Faith and Resilience
with audio
1. Shabbat on Nazi soil.
The fifty men stood together in an open field near the ruins of a brick factory.
The field lay on the outskirts of Aachen, the first German city to be freed from the grasp of the Nazis.
A rabbi from Virginia, then serving as an Army chaplain, and an infantryman from New York, who had been a cantor student, stood in the center of the group, and a radio correspondent from NBC stood to one side, holding a microphone.
Together, as German artillery shells exploded two hundred yards away, the men celebrated Shabbat after nineteen days of urban combat in Aachen.
And as the men prayed, the NBC correspondent held his microphone close, broadcasting the service to listeners across the US and throughout Germany as the artillery sounded in the distance.
This Shabbat, on October 29, 1944, was not the first Jewish religious service to take place on captured Nazi soil, nor was it celebrated by famous men.
But it was a symbol of what had been achieved and what was yet to come.
The Shabbat was the first Jewish service to be broadcast from Germany to the outside world since the rise of Hitler more than a decade before.
Jewish voices in Germany could again be heard.
“The emotion was tremendous. The soldiers had heard of all the atrocities. Most of them had families that perished in the Holocaust. We had so many of my family.” — Cantor Max Fuchs, 2009
The response of the American listening audience was overwhelming.
There would be a reckoning and ultimately, justice.
A wool prayer shawl.
Ancient prayers and song.
Audacious symbols of faith and resilience given voice in a land still dominated by the swastika.
“The spirit of man cannot be conquered.” — Rabbi Sidney M. Lefkowitz, Aachen 1944
Symbols steel men to attempt the impossible.
They enable men to bear witness to horror, then eat a meal and move on.
And so it was in Aachen in 1944.
Seven more months and the war in Europe would be over.
2. Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls.
Would it matter to Clara Driscoll that few know her name? that she is given little credit for designing exquisite Tiffany leaded-glass lamps that now sell for half a million dollars, or more?
It was Louis C. Tiffany’s practice to highlight his own artistic achievements and not publish the names of his designers, but recent discoveries of Driscoll’s letters have brought her achievements to light.
It was Driscoll, the director of Tiffany’s Women’s Glass Cutting Department, who designed the Tiffany lamps with nature themes, including the iconic Wisteria and Dragonfly lamps shown above.
The women in Driscoll’s department, who called themselves the “Tiffany Girls,” selected and cut the two thousand colored glass tiles that brought Driscoll’s designs to life, wrapping each glass tile in copper foil for the Tiffany men to solder together on wooden forms.
The women’s color selections made each handmade lamp different from the others — unique, an expression of artistry.
Driscoll’s letters describe a close working relationship with Tiffany, developed over a twenty-year span of employment. He paid her $10,000 per year, a magnificent salary for a woman working at the beginning of the twentieth century.
But in keeping with the custom of the times, married women could not be employed at Tiffany Studios, and Driscoll, a department manager as well as an artist, was continually frustrated by the loss of her best talent to married life.
And even she fell victim to this social convention.
When Driscoll married in 1909, no exception to the rule was made for her and her working life came to an end.
Oh, how the times throttle talent.
3. Oswald’s backyard photo.
Conspiracy theorists who believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy have long maintained that the photo of Oswald taken in his backyard months before the killing was a manipulated image contrived to frame Oswald for the killing.
Oswald was the first to make this claim, alleging in his police interrogation that his head had been superimposed on the image and that, if given some time, he could prove the photo was fake.
The photo is alleged to contain several inconsistencies:
The shadow of the chin and the body differ, suggesting two different light sources.
The degree of Oswald’s lean is physically impossible.
The depiction of Oswald’s chin is too wide.
The relative length of the rifle and the height of the body in the photo imply the rifle was actually held by a man much shorter than Oswald.
True believers have clung to these assertions, despite the Warren Commission and the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations both concluding separately that the backyard photo was genuine.
Dartmouth computer scientists have tested these theories recently by constructing a 3D model of Oswald’s head and body, placing them in a mock-up of the backyard scene, and duplicating the position of the sun, the photo’s light source.
Through this careful reconstruction and computer analysis, the Dartmouth scientists found all of the various shadows in the photo to be “perfectly consistent with a single light source.”
The tilt of Oswald’s body was determined to be five degrees from vertical, which is physically possible by shifting body weight to one leg. The tilt also accounts for the misperception of Oswald’s height.
And as for the chin? The apparent widening of the chin is due to the lack of depth perception along Oswald’s chin and jaw that often results in a two-dimensional image of a 3D object.
“Our detailed analysis of Oswald’s pose, the lighting and shadows, and the rifle in his hands refutes the argument of photo tampering.” — Hany Farid, Professor of Computer Sciences, Dartmouth.
Will this conclusion satisfy the skeptics?
Probably not.
4. The child soldiers of Okinawa.
As the Allied campaign in the Pacific brought World War II close to the Japanese island of Okinawa, with a civilian population of 400,000, the Imperial Japanese Army conscripted 1,787 Okinawan schoolboys, age fourteen to seventeen, into the Imperial Blood and Iron Corps, to serve on the front lines of the coming battle.
And Okinawan schoolgirls were forced to serve as nurses in battlefield hospitals.
During the eighty-two-day battle that followed, at least 921 of these students were killed, with many dying in guerilla operations and in suicidal bomb attacks against Allied tanks.
Some of those students who survived have written moving testimonials to the courage of these lost boys and girls.
One old man wrote, ‘They told us we would win the war.’
His life, he said, has been a struggle with survivor’s guilt.
5. Confederate slavery by the numbers.
The Census Office produced a map in 1861 that showed the population distribution of the four million slaves then living in the southern US, based on data from the 1860 census. The map was sold to raise funds for the care of sick and wounded Union soldiers.
Note the percentage of the states’ total population that was held in bondage. In South Carolina, the first state to secede, and Mississippi, the second, more than half the population was enslaved.
From George Templeton Strong, a New York lawyer, Aug. 19, 1861:
“The South… is fighting for the privilege of owning another man’s wife & selling another man’s children, and it calls this ‘Liberty.’
“Its position may be absurd & extravagant, logically, but it is practically convenient.
“A controversy on any question or applied science is much simplified if one of the parties insist that 2 + 2 is not = 4.”
6. The day of Lincoln’s election.
It was a day like none other, casting the nation irretrievably down the path of fratricide over fundamental questions of civil rights left unanswered in the Constitution.
For those, like Lincoln, who were morally opposed to slavery, November 6, 1860, was the first step in achieving the goal of freedom for the nation’s enslaved people.
“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” — President Lincoln, April 4, 1864.
For the others, including Lincoln’s main electoral opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, the day was a defeat for the proposition that people within the nation’s states and territories should be allowed to decide the momentous question of slavery for themselves rather than follow federal strictures. Southern states would begin seceding from the Union seven weeks after Lincoln’s victory.
For the workers laboring on the Capitol Building expansion — immigrants, slaves and free men — election day in 1860 called for a commemoration, even if done informally.
So, the date was carved onto a stone slab laying in the Capitol yard, and the tall column that was hoisted into position on that day was christened the “Lincoln Column.”
Hallelujah.
7. London’s link boys.
When a wealthy Londoner in the 1700s wished to go home late at night, he would hire a boy with a torch to guide him through the dark city streets.
These were the “link boys.” They carried a torch, called a “link,” that was made from rope or rags dipped in candle wax, pitch or resin.
When the Londoner and his link boy reached his home, the link boy would extinguish his link in a large candle snuffer attached near the gate, saving fuel for his next trip.
The customary fare was one farthing, a small sum considering that 960 farthings equaled one pound.
Link boys came from the lowest social class and hiring them could be dangerous. They were known to sometimes lead their customers into dark alleys, where robbers waited.
The introduction of gas street lighting in the early 1800s brought an end to the link boys, but their link extinguishers can still be found on the fences of many old London homes.
And if someone says you can’t hold a candle to someone, they are saying you aren’t even good enough to be their link boy.
8. It’s Friday, October 27, 1961. What’s happening?
Thirty-three Soviet tanks move into the center of East Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate. The Berlin Wall had been installed ten weeks earlier.
In response, the British Army moves three anti-tank guns to the Brandenburg Gate area and point the guns at the Soviet tanks, joining the ten US tanks and five armored personnel carriers that were already present.
The US and the Soviet Union fail to reach an agreement on an Acting Secretary General to replace Dag Hammarskjold, who was killed in an airplane crash in September while en route to negotiate a cease fire in the Congo. The UN votes to create an investigatory commission to probe the cause of the crash.
President Kennedy assures South Vietnam of America’s continued support in resisting Communist attacks and preserving its national independence.
A rift in the “world Communist movement” develops between China and the Soviet Union over a matter in Albania.
US public health officials announce that current fall-out levels from Soviet atmospheric nuclear tests pose no imminent threat to public health, but say continuous monitoring is required, warning against public apathy. Fifteen women from Bloomington, Indiana, send telegrams to Mrs. Khrushchev, urging her to persuade her husband to stop atmospheric nuclear tests.
President Kennedy orders the heads of federal government departments to curb spending, in light of predictions that the federal deficit would near seven billion dollars in 1962. Kennedy blames the deficit on the 1960-61 recession.
Senator Mike Mansfield, the Democratic leader, criticizes former President Eisenhower for calling the Peace Corps a “juvenile experiment” in a recent speech.
Planned Parenthood announces it will open a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut, to challenge the state’s law prohibiting the use or prescription of birth control drugs or devices.
Mrs. Kennedy returns to Washington from a three-month stay in Hyannis Port with her children and will present a trophy at the National Horse Show in Washington on Saturday.
The federal government agrees to lease a 460-acre beachfront tract to New Jersey for one dollar per year. New Jersey will develop the tract as the Sandy Hook State Park.
Brown or black calf leather wingtips from Bally of Switzerland sell for $35 per pair.
Macy’s offers the “Marlin Lever Action High Power Deer Rifle (.35 caliber)” for $53.99.
Playing at theaters: Exodus, with Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint; The Hustler, with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason; Spartacus, with Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier; Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard; The Guns of Navaronne, with Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and David Niven.
Playing live in White Plains: The Kingston Trio.
Playing live at the Village Gate: Aretha Franklin; Charlie Mingus; Herbie Mann.
Playing on Broadway: An Evening with Yves Montand [‘so good even the men liked him’]; How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; A Shot in the Dark; Camelot; The Sound of Music; The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
Playing on the radio: I Fall to Pieces, Patsy Kline; Crying, Roy Orbison; Take Good Care of My Baby, Bobby Vee; Dedicated to the One I Love, the Shirelles; Where the Boys Are, Connie Francis; Travelin’ Man, Ricky Nelson; Big Bad John, Jimmy Dean; Take Five, Dave Brubeck Quartet.
Playing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England: The Beatles [Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Pete Best].
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