Back when there were such things as phone booths.

She is an only child, as am I. Alas, that does not give me any special powers, like the seventh son of a seventh son.

That is where my family holds our annual Family Reunion in July. We moved it to a park due to the work and facilities. We normally have 150 attend. Sorry about your family. That sounds awful.

The more history I learn the more I feel for the soviet people. I have a small family as well, for different reasons. Keep talking, we all need to hear it. Putin is my idea of a nightmare and it doesn't surprise me our fascists are mad for him.

Russia's recent aggressive actions
towards its neighbours
bring back memories
of when the Soviet Union
invaded Latvia not once,
but twice
during the Second World War.
People in 1939 were
convinced that they were safe.
It's very sad
when you read people's memoirs:


That last summer
of Latvian independence in 1940,
before the Russian troops marched in,
they truly were living happy lives
and saying: We're absolutely safe.
Nothing can touch us.
When the Soviets arrived,
one of the first things they did
was start to deport any Latvians
who they felt were a threat.
On the night
of the 14th of June 1941,
15,000 Latvians
were woken in the night
and forced to come
to the railway station
and they were pushed
into wagons.
Of these 15,000,
2,400 were children.
As they left,
they tried to push out farewell notes
and they were scattered
on the tracks,
some of them never
reaching the families concerned.
Of those 15,000, over half would die.

Last edited Wed Mar 4, 2015, 04:03 PM - Edit history (2)

To be happy, free and independent and feeling safe, then wham! Good ol Uncle Joe...what a fucking monster. There are so many similar stories from this time and so many others from our own time. It isn't just the Jews, many have been targeted and persecuted.

When my family moved to Australia we lived among the Czech immigrant vegetable farming community. Wonderful, warm people that didn't speak English but shared their community with me, a child. I heard about and saw the wounds and scars of Nazi torture and attempted killing. This was in 1959....I can't help but feel for us all.

I think we all need to speak out more about what we've seen and experienced in our lifetimes. War, purges and pogroms, human history. We are better than this and we need to be rational, thinking, empathic humans to better this world. For that to happen we need to learn our true history.

Thanks for this thread and as I said before, keep talking....the young need our history.

Regards....

On edit....after thinking about this for the last couple of hours the community may have been mixed Czech and Slavs....they might have been Yugoslavia and there is no one for me to ask. Just to be clear.

Most of the younger generation know about the Holocaust from films and books, but few realize how many atrocities were committed throughout Europe, one nation against another. Stalin's acts aren't brought up as vocally, perhaps because he was an ally.

But, as you say, it is important for the world to remember, if only to understand how ugly and violent war really is, and how crucial it is for civilized leaders and nations to resolve differences through every other means.

The Russians are a lovely intelligent people who have been so misgoverned by so many evil leaders whose weapons and army are passed down from one to another, and I'm sorry that your folks were victims.

I hope for a better future for you. So many achievers were alone who used the privacy to read, explore, travel, and live in freedom, the way they like, without criticism of family members, or the need to care for and worry about the handicapped or poor that every family has. You were left alone for some reason.

On the lighter side, you're lucky to have found a phone booth.

I am sorry for your family's suffering.

....are beginning to remind me of the anti-vaxxers, in that no matter how many eyewitness first-person accounts there are, they stick their fingers in their ears and link to RT.

You are a witness. Your testimony is important.