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January 1942. Kerch Peninsula, Ukraine. "Parents find the body of their murdered son in Kerch. Photograph shows mother with arms outstretched, leaning back against husband while dead bodies lie at their feet." U.S. Office for Emergency Management photoprint -- British Official Photo (German War Crimes -- Hitler -- World War II). View full size.
War in Europe (Ukraine) starts again because of Putin. Each American and US government can stop this mad Russian aggressor.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
Paraphrased by Winston Churchill in a 1948 speech before
the House of Commons: "Those who fail to learn from history
are condemned to repeat it."
And sadly, "History repeats itself."
The Kerch Peninsula is a major and prominent geographic peninsula located at the eastern end of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine. The Battle of the Kerch Peninsula began on 26 December 1941 with an amphibious landing operation by two Soviet armies intended to break the Siege of Sevastopol. The last pockets of organized Soviet resistance were eradicated through German aerial and artillery firepower by May 19th. Reportedly total Soviet casualties during the five-month-long battle amounted to 570,000 men. See
You care. I care. Sociopaths do not care. This keeps coming around in the world and we never seem to learn.
This photo reminds me of something General Eisenhower commanded whilst the Allies encountered concentration camps at the end of WWII. He wanted as many photos as possible to be taken because it was his conviction that it would not be long before people would somehow forget or deny that so much ugliness had happened.
In 1950, in a class in high school, we were shown uncensored film from the liberation of the German death camps. My simple 14 year old mind was happy. "With the distribution of these films with all of the horrible images, people every where would never allow this to happen again anywhere."
My daughter opined this morning re: the war in Ukraine: "This feels like something from 100 years ago." Devastating photos like this prove it. May God rest their souls.
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” -- Winston Churchill.
The horror of this photo is increased when we reflect that the perpetrator of the current violence against Ukraine has said his goal is to "denazify" the country (which has a Jewish president).
World War II killed approximately four million Ukrainians, among them a million Jews living in the Ukrainian part of the Pale of Settlement. A decade before that was the Holodomor (Terror-Famine) of 1932-1933, when Stalin's Soviet Union engineered mass starvation that killed at least 3.5 million Ukrainians.
... can express the horror and sorrow in this photo.
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