September 1, 2015 - 76th Anniversary of Nazi invasion of Poland
Welcome to My Blob. This is my very first entry.
Today is the 76th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland.
When this occurred, my mother and father were in the UK. My father had graduated law school that spring. He knew that in the fall he would have his first job and would probably not be able to take a vacation for a few years while he established himself professionally.
So, he decide to take a trip to Europe. As a result, he was an eyewitness to history at the ground level. He was only 24.
He booked passage on a German ship, traveling with his law school roommate (?). They arrived in France. Then they traveled to Germany, then Denmark, back to Germany, to Italy. Hungary, at some point separated (his friend had decided to take some classes at a German university). Alone, my father traveled back to Germany, and then to Paris, where he met his fiancĂŠe, Mary Anne Foster Scott, and her mother, Helen Newell (?) McKirahan Scott.
Thatâs where they were 76 years ago today. After the rendezvous they travelled to the UK where, like many Americans in Europe, they frantically tried to book passage back to America. The waiting lists were weeks long. Nazi warships and U-boats had begun attacking allied shipping. If you wanted to make it home in one piece, you had to travel on an American vessel. The American ships had gigantic American flags painted on their decks, so that Luftwaffe pilots would not attack them, and Kriegsmarine U-boat commanders would not torpedo them, nor would they become targets of the 3 surface vessels (cruisers Graf Spee & Scherer and battleship Bismark) assigned to attack Allied shipping.
While they waited the 3 of them rented a car and drove up to Scotland and back. It was a real get-to-know-you experience for my father and grandmother, who I donât think had met before (not sure). This was a relationship literally baptized by fire, although luckily for me, they werenât within visual distance of it.
America was neutral and the Nazis did not want to bring us into the war on the Allied side by sinking an American ship, as they had done with the Lusitania, which brought us into World War I on the Allied side, tipping a deadlock into a humiliating, devastating defeat in 1918. Hitlerâs plan to avoid defeat this time was to bring America into the war on the Axis side. My fatherâs diary reflects this directly in conversation
with average Germans and observations of Nazi propaganda.
Starting today I will retrace his steps in this blog. I will be drawing on the primary materials he left behind when he left this earth on July
9th, 2011 at age 95. He kept a diary of his trip as long as he was not with Mary Anne and late in life he hired an oral historian friend of his to do his memoir. I have the raw audio and transcripts, the family research and photos she assembled and the final hard copy .There is also frequent correspondence between him and Mary Anne, and some between him and his parents. There is an envelope of black-and-white snapshots. There are some news clippings and some other miscellaneous illuminating items.
Relatively few dates in history carry gravity the equal of September 1, 1939. Tuesday September 11, 1973 (overthrow of Chilean Socialist President Allende by Nixon administration and Chilean army). Tuesday, September 11, 2001. June 28, 1914 (assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand leading to World War I. August 6, 1945 (Hiroshima).
November 9, 1989 (Berlin Wall opening). October 24, 1929. OK, Iâll stop, now; I think you get my point.
Simply by being a 24 year old fledgling lawyer at the right place at the right time, with a brain and a pair of eyes, with a Hill School,Yale University, Yale Law education, armed only with a diary book, some letters back and forth with his gal (as he referred to her) and an instinct for objects of historical value, my father can bring us back to those terrifying, Apocalyptic days, months and years of a struggle to the death with the monstrous evil of National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese Showa Imperialism.
And he can do it from street-level, from friendly conversations with everyday Europeans about to be sucked into a Black Hole of misery, suffering, torture and death of a kind this planet has never seen before, and hopefully, if we can do our jobs and make sure of it, will never see again.
My father, like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar, was able to look into this Black Hole from the Event Horizon, and either escape itâs Gravity or travel through it to the other side, depending on how you want to look at it. And it is the evidence he brought back with him that I will be assembling and presenting here.
There is more to his story issuing from these events, that I might get to if I live long enough. A short list would include: working for the wartime Lend-lease program arming Americaâs future allies; working under former NY governor Herbert Lehman for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, serving as legal council to the China relief mission in Chungking (Chongqing) and Shanghai (1945-46): work for Dr, James Y, C. Yen and the international Institute for Rural Reconstruction,âa rural development organization which has over half a century of participatory, integrated and people-centered development in the continents of Asia, Africa, and Latin Americaâ (Wikipedia), and local environmental activism as chairman of the board of the Larchmont NY Friends of the Reservoir, which successfully mounted a campaign to save the former water-supply of Larchmont from commercial development and turn it into a nature conservancy and environmental education center now known as the Sheldrake Environmental Center.
If I should kick the bucket before I accomplish this, feel free to look up any of these events yourself. I will make sure I pass on the materials I collect to someone qualified and interested enough to finish the job.
http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/map/lc/image/pol81270.gif JOHNSON--James Gann Jr.,aged 95, died on July 9 in New Rochelle, NY. He was born on October 15, 1915 to James G. Johnson and Marguerite Willing in Jackson, MS. The family moved to New York in 1918. He graduated from the Hill School, Yale University and Yale Law School. He was a member of Root, Clark, Buckner & Ballantine, served as counsel to the Office of the Lend Lease Administration, U.S. Department of State, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and the United Nations. He served as legal adviser, later deputy director to UNRRA's China office. He joined Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in 1946, specializing in corporate and international law until his retirement in 1983. Mr. Johnson was knighted by Belgium and France. He was a board member of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction and chair (1987-1996). He was President Emeritus of Friends of the Reservoir, Inc., now the Larchmont Reservoir-James G. Johnson Conservancy. He served on the Board of Directors of LTCB Trust Company. He chaired the foreign law committee for the New York Bar Association and led the ABA's first formal mission to China. He served on Boards of Education in Virginia, Paris, and Mamaroneck, NY, served on and chaired the board of College Careers Fund of Westchester. For all his accomplishments, he was humble, down to earth, and caring for those who surrounded him in his family, in his communities, and in his world. Contributions may be sent to IIRR, the Sheldrake Center, or College Careers of Westchester.
gracieabrams
theartofmadeline
2087
stormborns
titsay
kianamaiart