(Nothing eaten yet)

Sometimes, I make "potpourri" posts where I touch on several topics in one entry. I usually try to keep it to a minimum, but the last time that I said such nonsense, it turned out to be entirely false. This time, however, I really am going to try. Feel free to comment on one or more of these topics, or comment on something completely unrelated!

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Yesterday was a major cleaning day for me. Not only did I tidy up the apartment & wash dishes but I swept, mopped, vacuumed, & dusted in no particular order. My apartment reeks of Pine Sol, and yours truly could not be any happier.

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Today, I am visiting Time Warner Cable for both an upgrade & a downgrade to my services. I like to consider it a trade-off. I have two cable boxes, one of which is a HD DVR in my living room & the other of which is a normal cable box in my bedroom. I never really watch television in my bedroom, so I am wanting to get rid of my cable services over there. Instead, I can use it for late night DVDs since I still have a DVD player in there. Besides, I use my bedroom for sleeping & reading anyway.

Additionally, I want to upgrade my services to include some sort of HBO package because I keep hearing amazing things about True Blood & The Wire. Yes, yet more programmes to add onto my Autumn lineup, but my Tuesday & Wednesday schedules only consist of Dancing With The Stars & Glee. I need something else to fill my days, especially since Locked Up Abroad moved to a different schedule.

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When I left my previous employer, I forgot that one of my student loans garnished my wages. Now that they cannot tap any sort of payroll, they are reaching out to me in order to establish a repayment plan. Guess what else is on my to-do list for today!

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I accidentally bought a much larger than necessary sleeping bag for my Halloween camping trip this past weekend, but I lost the receipt. Hopefully I get store credit at least because I want to use the cash to buy a different sleeping bag. Maybe I can even use the credit to purchase a backpack. Gee, one more errand to chalk up to the to-do list. The sleeping bag was made for twenty degree weather, and it rarely ever reaches that here in San Antonio. A forty degree bag sounds much more suiting.

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There is something that I am forgetting on my to-do list for today. I hate that feeling. I have to visit the post office to send a postcard to Christine. For a few months already, we have been on a two-person campaign to keep the United States Post Office alive. She said that they already removed her mailbox to relocate her mail to a central posting station, and I read a news article several months ago that they want to relieve Saturday deliveries. In order to keep the post office afloat, we have sent each other postcards & letters in order to revive the dying art of snail mail.

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Last but not least, I am consulting Cheryl today about hotel accommodations & our rail pass inquiries for our upcoming trip. She proposed some hotels for us in Munich & Frankfurt, and they both have positives & negatives. I may ask that she research any other hotels, but what I like best about these hotels is the proximity to the hauptbahnhof, or the central train station, in each respective city, which brings me to the next matter of concern.

Our rail pass needs to cover airport transfers into the city centres, suburban commutes to Groß-Gerau, Dachau, & Füssen, & the journey from Munich to Frankfurt. Cheryl e-mailed me on Friday saying that the airport transfers appear likely, but she has not replied about the other legs of the trip. I figure a cool three days to research, given that today is Wednesday, should be enough time to hear back from the Deutsches Bahn. Hopefully I get some good news because my only other appealing alternative is renting a car, and I am terrified of the autobahn.

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Well, enough talk about what I need to do today. I am going to ask Mother to join me on my errands, especially since she is more excited about this trip than I am. Tschüß!

Current Mood: Prepared panda
Current Music: Timbaland - "Morning After Dark"

BBQ sandwich

Potato salad

Special K Red Berries & Very Vanilla Silk

Nobody was here to stop me, so I went ahead & booked our trip. The Baby & I will be spending Christmas Eve, Christmas day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, & New Year's Day with our British cousins. Then afterward, we will spend about five days in Bavaria & Frankfurt.

My network knows that I am a traveler. Since I began blogging over six years ago, I have lived in France & visited Germany, Switzerland, & the Netherlands at least once. In March, I took my youngest sister, the Baby, who is eleven years old, to Paris on my second voyage out to France, and in between I have visited London once & the Birmingham area at least four times. Our December/January trip will mark my sixth return to England. I never was a big fan of England. I wish my family lived somewhere fantastic like Paris, but England will do. They love coming to see us in San Antonio as well.

So the itinerary is as follows:

22 Dec 09 - United Airlines Flight 6089
Departs San Antonio, USA 12:22
Arrives Chicago, USA 15:02

22 Dec 09 - Lufthansa Flight 435
Departs Chicago, USA 20:55
Arrives Munich, Germany 23 Dec 09 12:30

23 Dec 09 - Lufthansa Flight 4916
Departs Munich, Germany 15:40
Arrives Birmingham, UK 16:50

02 Jan 09 - Lufthansa Flight 4921
Departs Birmingham, UK 07:00
Arrives Munich, Germany 10:05

[At some point on the the 5th January 2009, the Baby & I will take a train from Munich to Frankfurt, but we do not have an itinerary for that trip just yet]

07 Jan 09 - Lufthansa Flight 446
Departs Frankfurt, Germany 13:20
Arrives Denver, USA 15:50

07 Jan 09 - Lufthansa Flight 9420
Departs Denver, USA 19:15
Arrives San Antonio, USA 22:23

The Baby & I have already seen the castles in England, so we are not expecting to do any sightseeing. We are only there to see our family, and from what I hear, they throw a pretty wild New Year's fête. How exciting!

While in Germany, the Baby & I will visit Schloß Neuschwanstein & Hohenschwangau by train from Munich, and then on a separate day, we will visit the Dachau concentration camp. After taking the train to Frankfurt, we will spend a day in Gross-Gerau where I used to live when I was much younger. I visited Groß-Gerau roughly six years ago, so this trip should be much more fun. The entire itinerary in Germany is reminiscent of my travels six years ago, as a matter of fact. I hope the Baby enjoys herself. I have never had to travel in the snow, much less during the holiday season. By the way, holiday traveling is astronomically expensive. I doubt I will ever do this kind of voyage again.

Since this trip consists of multiple cities, I am using a travel agent for the first time in my life. Her name is Cheryl with the local AJ Travel agency, and she has been absolutely superb thus far. Hopefully my trips are not as complicated in the future, but if such is the case, then I will definitely return to specifically her.

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Additionally, I am visiting Daddy out in Los Angeles for the Thanksgiving holiday. He said that he was going to be alone, so I wanted to keep him company. While I am out there, I will visit Christine, and I plan on meeting my first MindSayer ever, Allison! Nothing would satisfy me more than seeing a film in the local cinema with this cool chica. I sent her my itinerary:

25 Nov 09 - American Airlines Flight 1461
Departs San Antonio, USA 08:35
Arrives Dallas, USA 09:45

25 Nov 09 - American Airlines Flight 493
Departs Dallas, USA 11:25
Arrives Burbank, USA 12:50

01 Dec 09 - US Airways Flight 275
Departs Burbank, USA 12:40
Arrives Phoenix, USA 15:08

01 Dec 09 - US Airways Flight 207
Departs Phoenix, USA 16:02
Arrives San Antonio, USA 19:08

Hopefully Allison & I get a chance to visit a local pâtisserie since we both love sweets, but I am perfectly fine with brunching at a local café as well. We were supposed to meet the last time that I visited two years ago, but the plans fell through the cracks somehow. No excuses this time though!

And here y'all have a fine specimen of what transpires behind the Friends-Only curtain: plenty of hyperlinks, sharp grammar, obscure names, unabashed & uninhibited information, & word upon word upon word. Well, MindSay, what are your plans for the upcoming holiday season?

Current Mood: Clean panda
Current Music: Las Ketchup - "Kusha Las Payas"

The Belzec Trials

 

These former SS officers who served in the Belzec death camp were brought to trial in Munich, during August 1963, indicted with murdering Jews:

 

The Belzec trial in Munich lasted only three days from 18 January – 21 January 1963 Only Josef Oberhauser was found guilty and sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment, the following SS men were acquitted:

• Werner Dubois

• Erich Fuchs

• Hans Girtzig

• Heinrich Gley

• Robert Juhrs

• Karl Schluch

• Heinrich Unverhau

• Ernst Zierke

 

Josef Oberhauser

The crimes of genocide committed in the three Aktion Reinhard Camps, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka only began to come to light during the euthanasia trials in 1948.

 

Heinrich Unverhau who had been in charge of the locomotive depot at Belzec, where the clothes was sorted and stored and cutting out the yellow stars, from the clothes of the murdered Jews, was the first to be arrested and charged.

 

This was in connection with the killing of patients at Grafeneck euthanasia centre, it was during the course of the trial that information began to emerge about the Aktion Reinhard death camps.

 

Unverhau, after a lengthy hearing into the euthanasia allegations, was acquitted of all charges and released. His references to the death camps were held to be inadmissible and were disregarded by the court.

 

Even then, the wheels of justice were slow to turn, it was only in 1959 that the West German government instigated a wide-ranging investigation into the Aktion Reinhard death camps.

 

Belzec was the first Aktion Reinhard death camp was first to be identified as a major killing centre in Poland. At the conclusion of these enquiries speedily the Belzec personnel were arrested and interrogated. They were arraigned at the Munich Assizes charged with several counts of murdering several hundred thousand Jews in Belzec.

 

Although the defendants had made admissions, the defence put forward a mixture of defensive lies, self exoneration to the actual killing, and not without some foundation, that they were in fear of their very lives and their families lives, should they not carry out the express orders of the Belzec camp commandants Wirth and Hering.

 

The defendants attempted to lessen their own involvement in the genocide, by suggesting that the “actions of destruction” could not have been carried out without the assistance of the Jews.

 

They had suggested to the court that the Jews carried out the whole operation – removed the victims from the transports, cut the hair of the females, removed their bodies from the gas chambers, extracted gold teeth and buried the bodies in the pits, which they had previously prepared.

 

Fortunately, on this point the court was not persuaded. To convict these men of the Belzec crimes there had to be direct evidence identifying them as the perpetrators of destruction. Whilst there was circumstantial evidence or loose admissions by the accused, the main requirements the witnesses to events implicating individual defendants was absent.

 

Rudolf Reder also known as Roman Robak who had travelled from Toronto, Canada was unable to positively identify any of the defendants.

 

To rebut the general defence proffered collectively by the defendants, the prosecution relied on one principle – that the defendants were guilty of collective participation, even though they had not acted as instigators.

 

In principle, the one in charge who gives the orders, in this case Wirth or Hering, is solely responsible, the one who carries out these orders must also share the responsibility if he knows the task in hand is unlawful. The jury disagreed. At the end of January the trial collapsed and all the defendants with the exception of Oberhauser, were acquitted. The defence of “acting out of fear for life” was accepted by the court

 

Immediately on leaving the court as free men, Dubois, Fuchs, Juhrs, Unverhau and Zierke, were re-arrested and held in custody on similar charges relating to the Sobibor death camp. The case against Josef Oberhauser was adjourned, and a new trial was ordered. In January 1965 Oberhauser again appeared before the Munich Assizes, but this time the prosecution were better prepared.

 

Immediately Oberhauser claimed to the court that he had already been sentenced to a term of imprisonment for the Belzec crimes at the Magdeburg court in 1948, where a Soviet Military Tribunal sentenced him to a term of fifteen years imprisonment.

 

When the Munich court investigated Oberhauser’s claims, it was established that he had been tried and sentenced for crimes relating to euthanasia and not the Belzec crimes, as these were not known at the time. The trial continued.

 

 

Read more here:  http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/belzectrials.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

 

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

 

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto 2009  H.E.A.R.T

                Overall, I can’t complain about today.  I had my busy morning; time with Erin, who I love, and then 45 minutes with AB, who was very flighty and resistant today.  Sue said he got his medication, so she thinks it was just him being purposefully stubborn.  I just think she doesn’t like him very much.  She has hit her limit with him; it’s my job to repair that bridge.  Then I went to Jacqui’s room to work with CB, but she told me, ‘he (thinking I was there for NB)’s absent today’ and when I said, no I was there for CB, she said, ‘she’s out, too’.  So instead of staying, I went back to my room and had fun.

                Lunch was another ‘D and Kait issue’ (why is it always when I’M alone in there? And why is this turning into a Friday routine?).  Not NEARLY as bad as last week.  Thank the Lord.  He sat down at the table with A, and then stood and went a row and a table over to stand behind his sister, pretty much shoving his tray into her neck.  He assumed/accused that she was telling people about a bump on his forehead (the nerve!).  Again, we had to tell him to give her space, and he wouldn’t.  So Kati got up to get some salad dressing for her lunch, and in that 2 second period, D slid into her seat and refused to stand up, even with both Dorell and I urging him.  Finally he got up, and walked out of the cafeteria.

                Got down to the room, Parker started to talk to him and he started talking to Parker, and I told Parker that D did NOT have permission to be there.  Fun when he started to bring his tray down for recess and I said, ‘and then come right back here’.  He asked ‘why?’.  When I explained that he left location and had also been bothering his sister, he tried to back-pedal pretty hard:  “so you’re telling me I can’t go out, even if I do a re-start?” when when he first came in we’d told him to go back and ASK to come to the room, but he wouldn’t.  Kept going back to ‘so you’re telling me_____’, but I held my ground, and Claudia and Parker did, too.  I was actually really nervous during it, because I know how he blows, but I also know that it’s not fair that he get to do whatever he wants and get no consequences.  No other kid in the SCHOOL would dream of talking back to a teacher that way,  No other kid has the privilege/option of eating in the classroom when he wants to, and that we’re deserving of respect when we give him that option.  I don’t think that option’s on the table for a while.  He told me he wouldn’t take his tray down, so I said, ‘okay, as long as your tray is here, you will not be watching the movie with us; you and I will go into the room and do work or read’ and I basically got growled at, but he went.

                I have to share silent reading.  This is something that actually made my heart feel WARM, even if you’re about to read it and go, ‘big whoop’.  In the work I do, with kids as tough as mine, you have to savor small moments where things go really right, or you burn out focusing on negative things (like D’s lunch drama).  So, to rewind a little, A is my 6th grader.  Not a typical 6th grader; he has a lot of mental disabilities (I'm pretty sure he suffered a TBI when he was 2-3), and functions pretty much on a kindergarten level.  He cannot really read; made HUGE leaps from the start of the year, but the books he's reading are... designed for pre-k/k, and he still flubs through most of them.  Mostly what's improved is his work ethic.  So today, after lunch, we got our usual mini-tantrum that it was silent reading time.  He said, "I want to listen to a book" (we have a few that are on CDs so he can just follow along).  I told him that if I saw him actually looking at a book quietly when I turned back, he could have those.  I reminded him what we've been saying since September; we don't care if you cacn READ the book; just show us you can look at the pictures/pages/be engaged in it, and we're happy.  Today...he did that.  He sta there and quietly flipped through a story, and then a second when I told him it hadn't been enough time, and he did that witout complaint, and he got his reward.  And a very happy teacher : ).

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006)

Plot Synopsis: East Berlin, November 1984: Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of con... (read more) East Berlin, November 1984: Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. Party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against the playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend, the celebrated theater actress Christa-Maria Sieland. After all, the "operation" is backed by the highest political circles. What he didn't anticipate, however, was that submerging oneself into the world of the target also changes the surveillance agent. The immersion in the lives of others--in love, literature, free thinking and speech--makes Wiesler acutely aware of the meagerness of his own existence and opens to him a completely new way of life, which he has ever more trouble resisting. But, the system, once started, cannot be stopped. A dangerous game has begun.

Sojo's take: This movie was an incredibly powerful story. I don't think many Americans really understand the price others have paid to gain the freedoms we enjoy every day. YOU'VE GOT TO SEE THIS MOVIE.