Hello Cruel World

Monday, November 09, 2009

A different 9/11 remembrance

Since the start of this blog, usually on this day, running up to Remembrance/Armistice Day on 11/11, I commemorate the 9/11/1938 Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), also called the State Pogrom Night. Especially since, not only due remembrance for itself, it has examples of political and propaganda uses, twisted mendacity in language, an interlocking step-by-step spiral of violence and oppression, and breathtaking fraud (including monetary).

(2008) Crystalline: 9/11 (9th November)
(2007): It's 9/11 (9th November) again – Kristallnacht
(2006): Anniversary: The First 9/11 — Broken Glass & Ashes
(2004): The First 9/11 — Broken Glass & Ashes
(2003): Repeating the Kristallnacht 9/11 entry from 2002
(2002): Remember Kristallnacht – 9/11/38 [In Australia 9/11 is November 9th]

One year, I remembered another sad incident associated with this date: (2005): 9/11 Returns: Stari Most at Mostar

There's a collection of historic German November 9ths at selenak's LiveJournal, Musings, originally from 2008, in the almost-immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's election as US President. (http://selenak.livejournal.com/429403.html)
(The Yorkshire Ranter added a couple more in comments.)

But this year has happier memories. It's the 20th Anniversary of the 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall. Perched on my grandmother's living room floor watching the B & W television showing coverage of the Building of The Wall in 1961 is one of my earliest datable memories. So reliving those days and nights 28 years after that and 51 after "the start of The Holocaust" — well within a human lifespan — it's good to celebrate its joy.

Here's some quick links to places where thoughts and memories were shared about this: It was twenty years ago today. As well as some in the Musings LJ post mentioned above, this year's 9/11 there is called Freiheit schöner Götterfunken... (a poem later altered to Freude schöner Götterfunken).

Labels: anniversaries, berlin, germany, history, politics