Tonight, on Christmas Eve, as Clinton and Cohen@Co just finished what I call a vicious act of "anti-terrorism" against a virtually defenseless Third World country, Iraq, one cannot help but wonder what will befall America when the karmic reaction sets in.
Nothing goes unpunished in this universe - and who is to say how we will celebrate next year? The last Christmas of this millennium? With the Y2K bug scaring half of us out of our wits?
I would like this ZGram to be a pensive one - against the backdrop of one young boy's memories of what it was like to be a "safe" on the eve of the Second World War in Germany.
Remembering Christmas 1938
Christmas 1938, now exactly 60 years ago, is forever in my memory because, unbeknownst to all of us, it was going to be the very last normal Christmas of my youth and childhood. I was eleven at the time, going on twelve, and, as in every year, our parents had us children a week or two before this highest holiday of Christendom to the center of nearby Saarbrücken, where we could admire the beautifully decorated windows of the department stores and small shops lining the "Bahnhofsstraße".
It must have snowed a little the day before we went, and it was cold. As a result, the lights of thousands of bulbs which had been strung in regular intervals across this main street glistened in the tiny crystals of ice and snow still covering parts of the sidewalk and streets. The smell of Christmas cookies, chocolate, ginger bread and, yes, freshly brewed coffee wafted from the many first class cafés for which Saarbrücken was justly famous.
For us children, however, there was nothing more exciting than to be able to visit the wonderful toy departments of stores like the PK, Gebrüder Sinn und Weinholds. My older brother and I especially enjoyed to see the special exhibits showing the erector sets and model railroads of the world-famous Märklin Company, while our sister admired the great assortment of dolls Made in Germany. Interestingly, at the time it was possible for girls in "racist" Germany to get black dolls with frizzy hair for Christmas, something almost impossible to obtain at the same time in the alleged arsenal of democracy and tolerance across the ocean.
When we celebrated Christmas 1938 in normal fashion, with a Tannenbaum and presents and cookies, and with the singing of the wonderful German carols, we did not think that a year later there would be war, and that we would be evacuated, living in a strange part of Germany. Christmas 1938 we celebrated with the knowledge that the effects of the great world-wide depression of the thirties were behind us, and that especially in Germany the future looked rosy again.
We did not think that once more, just as in the childhood of our parents, the lights all over Europe were going to go out, not to be lit again for many years to come. I myself should not see the Bahnhoffstraße in Saarbrücken bedeckt again with Christmas lights and garlands until almost 20 years later.
In 1945, when the war was over, this street and innumerable others were in total ruin, and a few half-starved, ill-clothed people walked where only seven years earlier joy and good will had reigned.
Reminiscing of that Christmas long gone by, I cannot help but think of the fact that, in my opinion, we seem to be in a similar situation today. There are powers at work that want, nay, need, war and chaos in the furtherance of their nefarious aims, and we all are merely pawns in the game. There are now clear indications that the world is once again on the brink of war.
Unfortunately, many Americans seem to believe that relatively good and normal times (good and normal only as far as economic circumstances are concerned) will last forever. The bulk of the population of the United States is unwilling to face the fact that the great manipulators of our era live and operate in this country and that eventually we all will have to pay dearly for their crimes."
(Hans Schmidt, December 1998 GANPAC)
Thought for the Day:
"The tragedy and the magnificence of Homo sapiens together rise from the same smoky truth that we alone among the animal species refuse to acknowledge natural law."
(Robert Ardrey)