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2024.1023.0002...
1936 - Granen, Spain
1944 Beauvoir, France
1945 - Budapest
1945 - Toyoko
5 comments:
Wow.... The final one leaves me speechless.
When we ever learn?
2 images to close to home
My maternal grandfather, a Spaniard by birth, fought in the Spanish Civil War off and on during its three years 1936-1939 as an American citizen (off and on because my naturalized grandfather had to, in order to keep his American citizenship) Fighting for the Spanish Republic against Franco and his Fascists who had the full support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The war stories grand dad could tell, for he was also a Spanish volunteer in the French army in Ww1, before coming to America in 1920. (The old war horse as we called grand dad in my family)
Budapest- My maternal grandmother had a brother who lived in Budapest. Born in Hungary 1900, Laszlo came to America as a child 1908 and sent to live with ailing grandparents right after Ww1 1918. After caring for their grandparents 1918-1923, he went on to work in the Hungarian, Austrian and German film industries as a film technician. He left Germany in 1934 because of Hitler and went back to Budapest. He made very good money in Germany working for the UFA, Tobis and Terra studios, not so much money working for the Hunnia and Pannonia studios in Budapest. When Ww2 came along he told me it was as if Ww2 was another planet, as Budapest had been spared air raids and artillery bombardments for much of the war. In Budapest, they only had air raid drills, that people ignored and went about shopping in stores, enjoying their café rituals and dining in restaurants. (there was no shortage of coffee, teas, cocoa or tropical fruits in Hungary because café and restaurant owners purchased such goodies in neutral Turkey) During the war the city was lit up like a jewel box at night, the Hungarian government had made a deal with the allies to light the city up at night to act as a beacon for allied fliers n exchange that the Allies would not bomb Budapest. Nonetheless, shit hit the fan when the city suffered its first air raids in the fall of 1944. The Budapest of horse races, automobile and fashion shows, fine dining, night clubbing, all came to a screeching halt. That war on another planet came to Budapest ! Much worse would come in 1945, when the Battle of/for Budapest occurred with great destruction to the city,(though not as bad as Warsaw or Rotterdam) Not to mention the terror inflicted on the Jewish community by anti semites goaded by the the Cross-Arrow Hungarian nazis. Laszlo survived the war and the stories he could tell !
(like hiding in the caves in the Gellért hills of Buda, yes Budapest has caves or going to a Catholic mass to pray the war away only to have the church bombed) Both my grand dad and Laz would be shocked at how half of America has a fascination for fascism and nazism and excuse their abuses, and seem to favor a president with the full powers of a dictator. :(
-Rj
March 1942-April 1945 Tokyo was bombed off and on.
The worse air raid was Operation Meeting House on the night of March 9, 1945 when 16 square miles of central Tokyo was destroyed with bombs and incendiaries, and 100,000 people were killed. The fire bombing of Tokyo as it came to be known. Tokyo was a very flammable city due to the fact that many homes were made of wood and stucco construction, and some homes were very traditional, as being made of only wood with wood framed rice paper doors and partitions. With such construction Tokyo was a tinder box. -Rj
Rj, what a story!
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