April 15, 2019 Monday
Bedtime Story
The End of Friedrich Jeckeln
Last night’s bedtime story should give you
a fairly vivid understanding of the term Sardinenpackung.
The massacres of the innocents was so
brutal and so gut wrenching that even some killers of SS-Einsatzgruppen were
sickened by its savagery.
But this was not the case with their leader
Friedrich Jeckeln who remained unmoved even with the most extreme cruelty.
He actually stood and watched over on both
the two days, namely, 30th November and 8th December of 1941 the
killings of 25,000 Jews that is often described as “holocaust by bullets”.
For this pure evil act the very next month,
that is January of 1942, he was honored and decorated with War Merit Cross with
swords.
War Merit Cross was the creation of none
other than Adolf Hitler in October 1939 just before launching his blitzkrieg
all across Europe and came in different grades.
The term “with swords” meant that a soldier
was being honored for exceptional service “not in direct connection with
combat.”
The medal of the War Merit Cross with
swords was literally built the way it was named: the medal came in the form of
a cross with the symbol of Swastika in the center.
The medals that came “with swords” had in
addition two swords that crossed each other at right angles to each other with
their point of intersection being also the central point of the cross.
This decoration came “on orders from the
highest level”.
Unlike Hitler who shot himself in his
bunker Jeckeln was captured alive and taken prisoner by the Soviet troops in
1945.
He was investigated and questioned, tried
by the Soviet military court in 1946 that is known as the Riga Trial and was
executed by hanging on February 03, 1946 in Victory Square in front of some
4,000 spectators.
The trial in the Soviet military court lasted
less than 2 weeks; that is the Soviet criminal/war justice system for you.
During the trial he accepted his crimes,
took full responsibility of the murders and asked for repentance in a sober
voice.
Now we can talk about the second term
Dünamünde Action.
The word Dünamünde is a German word for
Daugavgrīva which is a place or rather a neighborhood of Riga which in turn is
the capital of Latvia.
It lies on the bank of the Daugava River
from where its name must have originated with the river itself originating from
the scenic Valdai Hills of Russia that lie somewhere between Moscow and Saint
Petersburg.
This neighborhood of Riga is also
historically known as Riga Ghetto where initially Jews from Latvia but later
from Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia were deported to and were allowed to
live with restrictive conditions.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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