Hi..Please come sit with me

[fahim mohammed]

Nice and quiet isn't it. First time here? No, I have come here a few times before. Last year I brought
my grandson over from North America. Yes, we wanted him to see some countries. Wanted him to see
what he read in school. What did we talk about here? Well about many things. He understood some, but
others he will understand later.

Really? So you have been to Egypt. Thats great! I think Winston Mitchell took a balloon ride over Luxor!
Yes I have been to Egypt many many times. Yes to see the pyramids, the valley of the Kings etc. But for something much more. Just like I come here. Not much to see here, I agree. Just the stones remain. Like in Egypt. No?

Shhh! Can you hear something? No? Listen harder. Do you see anything besides the grounds, the trees, the flowers on the ground? Yes it is a big ground. You don't feel anything?

Can you hear someone crying? A woman or is it a child? Heavy footsteps? No? Strange I see and hear
them clearly. I can see thousands of people across the grounds in front. Can't you hear the boots.
can't you hear the roar of the crowd? deafening isn't it. frightening really. I can see flags. Red, White, Black. Don't you see the guns? Oh, there it is. can you see the car? the one with the three pointed star?
Yes it is a mercedes benz.

I agree, they do make good cars. Yes, BMW used to make motorcycles. They still make them. excellent
ones too.

You have to leave? Sure, I can meet you here later. If you want to. What's that? You want to hear
what I told my grandson? See you later, then. Enjoy your stay.

 

[Rachel Foster]

Peaceful image, Fahim. Where is this?

 

[John Angulat]

A very poignant message you have left us, my dear Fahim, with this image.
The quiet belies the hate that once spewed forth from here.
Our world is a better place now that the Reichsparteitagsgelande no longer draws frenzied crowds and military madness.
May we never forget.

 

[Michael K. Carberry]

Peaceful image, Fahim. Where is this?

Nuremberg.The Ehrenhalle specifically.I have been bewildered all my life wondering how that happened.

 

[Rachel Foster]

My God. I'm speechless.

 

[Larry Brown]

As I viewed and read thru this I found I was touched and moved at several levels. Thank you Fahim for posting this as your wonderful story here surpassed your excellent image! Nice work indeed!

Larry

 

[Asher Kelman]

Fahim,

One of the saddest parts of man's nature is to follow leaders for magical solutions and maniacal views on hierarchy and hate.

These propensities might be of help to small bands of humans migrating to new lands as man spread out from Africa dominating the Neanderthals or previous migrants who already had footholds. The extra passion might have been the engine for success.

Modern man has not shed such traits. With massive populations, the consequences of following messiah's of the day can lead to massing of armies with mayhem, misery and massacres on the subject populations.

Thinking the Nazis were some new evil removes responsibility from our cultures of exclusivity and privilege. The Nazis were merely direct consequence of teachings that simmered for centuries. The new tools of the telegraph, train and production lines for weapons of war and death just magnified the potential gains and the terrible consequences. Hitler was so special monster, just the demagogue de jour for which we seem to have a special affinity. "Following leaders" based on catch phrases that seem to solve all the issues of life is our everlasting inheritance.

Thanks for the eloquent reminder of the our weakness for infectious ideas!

Asher

 

[Michael K. Carberry]

Hitler was so (no?) special monster, just the demagogue de jour for which we seem to have a special affinity.

I've no wish to begin a political debate thus this will be my only comment.I disagree as would 6 million Jews.

 

[Rachel Foster]

Michael, I would agree with Asher. The reason this is so bone-chilling is that it could easily happen in any country, and my own country is no exception.

 

[fahim mohammed]

After having read the various comments in this thread, I think a little more of this human tragedy
needs to be told. Hence, I shall seek your indulgence for a few more threads.

There have been various questions posed by your comments:

Where is it: It really does not matter. I happened to post a picture from Nurnberg. Should a similar event
in another place leave us any less concerned or moved? Would it?

May we never forget: Is this a wish, a prayer? What if I told you such events have happened. Equally importantly, are we able to recognize such an event if it was happening or about to happen? Have we forgotten or have we chosen to selectively forget? What should you and me do in such instances? Shall we wait for another poster from another time to post a similar photo from another place in another forum?

I found I was touched and moved at several levels: Moved enough to learn more about the bestiality
of the human race? Moved enough to get involved? Moved enough to stop it happening again and again and again in another part of our world. Or moved enough to ' tut tut' and move on.

I disagree as would 6 million Jews: Would it make a difference if instead of 6 million human beings, the number was 1 million. quarter of a million? fifty thousand? What if they were not Jews?

The reason this is so bone-chilling is that it could easily happen in any country, and my own country is no exception: Who says it did not happen in your country? Who says that there are no undercurrents
that do not preclude it to happen in your country? Have we forgotten already?

These are questions addressed to me. These are questions I am trying to answer. Have I forgotten? Have I chosen to forget since it was in the past? Or have I forgotten since it happened to the Jews?

Do I let a corporal's ' My Struggle ' , ' My Battle ' or ' Mein Kampf ' writings go unanswered?

I shall come back to the following photo again. Lest we, me and you, choose to forget...

I am waiting to meet someone here.

 

[Mike Shimwell]

Fahim

This is a powerful thread and the questions you are asking, both yourself and everyone else, are important. Too often we are seduced into thinking that an emotional reaction or disapproval is meaningful, yet Germany then and the world today was/is full of reasonable, intelligent and caring people. This did not stop the events then, nor has it stopped the genocides and massacres arond the world since.

Somehow I always feel we need more than the emotional reaction to these evils, and we need something more to see them before it is too late and we are either swept along or made powerless to prevent it.

I wish I had more answers.

MIke

 

[Michael K. Carberry]

I disagree as would 6 million Jews: Would it make a difference if instead of 6 million human beings, the number was 1 million. quarter of a million? fifty thousand? What if they were not Jews?

Simply a generally accepted statistic?

The tone that this thread developed and that post in particular pushes me to speak out.However I shall request my account be deleted from this site and remain silent forever.Good luck all.

 

[fahim mohammed]

Simply a generally accepted statistic?

The tone that this thread developed and that post in particular pushes me to speak out.However I shall request my account be deleted from this site and remain silent forever.Good luck all.

Hi Michael. I am really sorry that you seem to have misunderstood my post; or maybe I have been not
clear enough. I lack Asher's eloquence.

In this particular instance, the statistic is not being challenged. I just was questioning if one would consider the very philosophy of the Third Reich to be any less disgusting or vile if the numbers were
not 6 million. How about 5.99 million? Would that make this crime any less repulsive?

To me, no number of human lives however small, Jews or Gentiles..to be subjected to such barbaric, inhuman and utterly despicable fate was never and will never be acceptable. The Nazi philosophy that
resulted in such atrocities against the human race ( Jews and others ) repulses me. And it is such or similar thinking that I dread.

I wish you reconsider your decision to close your account.

Good luck be with you always.

 

[Rachel Foster]

Michael, why? You are a valued member. Please share why?

My maternal grandfather's name was Francis Cohen. I would have gone to the ovens. My father was Native American. Some call what happened to the Native Americans the American Holocaust. I find the one in Germany in the 40s more horrifying but I cannot say why.

I think we must see the lesson here. Cruelty is horrific, but yes, the larger the number, the more horrifying.

Please, Michael, share your feelings?

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hitler was so (no?) special monster, just the demagogue de jour for which we seem to have a special affinity.

I've no wish to begin a political debate thus this will be my only comment.I disagree as would 6 million Jews.

Michael,

Please forgive me failing to present my moral ideas adequately and having them be received as some kind of political commentary which was far from my intent. The roots of Hitler's moral values came not from some inner madness but from the teachings from Constantine and propagated by the Catholic doctrine that followed. Martin Luther first befriended the Jews seeking allies and when they rejected the Christian doctrines he offered became more venomous in his teachings than the mother church itself.

The Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions lasted 250 years. Almost the entire native male population of South America was decimated at the behest of the religious Europeans. In Africa, the slave traders emasculated the continent from which humanity had arisen. Everywhere these Europeans went they left missionaries, wiping out cultures in the remaining populations. At least until 50 years ago, the Crusades were taught as "gallant sacred pilgrimages" when they were a swathe of pillage, murder and rape across the entire Jewish communities n Europe to the Muslim peoples of the levant.

So I see Hitler's 15 year Reich as just another more horrible version of the same human behavior with industrialization enabling and magnifying the state's leverage over killing machinery and propaganda. Back in 1915, under German tutelage, when the Turks tried to solve their "Armenian problem", (with the technical background help of the German high Command there), the choked off road system with expelled Armenians on death marches hampered the efficient execution of the intent of the Porte in Constantinople. Hitler, however, had a train system to transport his prey to extermination centers.

This is not a political argument but an anthropological observation. The innate ability of man to massacre competing tribes likely been with us for the past 80,000 years at least! Hitler's success in his Judenfrei passion, (the materialized passion of the churches normal teachings of Jews culpability for deicide) blossomed in an environment of new technical tools that enabled industrialization of killing on a scale never seen before on planet Earth.

Painting a picture of Hitler and his Nazis as some "unique monsters" is denying his views as part of the normality in European culture for the almost the entire past 2 millenia. I experienced this in the gauntlet of suspicion, demonization and hatred towards Jews as I grew up in London. I experienced the same tone when, as a teenager, I visited my beloved France, (which I idealize as an origin of rational thinking about the rights of man). Commonality of Nazi teaching with the lessons on the New Testament in my school in England was obvious. More than a few of the teachers espoused and/ or taught much the same thing. That found frightening expression in Sir Oswald Mosley's blackshirt fascist thugs or the common ruffians and finely dressed school kids who spouted as much as we passed with police escort. That's how we got to get to school some days! Just because we were Jewish.

The only difference was that the folk that menaced us every day in London were not in power!

I'm so sorry that you misunderstand my intent. I am a scholar of genocide and sometimes take it for granted that what I feel strongly about, others already know about and feel as I do. However that is obviously not the case.

Asher

 

[fahim mohammed]

"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. "

"America must remain American."

President Calvin Coolidge 1924.

Let the reader find out more about the statement at the beginning.

 

[Rachel Foster]

I started to make a post asking we condemn cruelty of any kind, of any magnitude. Then I realized how fatuous and self-congratulatory, what "mind valium" it was.

My "official response" to this is as before.

My God. I'm speechless.

 

[fahim mohammed]

Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is
the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men
do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of
that force of resistance which is continued only in pure
blood. All who are not of good race in this world are
chaff.[/SIZE]

Oh hi there Mitch. Fancy running into you here. Going up to
Schloss Neuschwanstein. Great. Us too. Yes, I believe it is the
best castle anywhere. They hoarded the booty here, you know.
In the last days.

How was Munich? Liked it ? Lovely city? Get into Austria? No,
You and Sandra should have gone there.

He was an Austrian, you know. A foreigner in a foreign land!
Who? Yes the one with the small moustache. Of course, most
of Germany is Roman Catholic. Yes, he was Catholic too.

I don’t know, whether he was born or re-born. He said he was
blessed by the Almighty. What do you mean which Almighty?
I didn’t ask him. Nuremberg Castle had Papal connections for
centuries. Ask them. I am wondering though, why with all the
crimes he committed, Rome did not ex-communicate him? Or
did they?

The others in the past years have not had the blessing
of the Almighty - of Him who in the last resort,
whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final
decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the
coward..[/SIZE]​

Beautiful day to visit the castle. What’s that? Yes looks like a
fairy tale castle. Not Disney..the real thing.

Hey Mitch, you think we shall find fairies there? No, not those sir..the female
kind and you better be careful around here friend.
‘Strangeness’ has been dealt with severely around here.

Mitch, why are fairies white? What do you mean that’s the way
it is? Why can’t they be another color? All the fairies I have
seen in books and movies are white, have blond hair, blue
eyes. Even their wings are white. Even in my dreams the fairies are white

Maybe I am seeing too much tv. Subliminal images. Mass media.
Mitch, do you Know a Paul Joseph Goebbles? No no, he is not a friend.

You think God has the Nordic look too? No, I am serious.
You think He is an equal opportunity Provider?

Why do you think that strange? No, I mean the food part. Just because I want
Kosher food, you think us strange? I want beef. you know, cow..moo! Sink
my teeth into a Kosher bavarian cow. WoW!

How you going to the castle. Walking. It is a long hard climb
you know Mitch. No, Ayesha is walking. I doubt Sandra and
you can keep up with her. You wanna bet?.

Me, I shall take that carriage. Yes they are lovely Bavarian
horses.

Aryan horses for sure. Must be their genes.

Up the hill, Mitch.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Fahim,

Keen is always brief and rich. You pull in history much like Jorge Luis Borges's stories and we feel even less educated but paradoxically richer.

Thanks for this unusual wake up!

Asher

 

[fahim mohammed]

Warning: Very Graphic Pictures

…Set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.

A frightening feeling ripped through me. I had heard similar words before. I would hear them again. I would hear them repeated continuously in another time.

The virus had mutated as it would do again. You see it does not ask for much. Does not need much to survive.

Just us.

People will believe the ‘ new’ message. They will trust and honor this harbinger of death. They will send their sons and daughters, once more, into battle. The Roman Legions shall be resurrected.

The Jews … are worse than wild beasts … lower than the vilest animals. Debauchery and drunkenness had brought them to the level of the lusty goat and the pig. They know only … to satisfy their stomachs, to get drunk, to kill and beat each other up … I hate the Jews … I hate the Synagogue … ​

The world would witness the new ‘ Centurians. They would respect no race or region. They will walk
with the pomp and power of Augustus Caesar and Rome.

They will challenge all the gods. They will challenge the GOD of Abraham.

The meek shall inherit the earth.

It is not ‘ us ‘ against ‘ them ‘. It is, it has to be ‘ us ‘ against this evil. It shall find many other Goebbels; there are many other Fuehrers.

Once it has dispensed its venom, it shall move on.
There were, are and will be other Oswiecims to find; other Treblinkas to be explored; Belzecs to haunt and other Majdaneks waiting for desolation and inhumanity.

This evil, this venom needs very little.
It needs us. It has already found us.
It feeds on our Fears.
Do we, you and me, have the courage to deny it its subsistence?

I hope, No I pray that we find that strength.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Fahim,

These pictures are haunting and a reminder to us to not think it's just "them" being rounded up. There's no point, IMHO, in learning about beauty if our fundamental views of the value of man are arrogant and ugly.

"Your children are precious to me!", is what we must say to anyone we meet. That's the edge of the beginning of respect. Out if respect comes humility and grace.

Thanks for reminding us.

Asher

 

[fahim mohammed]

Hi guys. “ where’s Ayesha “ I asked. She took the mud road, wanted to run up the hill, said Sandra. Hand over the Euros, I said to the panting Mitch.

We are leaving for Paris tomorrow, said Sandra.
We too are flying home this evening, said I.

I was hoping Sandra would have forgotten, but no!
We did not get to talk about the “ Crusades “, Sandra said.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Oil, Saddam Hussein and of course Jerusalem. I said.

Just one of the many reasons I did not want to get into this difficult and emotional subject.
Mitch and Sandra were shocked, but pretended not to be. Out of respect for me. I smiled and said:

Baghdad August 1099.
The Place. The Court of the Muslim Caliph in Baghdad. The seat of the Muslim Empire. A Qadi with a group of weak and emancipated followers informs the Caliph that the Holy City, Jerusalem, had been taken by the Franj on Friday, the twenty second of Shaban of the year 492 Hijra, corresponding to 15 of July 1099 A.D after a forty day siege.

Most of the the Jews in the city were gathered together in the Main Synagogue. They had gone to pray when the Franj had stormed into the Holy City.The Franj locked the doors. Covered the perimeter of the Synagogue with straw and wood. Then they set it on fire. Children, women, old, sick and the infirm. All. The wailings could be heard in the streets. The Knights on horses chased those running in the streets; cutting and hacking.
Every single one of them were burnt alive. The others could be found with their heads cut off. Women and naked girls, raped and then killed.

The Knights and the foot soldiers went into every single home and raped, looted and murdered every single Muslim and Jew they could find. They roasted the children on open fires and some were seen to eat the flesh. Ulema, women, children’s bodies were in the streets or lying at their doorsteps with their heads cut off. Two days later when the slaughter stopped, not a single Muslim was left alive in the city walls. Neither was a single Jew alive.The city streets were flowing with blood and some of the Franj soldiers has to wade through this bloody liquid.
All the people traveling with the Qadi had fled from the towns pillaged and set afire by the Franj, and there were some survivors that had fled the Holy City.

‘How dare you slumber in the shade of complacent safety’ said the Qadi, ‘ leading lives as frivolous as garden flowers, while your brothers in Syria have no place to live save the saddles of camels and the bellies of vultures. Blood has been spilled. Women have been raped and have killed themselves. Shall the valorous Arabs resign themselves to this insult, and the valiant Persians accept this dishonor?’

The speech brought tears to the eyes and moved men’s hearts. There was wailing and crying. But the imam had not come to see tears or hear the Muslims cry.
‘Man’s meanest weapon’, he shouted, ‘is to shed tears when rapiers stir the coals of war.’

The Qadi and the survivors had crossed the hot Syrian desert…Damascus to Baghdad. He was the Venerable Grand Qadi, the magistrate of Damascus. His name was Abu Sa’ad Al-Harawi.

He was of Afghan origin.

Where does the Oil come into this? Asked Mitch.
Mosul. I said. Find out for yourselves about Mosul. Through history books written over 900 years ago! And you shall find Oil. Bitumen.

And why Saddam Hussein? Asked Sandra.
Because he was from Takrit , I said.
So, What’s the connection; asked Sandra.
Another man also came from Takrit. A Kurd.
Who, asked Sandra.

Salahuddin Al-Ayubi, I said. Better known to you as Saladin.

 

[Rachel Foster]

I'm in a hotel room in Deauville, France. I've just spent the day in incredibly beautiful surroundings. This morning began in Paris, from there Monet's gardens, Rouen, Honfleur.

I talk to my children via google video chat while I'm gone. Theyre not home yet so I'm online while downloading todays images (sorry, in spite of the advice, I have a few hundred from today alone). I' can't read the posts after the last posted photos. I can't see through the tears.

May the lessons never be forgotten. I'll read the posts later. Right now, I need to talk to my children. I hope they are home soon.

 

[Rachel Foster]

Fahim, may I sit with you a while?

Omaha Beach 1, Normandy: Rachel, Mother of a Young Son

Omaha Beach 2, Normady: Rachel, Mother of a Young Son​

Fahim, sometimes the silence is louder than any sound. I knew you'd understand.

 

[fahim mohammed]

Rachel, of course you can sit with me. Maybe some others might join us too. They too would be
very welcome. In silence or to tell their ' story'. We would honor their silence and share their sorrow..together.

I hope you talked to your kids and that they are safe.

Have a safe journey back and please make us see what you saw.

 

[Rachel Foster]

I did. But I'm all too aware of the threats to their safety, either as a member of a targeted group or as one sent where ever the next Normandy might be.

 

[fahim mohammed]

....

But I'm all too aware of the threats to their safety, either as a member of a targeted group or as one sent where ever the next Normandy might be.

I share your concerns and your fears. You see, I too have exactly the same concerns and fears.

 

[fahim mohammed]

Au Revoir

Sandra, Mitch and Ayesha had seen the castle. Not much had been there to see inside.

We had become friends. The four of us. Sandra was gracious to invite us to their home when we would next be in the States. Ayesha and I were honored.

And of course, we had made new friends, not the least Hans and Josef. Those fine Bavarian steeds that had valorously pulled us up and down to/from the castle. I told Mitch that Hans and Josef had had a few stories that they had shared with me. Mitch looked at me with a certain apprehension.

Hey Mitch, I had said, If African lions could sing with an American accent; why couldn’t Bavarian horses speak English with an Arabic accent! Mitch had agreed, although he insisted that that only happened in the movies.

The movies! A whole history and story there.

Mitch, Could you do me a favor? If you can; I asked.
Mitch suddenly became guarded.

It is about a movie, I added hastily.

Could they change a few lines at the end, I pleaded.

Mitch relaxed a little.

Have you seen ‘ Robin Hood ‘? Mitch looked a little worried.

No Mitch, I said. ‘ seen’ not ‘ met’. Of course the movie Mitch, I said. He relaxed further.

‘ Robin Hood ‘ the movie with Kevin Kostner and that magnificent gentleman playing the ‘ Moor’. Mr. Freeman, I think. Yes the ones with the ‘ american’ accents. No it is not about them. I had been to ‘ Sherwood ‘ many times…too many times. Had not met the Sheriff of Nottingham..or mercifully neither from anwhere else!

No Mitch, I can accept ‘ poetic license’ in this regard. But I really take issue with one aspect of this movie. Really p***es me off., I told Mitch.

It is that fine Scottish gentleman towards the end, I said. It is not about his Scottish accent either.

Who?, said Mitch.
The SPECTRE of that scene haunts me to this day.

It is stretching it a bit too far! Even for the movies, I had said.

Why and what? Asked Mitch.

You remember the ending scene; where everyone falls to their knees with a hush and there is an audible whisper of ‘ Richard the LionHeart ‘, I asked sheepishly.

Richard had appeared to be taken aback in the movie. Or so it appeared to me. And Understandably so.

‘ Scare Bleu’ Richard must have been thinking. ‘ What have I come back to ‘. I could imagine Richard shaking his Scottish head in the movie.

Mitch could you ask them in L.A to have people calling him ‘ Coeur de Lion ‘ with an Arabic accent, please.

Duke of Normandy or not, he was French and seemed to have spent more time in Arabic speaking lands than English speaking ones. I don’t want Richard to appear surprised in the movie.or anywhere else for that matter!

Mitch said he doubted if the movie folk would listen to him.

We shook hands all around. Mitch hugged me. I consented to the ‘ give me five’ but refused the fist bump.

I had seen what happened to people who give fist bumps. I had seen it on the news. Fox news. I have enough problems as it is.

We were going to visit Rome, the next trip. I might have a few more ‘ stories’ to ‘ weave’.

After all I do come from the land of story weavers. Didn’t we not bring you that ‘ blockbuster’; ‘ A thousand and one nights’. Or as they say it in Arabic ‘ One night and a thousand nights’. You know Al-gebra and all!

Best regards.

 

[Rachel Foster]

Fahim, I know you are aware of this, but neither the media nor fanatics do any of us any favors.

What can one do? I sometimes feel helpless.

 

[Rachel Foster]

Being a parent isn't easy. Perhaps the hardest part is realizing you can't protect your children.