, three weeks after VE Day, Private First Class Kurt Vonnegut, Jr wrote a letter home to inform his family that he was alive. His infantry unit had been smashed by Panzer divisions in the Ardennes; his unmarked POW train attacked by the RAF; miraculously, he and a handful of fellow prisoners escaped incineration by American and British bombers. "Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden – possibly the world’s most beautiful city", Vonnegut wrote. "But not me."
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Survivor:
How Kurt Vonnegut created a novel, a cult following and one of the most loyal readerships in American Fiction by Thomas Meaney in The Times Literary Supplement.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 11, 2012 -
85 comments
Charley Fox, two-time recipient of the Distinguished Cross, died on October 18th in a car accident. Another WWII veteran gone, and as with many, an
interesting tale exists in his past. Credited with injuring
Rommel (although
he didn't know it at the time and it was denied by Germany), it's often thought that the loss of Rommel from Hitler's strategy team helped sway the war for the Allies (though it's wondered if has Rommel lived the
July 20 plot against Hitler might have succeeded). After the war, Charley was an advocate for veterans and trained many.
He died wearing his uniform.
posted by Kickstart70
on Nov 11, 2008 -
12 comments
JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives is a collection of photographs, diaries, letters, camp newsletters, personal histories and a wealth of other material relating to the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The site is divided into four categories:
People, the men, women, and children who were incarcerated.
Places, prewar neighborhoods and wartime camps.
Daily Life, eating, sleeping, working, playing, and going to school.
Personal Experiences, letters, diaries, art and other writing by internees. Among the photographers hired by the War Relocation Authority was famed dust bowl photographer Dorothea Lange.
855 of her photos are on the site. Even though she was working as a propagandist many of her images captures a starker reality, for instance
this picture of a glum little girl.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 3, 2008 -
10 comments
'Films from the Homefront' is a (new) collection of amateur documentaries, newsreels, government films, and home movies documenting life for the ordinary people in Britain during World War II, with background text descriptions/explication.
Browse the themes. The films are QT and wmv format. I found it both poignant and funny, for instance, seeing kids don gasmasks during air raid drills then attempt to continue writing in their lessons.
[via Glasgow School of Art Library]
posted by peacay
on Feb 16, 2007 -
4 comments
Munich Bans Memorial Plaques Munich has decided to ban memorial plaques to Jewish, Sinti and German citizens deported and murdered during World War Two. Jewish leaders, fearful that the plaques would stir up anti-Semitic fervor, supported the ban.
These plaques are the work of a German artist,
Gunter Demnig.
”He first had the idea in the early 1990s when he was unveiling a memorial for the Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust.
“An elderly woman approached him and insisted that "no Gypsies ever lived here". "It is so easy for people to deny something. I wanted to ensure that this would not happen," he says. (BBC).”
This reminder of the holocaust brought to mind the
Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, as well as the
Viet Nam Memorial
and the
AIDS quilt -- monuments that really changed me.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk
on Aug 14, 2004 -
22 comments
