Free Republic

The following is an email floating around a Chabad email group this week. I deleted the email headers and changed the surnames at the request of the sender. The story behind this message is the sender’s children were tasked with interviewing a WWII veteran. They chose their great-grandfather who lives with them. It is videotaped, but Moshe “Spears” wrote it out. Moshe is either in his 90s and was a government lawyer during his life. He is sadly a lifelong Democrat, but he's old and not going to change (and not relevant to the events). The below was typed verbatim...

Matthew Luxmoore’s article (Poles apart: the bitter conflict over a nation’s history, The long read, 13 July) contains a gross error likely to lead readers to misunderstand the Soviet Union’s true intentions during the second world war. There were 1.5 million Poles deported to Siberia, not “hundreds of thousands” as the article states, with no mention of their fate. They were forcibly taken from their homes in eastern Poland to gulags. Most died of starvation and disease under forced labour. To misrepresent this suffering, which took place on a colossal scale, is a crime akin to Holocaust denial. My grandfather...

An elderly Italian man who lived on the outskirts of Rimini, Italy went to the local church for confession. When the priest slid open the panel in the confessional, the man said: "Father…During World War II, a beautiful Jewish woman from our neighborhood knocked urgently on my door and asked me to hide her from the Nazis. So I hid her in my attic." The priest replied: "That was a wonderful thing you did and you have no need to confess that." "There is more to tell, Father. She started to repay me with sexual favors. This happened several times...

In April 2007, the former Soviet republic of Estonia decided to relocate a monument of gratitude out of the centre of its capital city, Tallinn. The bronze statue depicts a pensive soldier with his head bowed, one hand holding a helmet and the other curled into a fist. For Estonia’s Russian minority, it was a symbol of the country’s liberation from fascism by the Red Army. For Estonians, it was a reminder of the country’s occupation by the Soviet Union. On 26 April, as authorities cordoned off the monument in preparation for its removal, hundreds of ethnic Russians descended on...

Comrades! It is in the interest of the USSR, the Land of the Toilers, that war breaks out between the Reich and the capitalist Anglo-French bloc. Everything must be done so that the war lasts as long as possible in order that both sides become exhausted. Namely for this reason we must agree to the pact proposed by Germany, and use it so that once this war is declared, it will last for a maximum amount of time. - Josef Stalin Speech to the Politbureau, August 19, 1939 For the Russians, May 9, 1945 is the day marking the end...

Amy Air Forces Staff Sgt. John H. Canty was laid to rest under blue skies at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, [July 10, 2018] more than seven decades after his plane was shot down over occupied France. More than two dozen family and friends from his native Winsted, Conn., Georgia, Illinois and Nebraska gathered at the chapel for a private service, then Canty’s flag-draped casket was placed on a caisson for the procession to the gravesite for burial with full military honors. A lone drummer kept cadence as an honor guard escorted the horse-drawn caisson down a quiet tree-lined road....

Poland has amended its controversial Holocaust law that made it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail to say “Polish concentration camps,” four months after the law went into effect. Polish lawmakers voted on Wednesday by a vote of 388-25, with five abstentions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is pleased that Poland “fully rescinded” clauses in its Holocaust law. “I’m pleased that the Polish government, the parliament, the senate and the president of Poland decided today to fully rescind the clauses that were signed and caused a storm and consternation in Israel and among the international...

'We knew what has happening to the Jews in Germany and we wanted Germany to lose the war,' Shapiro says NEW YORK (JTA) — Growing up in Imperial Japan during World War II, Isaac Shapiro’s best friend was a member of the Hitler Youth. The friend wore the organization’s brown shirt uniform to their international school every day, but not because he wanted to — he was German and Japan was an ally of the Nazi regime, so he was expected to project support for the Fuehrer. Instead of instilling fear into his classmates, however, the uniform had the opposite...

The Kremlin has in recent years advanced a narrative that Russia must not be ashamed of its Soviet past. President Vladimir Putin has used his nearly two decades in power to talk up achievements during World War II as a rallying cry to unite the nation. In recent years, there have been efforts in Russia to transform Stalin’s image from that of a bloody dictator to a ‘great personality.’ A poll by the independent Levada Center found only 9 percent of Russians blamed Stalin’s leadership for the war casualties, according to a survey published Wednesday. That is a a rapidly...

More than seven decades after their death in World War II, Julius Pieper is finally laid to rest alongside his brother Louie at the US military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy. Known for decades by the number “X-9352”, Julius Pieper has finally been laid to rest beside his twin brother in the US cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, 74 years after they were killed by a German mine off the blood-soaked D-Day beaches. Late on Tuesday, as the last visitors left the immaculate fields of the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, a half-dozen members of the Pieper family gathered around a flag-draped metal...

"I'd like people to remember me as someone who was good at his job and seemed to mean what he said." Born to the owner of a hardware store, Jimmy Stewart dodged continuing the family business to become one of the most prolific actors of this time. Stewart was shy as a child and was interested in aviation, but his father discouraged him from attending the U.S. Naval Academy and guided him towards Princeton. It was at Princeton that Stewart became involved in acting, and began a career as a stage actor. During the depression, cinema houses were taking over...

The internet is in uproar (again). Developer DICE’s decision to include a woman on the cover art for this year’s Battlefield offering has, for some reason, antagonised the most vocal parts of the gaming internet. Within minutes of DICE revealing its new game, detractors on reddit, Twitter and various online gaming forums were spouting their vitriol, furious that DICE had sacrificed authenticity in favour of ‘political correctness’. Here’s the thing, though: it hasn’t. Women have always played a vital role in the World’s wars, and to ignore that is to be willfully ignorant. From soldiers enlisted in active duty to...

Timeline of the D-Day landings of 6th June 1944 hour by hour as events unfolded on the day

HALYARD MISSION'S O.S.S. AGENTS FINALLY RECEIVE LONG OVERDUE AND WELL-DESERVED RECOGNITION AND HONOR! Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony in Washington D.C. March 2018Aleksandra's Note:It seems that every positive step in the vindication process for General Draza Mihailovich and his Chetniks and the proper recognitions and honors bestowed takes the long road to fruition. Perhaps it is meant to be that way, but so many of the patriots directly involved in the events that made the Serbian general and his Chetniks a legend in the hearts and minds of those who understand who they were and what they stood and fought for,...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — William Roy Dover's memory of the World War II battle is as sharp as it was 75 years ago, even though it's been long forgotten by most everyone else. His first sergeant rousted him from his pup tent around 2 a.m. when word came the Japanese were attacking and had maybe even gotten behind the American front line, on a desolate, unforgiving slab of an occupied island in the North Pacific. "He was shouting, 'Get up! Get out!'" Dover said. Dover and most of the American soldiers rushed to an embankment on what became known as...

Bone with bullet hole found by Russians in 1946 came from an unknown woman, not the German leader Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide In countless biographies of Adolf Hitler the story of his final hours is recounted in the traditional version: committing suicide with Eva Braun, he took a cyanide pill and then shot himself on 30 April 1945, as the Russians bombarded Berlin. Some historians expressed doubt that the Führer had shot himself, speculating that accounts of Hitler's death had been embellished to present his suicide in a suitably heroic light. But a fragment...

French researchers claim to have put an end to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Adolf Hitler, after a study of his teeth proved he definitely died after taking cyanide and shooting himself in the head in Berlin in 1945. The researchers reached their conclusion after they were given rare access to fragments of Hitler’s teeth which have been held in Moscow since the end of World War II. "The teeth are authentic, there is no possible doubt. Our study proves that Hitler died in 1945," said professor Philippe Charlier. "We can stop all the conspiracy theories about Hitler. He...

The oldest living World War II veteran and oldest living man in the U.S. turns 112 Friday, and his family and friends are celebrating by inviting everyone to stop by and see him. Richard Overton, born in 1906, still lives in east Austin in the house he built 72 years ago. Overton moved into the house, now on a street named after him, in 1946, and still spends his days on his front porch, smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. "I feel fine every day," Overton told a gaggle of reporters and photographers gathered outside his home on Thursday. "No pain...

New documents revealed by the FDR library shows the president's secret plans to resettle Jews out of Europe. NEW YORK - New evidence suggests that as the Jews of Europe were being slaughtered across continent during the Holocaust, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want them seeking refuge on American shores. Tucked away in a secret vault inside the White House during his 12 year tenure as commander-in-chief, the newly revealed documents recently made public via the FDR Library paint a portrait of the President’s plan to ‘spread thin all over the world’ the remains of European Jewry.  Be the...

**SNIP** So far, Sharma has interviewed more than 850 veterans in 45 states. “They can say that their lives have had a purpose greater than themselves. Lot’s of people are born, they live and they die without having an impact on the world,” Sharma said. “But every single World War II veteran have given millions of people a chance at life. Because of the hell they went through at 18-19 years old.” Sharma’s goal is to preserve their stories for future generations through his nonprofit, Heroes of the Second World War.