Rico says his friend Kelley forwards these two pieces of history:
Kirsten Grieshaber has an article at Yahoo News about Kristalnacht:
Germans across the country recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht— the 'night of broken glass '— during which the Nazis staged a wave of attacks on Jews in Germany and Austria.
On 9 November 1938, hundreds of synagogues were burned, numerous homes and Jewish-owned stores were ransacked, some thousand people were killed and more than thirty thousand Jews were sent to concentration camps.
The attacks marked the beginning of the state-organized, violent persecution of Jews, which ended in the murder of at least six million European Jews by the end of the Third Reich in 1945.
Germans in many cities and towns held candle-light vigils, listened to Jewish survivors share memories and met at Jewish cemeteries to remember the victims of Kristallnacht during the commemorations.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the night of broken glass "was an event that humiliated Jews in an unbelievable way... a real low point in German history had been reached".
She added: "Unfortunately, later on, German history developed in an even more dramatic way which eventually ended in the Shoah", the Holocaust. The chancellor also called on Germans to never forget the past.
Across Berlin, groups of residents walked through their neighborhoods, noting sites where Jewish stores, schools and other locations once stood before being destroyed by the Nazis and their supporters. Several Berliners came together to polish some of the city's five thousand Stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks, which identify by name individual victims of Nazis in front of their former homes. The cobblestone-sized brass plaques are inserted on sidewalks and called stumbling blocks because one unexpectedly trips over them—figuratively speaking— while strolling through the city. "We have organized sixteen groups who are out today cleaning the stumbling blocks, and we are hoping to turn this into an annual event in the future," said the coordinator of the tours, Silvija Kavcic.
Despite the many positive activities, some speakers sounded a note of caution, reminding their listeners that anti-Semitism is still a problem in Europe.
A poll of European Jews released recently found that more than three-quarters of those questioned believe anti-Semitism is surging in their home countries, and close to one-third have considered emigrating because they don't feel safe.
Dan Sewell has an article, also at Yahoo News, about the Dolittle Raiders:
Known as the Doolittle Raiders, the eighty men who risked their lives on a World War Two bombing mission to Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor were toasted one last time by their surviving comrades, and honored with a Veterans Day weekend of fanfare shared by thousands.Rico says it's another event we should never forget...
Three of the four surviving Raiders attended the toast at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Their late commander, Lieutenant General James "Jimmy" Doolittle, started the tradition, but they decided this autumn's ceremony would be their last.
"May they rest in peace," Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cole, 98, said before he and fellow Raiders— Lieutenant Colonel Edward Saylor, 93, and Staff Sergeant David Thatcher, 92— sipped from specially engraved silver goblets, from a bottle of 1896 cognac saved for the occasion, after being passed down from Doolittle.
Hundreds invited to the ceremony, including family members of deceased Raiders, watched as the three each called out "Here" as a historian read the names of all eighty of the original airmen.
The fourth surviving Raider, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hite, 93, couldn't travel to Ohio because of health problems. But his son, Wallace Hite, said his father, wearing a Raiders blazer and other garb traditional for their reunions, made his own salute to the fallen with a silver goblet of wine at home in Nashville, Tennessee earlier in the week. Hite is the last survivor of eight Raiders who were captured by Japanese soldiers. Three were executed; another died in captivity.
A B-25 bomber flyover helped cap an afternoon memorial tribute in which a wreath was placed at the Doolittle Raider monument outside the museum. Museum officials estimated some ten thousand people turned out for Veterans Day weekend events honoring the 1942 mission credited with rallying American morale and throwing the Japanese off balance.
Acting Air Force Secretary Eric Fanning said America was at a low point, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other Axis successes, before "these eighty men who showed the nation that we were nowhere near defeat." He noted that all volunteered for a mission with high risks throughout, from the launch of B-25 bombers from a carrier at sea (photo, at bottom, above), the attack on Tokyo, and lack of fuel to reach safe bases.
The Raiders have said they didn't realize at the time that their mission would be considered an important event in turning the war's tide. It inflicted little major damage physically, but changed Japanese strategy while firing up Americans. "It was what you do... over time, we've been told what effect our raid had on the war and the morale of the people," Saylor said in an interview. The Brussett, Montana native who now lives in Puyallup, Washington, said he was one of the lucky ones. "There were a whole bunch of guys in World War Two; a lot of people didn't come back," he said.
Thatcher, of Missoula, Montana, said the raid just seemed like "one of many bombing missions" during the war. The most harrowing part for him was the crash landing of his plane, depicted in the movie Thirty Seconds over Tokyo.
Cole, of Comfort, Texas, was Doolittle's co-pilot that day. Three crew members died as Raiders bailed out or crash-landed their planes in China, but most were helped to safety by Chinese villagers and soldiers.
Cole, Saylor, and Thatcher were greeted Saturday by flag-waving well-wishers ranging from small children to fellow war veterans. Twelve-year-old Joseph John Castellano's grandparents brought him from their Dayton, Ohio home. "This was Tokyo. The odds of their survival were one in a million," the boy said. "I just felt like I owe them a few short hours of the thousands of hours I will be on Earth."
Organizers said more than six hundred people, including descendants of Chinese villagers who helped the Raiders, and Pearl Harbor survivors, were invited to the final-toast ceremony.
The eighty silver goblets in the ceremony were presented to the Raiders in 1959 by the city of Tucson, Arizona. The Raiders' names are engraved twice, the second upside-down. During the ceremony, white-gloved cadets presented each of the three with their personal goblets and their longtime manager poured the cognac. The deceased's glasses are turned upside-down.
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