Another meaning of poppies from Greco-Roman influence is the promise of resurrection after death. For their culture, the bright colors of poppies (especially red) signify life after death. In many cultures, vibrant red means life and white means death. In most western cultures exactly the opposite is true. A white wedding dress for instance, is common but in part of the east and Asia it signifys death and funerary.

Lest We Forget…

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The remembrance flower of the 53 member states of the Commonwealth of Nations is the papaver rhoeas, also called the red flowered Corn Poppy. This is a weed common throughout parts of Europe. Notably, this common wild flowering perennial is found in Belgium in a place called Flanders Field and was made immortal by the writings of the Canadian surgeon and soldier John McCrae in his poem “In Flanders Fields,” May 3rd, 1915.

Lt. Col. John McCrae had witnessed his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer die and the poem he wrote about Flanders Fields gives meaningful tribute to his and other soldier’s deaths during the war. In the poem the poet describes the poppies blowing in the windy field of crosses that marked the place where they were buried. This popular tribute is how the poppy became the symbol of sacrifice for those who fell in war campaigns, battle of World War I and later, in all other wars inclusive.

Remembrance poppies, artificial flowers made from paper or plastic, are sold in many countries during the weeks before Remembrance Day which falls on November 11th. The Remembrance Day observation is for honoring the living veterans of war.

 In the United States the paper poppies are sold prior to Memorial Day, the last Monday in the month of May. The flower as used here are to commemorate the veterans of various wars including the Korean and Vietnam Conflicts as well as both World Wars.

An interesting fact about the Canadian version of commemorative poppy (plastic flower base with black center affixed to the wearer with a common bent pin, shown above) was that in 1980 the Royal Canadian Legion formed a committee to decide changes of design and/or colors of the commemorative token. The traditional black center of the red flower was voted to be changed to green to denote the green grassy fields of France, where the Allies landed. However, this change to a green center in the poppy proved to be quite unpopular with the membership. The green felt had already been purchased in large quantity and was used in Remembrance poppies until the material was exhausted. The popular black center design was by commission reinstated back in the design by decree in 1986 but it was not until the green felt material was exhausted in the year 2002 did the popular black center returned. At this time again, persons not familiar with the change in the 1980s to return to traditional colors  caused some mild debate but the black centers were reinstated and continue in use today.

I vaguely remember the green centers of the Remembrance Day poppies here in Canada but am quite accustomed to the sight of the black centers of Remembrance Poppies and would protest any change of design should it ever be proposed again.

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Restful sleep and honor for the fallen soldiers. Their sacrifices shall never be forgotten. Like the ideals of the soldiers who fought for their nation and its ideals, the Remembrance Poppy shall endure just as the poppies of Flanders Field.

Read more about the life and times of the Canadian soldier, surgeon, teacher and poet Lieutenant Colonial John McCrae here at the Veterans Affairs Canada web site.

If they were a plumber, they could help in building the crematoriums. The worst job I think is digging your own graves.

The final solution is not the end but the beginning. It has many meanings but overall it means the final solution is to start the mass murder of Jews. It was also known as “Liquidation,” “Finished Off,” “Special Treatment,” and “Elimination.” Hitler was obsessed with Jews. He thought they were responsible for Germany’s economic depression. He was born from Jewish blood. Talk went around for twenty years until something really happened.

When you wake up on the wrong side of the bed it means you’ll have a bad day. In the camps when you wake up you take role call (which could take several hours,) next they would march several hours to their work. The marches could be miles long. At the job site they would work for several painstaking hours. Finally they would go eat and sleep, if they were lucky, not gassed in between.

Do you like sleeping in your nice warm bed? In the camps the beds, if you could call them beds were usually made straw. The beds had three to five people in each one.

People didn’t have blankets or proper protection from the cold. The prisoners would use their food dish for pillows so they wouldn’t get stolen.

When you put your clothes away you may moan and groan. At least you have clothes. When they get their clothes it didn’t matter what size you got, they were clothes. If they froze or fainted they might get stripped from their clothes by other prisoners.

One survivor recalled that a soldier said to him, “You don’t have an identity, you have a number, you’re nothing but a number. Another survivor said, “If you made it to a camp alive, you would die from work, if you lived from work you died from starvation, if you still had life in you, you would die from the gas chambers.”

The number of camps was massive. From 1933-1945 twenty thousand camps were built for several of reasons. First prisoners would go to forced labor camps in which they worked until they died or got weak. Those that were too weak or old went to transit camps. Transit camps were built to move prisoners from work camps to death camps where they died for sure. At the end of 1942, sixteen large camps remained with thousands of smaller ones. At the end of the war six thousand camps remained in Poland.

Death, suffering starvation, exhaustion, gas chambers, medical tests, and chemical exposer, all were forms of an ethnic cleansing called the Holocaust. Around 11,000,000 people were killed from those things in Nazi camps. On average six thousand people were gassed a day. Thats 186,000 people a month.

Most victims were Jews. Other victims were Socialists, Social Democrats, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witness, Blacks, and Homosexuals. They were victims because they were blamed for being Christ killers and other things. Another thing is helping someone escape.

It started as a speech and ended as a war. Overall I started to see that the Holocaust was really that bad. My brother had a Holocaust survivor talk at his school and now I wish I went to. He learned a lot just from the talk. I didn’t think it was that important. Now that I might get to see one I am glad I did this unit. It was so cruel and I’m glad it ended before all of the Jews were killed and everything was destroyed.

As a child, Hitler, along with his mother, was often beaten by Alois. This resulted in a strong emotional attachment to his mother and a hatred towards his father. Hitler also did poorly in school to make a point to his father, who wanted him to become a Customs Official. Hitler wanted to be a painter instead. He tried to enter the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna twice but was denied.

On 21 December 1907, Hitler’s mother died of breast cancer. He inherited money from an aunt in 1910.

Hitler’s career as a painter failed soon after his second try to enroll in the academy. In 1909 he lived in a shelter for the homeless and in 1910 he lived ina shelter for poor working men.

In World War I he served in Belgium and France as a runner. Being a runner is the most dangerous job on the Western Front. Hitler received two iron crosses, one in 1914 (second class ) and in 1918 (first class). Hitler remained in the army after World War I and returned to Munich, where he attended the funeral march for the murdered Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner.

The Holocaust

The definition of the word “holocaust” has been used since the 18th century to refer to the violent deaths of a large number of people.

The killings took place in almost all of the Nazi controlled countries. Any person with 3 or 4 grandparents that were Jewish were killed unless they converted to another religion.

Many experiments were done on the people in the concentration camps, including lacing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children’s eyes and various amputations and other brutal surgeries. People who survived the experiments were almost always killed soon after and disected.

In one experiment they sewed two four year old twins together at the back, the wounds became infected. The mother obtained some morphine and had her daughters killed.

By the end of the Holocaust, 5.9 million jews were killed, 2-3 Soviet prisoners of war, 200,000-250,000 disabled, 80,000-200,000 Freemasons, 5000-15,000 homosexuals, and 2,500-5000 Jehovah’s Witnesses

As stated in Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Raoul Wallenberg was a man of great integrity. During Hitler’s Holocaust Raoul Wallenberg tried to save as many Hungarian Jews from death camps like Auschwitz. He used many unconventional methods for diplomacy, anything from bribery to blackmail, in order to save the lives of the innocent. Another way of protecting the Hungarian Jews was to issue Swedish Passports to as many people as he could, this would normally prevent deportation to the death camps. Everything Raoul Wallenberg underwent was at great personal risk and loss. Thanks to his selflessness, persistence, and integrity, Raoul Wallenberg, saved the lives of over 100,000 Jews. He chose to be the difference between life and death.

Another man noted for his integrity by Elie Wiesel was Albert Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer was a highly distinguished musician from a young age. Through his musical profession he earned enough money to fund his education and later medical schooling.    After deciding to go to Africa as a medical missionary instead of a pastor, Schweitzer began to study medicine at the University of Strasbourg in 1905. In 1913, upon obtaining his Medical Doctorate, he founded a hospital at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa. Soon after, in 1917, he and his wife were sent to a French internment camp as Prisoners of War. After being released in 1918, he spent the next six years giving medical lectures, music concerts, preaching, and studying medicine throughout Europe. Finally in 1924 he returned to Lambaréné. For the rest of his life he used the funds from donations, his personal appearances, and  royalties to expand his hospital to seventy buildings that could care for over 500 patients at once. On December 10, 1953, Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for all of his many contributions to humanity. Additionally he started a leprosarium at Lambaréné with the $33,000 of Nobel Prize money. Albert Schweitzer was a man of great integrity whose efforts resulted in the saving of thousands of lives. He made the difference between life and death.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is probably one of the most well known humanitarians in history. He is most well known for civil rights movement against the segregation of whites and blacks. Because of this activism he was arrested, his home was bombed, and he and his family were subjected to personal abuse. King endured through all of this by following the nonviolent protest methods of Ghandi. He was elected the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to lead the civil rights movement in an even more progressive direction. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. When he learned this he announced that he would give all $54,123 to further the civil rights movement. On April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee, he was assassinated. This man of perserverance, strength, and integrity, had his life taken from him because he made the difference of life and death for all African Americans in the United States.

I believe a man of integrity can make the difference between life and death even though they are not required to. There have been many people in history who have made this difference. They made the choice to do something to change what they belived to be wrong instead of staying silent, for better or worse. All the people of integrity who didn’t make that difference aren’t mentioned in the history books because they didn’t alter history and make the difference between life or death. I agree with Elie Wiesel, “One person – a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a Martin Luther King, Jr. – One person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death.” Yet just because they can make that difference doesn’t mean they will.