The White Rose of Stalingrad
Her nickname was Lilya.
In the Great Patriotic War
When Hitler’s armies invaded the Soviet Union
She became a Soviet air ace,
Known as the “White Rose of Stalingrad”.
Lydia Litvak was born
Into a Moscow Jewish family.
In 1935, at the age of 14, she joined a flight club
And a year later she had her first solo flight.
When the Germans attacked Russia,
Lilya joined the Soviet Air Force.
In the summer of 1942 she was assigned
To the 437th Combat Regiment
Fighting over the skies of Stalingrad.
At first the men were reluctant
To take her seriously
But soon it became evident
That she was an excellent pilot.
Lilya was a pensive and beautiful young woman
Who got into trouble because of deviating from
The prescribed dress code of the Soviet Air Force.
Once she cut off the fur lined trim of her boots,
Producing from it a fur collar for her flight suit.
She was jailed for the offense.
Nevertheless, her desire for expressing
Her feminine individuality was irrepressible
And she continued to design
Her own military outfit.
Among other things she bleached her hair.
Military regulations permitted this.
And then she took pieces of parachute silk,
Sewed them together,
Painted them in different colors
And wrapping them around her neck
She created her own air combat fashion.
Lilya flew a Yak-1 fighter plane,
Which she embellished in painting white roses
On its sides. She made her first kills
Of enemy planes on September 13,1942,
Shooting down two Luftwaffe aircrafts,
A Ju-88 and a Bf 109 G-2.
The German flyer of the downed Bf 109
Was Erwin Maier, a decorated combat pilot.
He bailed out and parachuted
In Soviet-held territory. He asked his captors
To see the Russian ace that shot him down.
When the Soviets brought in Lilya,
Maier thought first that they made him the butt
Of a Bolshevik joke. But after Lilya showed him
Her flight maneuvers in the dogfight,
The German pilot’s disbelief turned
To surprised admiration.
Once, during a mission, Lilya was wounded
And she belly-landed in fascist-held territory.
German soldiers were rushing from every direction
On the field to catch her. She could see them
Running towards her with their weapons in hand.
Yet before they could take Lilya captive,
A Soviet aircraft appeared from the clouds
And landed next to her. Its pilot helped her climb
Onto his plane and took off as fast as he could
Under intense enemy fire.
On another occasion, in the course of air combat
Lilya was wounded in her leg but kept engaging
The Nazi aircrafts. She had whirled between
The enemy planes painted with black crosses
On their fuselage and the underside of their wings,
The swastika insignia hectoring on their tails.
She fired at the enemy aircrafts
With high explosive ammunition
From her 20 mm cannon
And 12.7 mm heavy machine gun
And at the end she managed to bring back
Her Yak-1 to base.
Lilya’s daring exploits included the destruction
Of a German observation balloon,
Which the Wehrmacht used
For artillery targeting against Red Army positions.
The hydrogen-filled balloon was protected
By an alignment of anti-aircraft guns that created
A deadly fire wall. The balloon flew high and far,
Out of the range of the Soviet artillery
And no Red Air Force pilot succeeded
To shoot it down.
Lilya volunteered to do the seemingly impossible.
First her commanders did not endorse the sortie
Because they regarded it as a suicide mission.
But Lilya devised a plan
Of approaching the balloon
From an unexpected direction, flying over
Enemy-held territory.
She succeeded to shoot it down.
August 1,1943, was another exhausting
And bloody day of the war.
Lilya already completed three sorties
But was sent again to take off with her squadron
And escort a formation of Ilyushin II-2 planes.
As the Soviets were returning from their mission,
two German Bf-109 fighters dived on Lydia’s Yak-1.
Her plane was hit. Smoke began to pour
From its fuselage.
The German pilots recognized the white roses
Painted on the aircraft and now as many as eight
Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter planes joined
In pursuing the damaged Yak-1 plane
Of the Soviet ace.
She could not bail out.
Her plane crashed but did not explode.
Lilya was killed of a head wound.
She was twenty one years old.
Lilya shot down 12 enemy air planes in the war
And was the top scoring female fighter pilot
Of the Red Air Force. She and her close friend,
Katya Budanova, were the only two female aces
Of the Second World War.
In 1990 USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev
Posthumously awarded Lydia Litvak
The gold medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Related quotes
The Royal Air Force Hero and the Luftwaffe General
Britain fought for her life.
Hitler’s armies prepared
For an invasion of England.
Savage air battles took place
Over the skies of Albion.
Then a miracle happened:
In the summer and autumn of 1940
The Royal Air Force defeated
The numerically superior Luftwaffe.
This was a turning point in the war.
Lacking adequate air support,
The Fuehrer could not carry out
His invasion plans.
Deeply touched by the heroism
Of the pilots, Winston Churchill said:
“Never in the field of human conflict
Was so much owed by so many
To so few”.
Only three thousand young aviators
Defended the skies of England;
Among them scores of Jewish pilots.
The British ace pilot Robert Stanford Tuck
Was one of the outstanding Jewish heroes
Of World War II. He was born in 1917
And grew up in the Greater London district
Of Catford. In 1935 the 18-year-old Robert
Joined the RAF. During the war
He distinguished himself in the skies
Of Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain.
A Flight Lieutenant and Wing Commander
With 92 and 257 Squadrons, Tuck became
One of the top ace aviators of the RAF,
Credited with 29 confirmed victories
Of downed enemy airplanes. Flying a Spitfire,
He had first engaged in aerial combat during
The Battle of France and claimed
His first plane kills over Dunkirk.
In September 1940,
As the Battle of Britain
Gathered momentum,
Tuck was promoted
To lead the 257 Squadron
Of Hawker Hurricanes.
He had an exceedingly eventful
Combat experience; was shot down
Four times, collided twice, crash landed,
Got dunked in the English Channel
And was wounded twice.
On an August day of 1940
Tuck was on patrol in his Spitfire
And got into a dogfight
With a Junker 88 over Kent.
His plane was hit by enemy fire.
He managed to bail out
While the aircraft crashed
On a nearby farmland.
Tuck found himself descending
with his parachute towards Plovers
In Horsmonden. He reached ground
On the estate of Lord Cornwallis.
The Lord was curious to see
The unexpected visitor.
He gave a warm welcome
To the vertically arrived guest
From the sky and then invited him
For a cup of tea.
One day in the winter of 1942
Tuck flew over northern France
Outside Boulogne when his airplane
Was hit by enemy flak.
He force landed and was captured
By the same German units
That he strafed just a short time earlier.
The Nazis knew very well
That Tuck was an ace pilot of the RAF.
General Adolf Galland himself came
To interrogate him.
One of the top pilots of Hitler,
The general was a war criminal.
He developed carpet-bombing tactics,
Which he tested during the Spanish Civil War.
He flew with the Condor Legion
Of the Luftwaffe and participated
in the terror bombing of Guernica.
By the way, the 1937 horrors
of that Fascist atrocity moved Picasso
to paint one of the grand cultural icons
of the 20th century, titled “Guernica”.
Now dissatisfied with the performance
Of his air force in the Battle of Britain,
Goering promoted Galland to the rank
Of Inspector General of the Luftwaffe.
When Tuck fell into Nazi hands,
Galland was curious to meet him.
The Luftwaffe general
Treated the British ace pilot with respect
And even provided him with a slap-up meal.
Tuck became a prisoner of war
But in February 1945
He succeeded to escape.
Walking eastwards he reached
The Soviet Red Army lines.
The Russians allowed him to travel
To Moscow where he showed up
At the British Embassy.
He returned to England via Odessa.
After the war, it was Tuck’s turn
To interrogate Galland.
Then a curious thing happened:
The former German Nazi
And the British Jew
Became close friends.
In celebrating the metamorphoses
Of a new era wherein former enemies
Turn into allies, Galland made Tuck
An honorary member
Of his old German flying squadron.
Tuck and Galland struck a lasting friendship
And instead of shooting at each other
They went together for game hunting.
Then the year of 1969 arrived
And they both accepted the role
Of serving as technical advisors
For the film of the Battle of Britain.
The war became a movie.
Robert Stanford Tuck died in May 1987.
A few days after his death an obituary
In The Los Angeles Times said that
Many consider Tuck “as the greatest
Spitfire pilot of all times”.
The article paid homage to the courage
Of the ace pilot who went to combat
Facing death in the eyes with the bravura
Of a guarded levity of the heart
Combining it with excellent technical aptitude
And sterling flying skills.
In 1940 the King personally awarded Tuck
With the Distinguished Flying Cross,
Stressing the aviator’s initiative
And personal example over Dunkirk.
During the war Tuck was also decorated
With the medal of the Distinguished Service Order.
The life of Robert Stanford Tuck affords intriguing
Insights into the strange peculiarities of wars
And the irrational nature of human conflicts.
It poses an array of inquisitive questions
regarding the historical context and futility
of organized violence, the unnecessary sufferings
and avoidable horrors that we humans inflict upon
Each other.
It also reveals some bizarre ironies
Of the Holocaust. After all, a friendship
Between a Nazi Luftwaffe general
And a Jewish ace pilot of the RAF
Stands out as a very odd alliance.
Yet human history offers
Countless bizarre stories.
poem by Paul Hartal
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A War Story
There’s a story that have being told
(and I do not know if there is truth to it) ,
that after the slaughtering
of the 47th FAPLA / Cuban brigade at the intersection
of the Lomba and Cuzizi Rivers in Angola,
the mauling of several brigades on the way
to Cuito Cuanavale and the destruction
of that military airfield, the loss of many soldiers,
the destruction of nine Mig fighters
and the loss of huge amounts of Soviet equipment
Fidel Castro was very angry and in a terrible rage
brought his Cuban soldiers in Angola
up to fifty thousand, sent four hundred tanks
and his best pilots to Angola,
after the South African forces had withdrawn
which resulted in the Mig-23 attack
on the Calueque dam
in South West Africa (now Namibia) ,
where a Buffel troop carrier was lost
along with some South African soldiers.
According to the story in vengeance
a team of elite South African
Reconnaissance Commandos
was HALO dropped equipped with
the Fim-92 Stinger anti-aircraft systems
that UNITA had supplied to them,
along with some other weapons and equipment
that these special force soldiers do normally carry
to shoot down MIG-23’s
and Hind attack helicopters
that was putting UNITA under attack
and it has been told that they were dropped
near to an enemy airbase under the nose
of the large Russian aircraft that was scanning
the air for any approaching enemy activities
where they shot down
several fighter jets and attack helicopters,
but that the section-leader
left one pilot to fly off after seeing him
making a cross, begging God for mercy.
The Reconnaissance Commandos managed to withdraw,
were extracted at the allocated extraction point
without any further incident with either FAPLA
or any Cuban enemy units
but the story gets much more interesting.
It is told that while that Recce section-leader
was holidaying in the United States
he took a taxicab from the airport to his hotel,
where the driver (a former Cuban pilot) recognized him
and that he had left Cuba as a refugee.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Face Of Jackal God Mubarak Gnaws Egyptian Bone
Behold face of jackal god hosni
as orders sly chaos across sands
burn new mall order camel charge
Tahrir Square blow up oil pipeline
hear senile whisper there will be chaos
in Saddamish Hitlerish destruction order
I jackal order... survived assassination
dark secret police secrets let me rule more.
Hell no I won’t go I’m alias Soviet Union trained
in air force I US $40 billion to $70 billion gained.
My solution to opposition nuke it seek and destroy
I resurrected Soviet one party state Egypt is my toy.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
Mubarak trained in the Soviet Union, attending a Soviet pilot training school in Moscow and another at Kant Air Base, near Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan (then a Soviet republic) from February 1959 to June 1961. Mubarak then trained on the Soviet Ilyushin Il-28 and Tupolev Tu-16 jet bombers. In1964 Mubarak entered the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, which offered chairs in operational-tactical disciplines, Marxism-Leninism, history of the CPSU and Party-political work etc. Muhammad Anwar El Sadat, the previous Egyptian President had re-instituting the multi-party system and launched the Infitah reforms, which included economic reforms heavily influenced by the free-market philosophy.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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The red directors were one of the main political forces. Another force was the former Soviet ministers who lost everything because of the transformation of the Soviet Union to Russia.
quote by Anatoly Chubais
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Holocaust Latvia Begins
Holocaust Latvia begins
on June 22,1941 when
the German army invaded
the Russian Soviet Union;
and the Baltic States
of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia which had
by Soviet military forces;
recently been occupied
after a proud period
of independence after
World War One finished.
Murders of Jews
Communists began
almost immediately
by Einsatzgruppen;
perpetrated by German
killer squads known
as Special Task Groups
Special Assignment Groups;
the German Security Police
Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo
the Security Service of the SS
the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.
The first recorded murders
were on the day after invasion
on the night of June 23,1941
in town of Grobina near Liepāja;
six Jews were killed
in the church cemetery
by Sonderkommando
1a members deployed;
with the 14th Army
Nazi German
Einsatzkommandos
were a sub-group;
of five Einsatzgruppen
mobile killing squads
up to 3,000 men each
composed of 500 to 1000;
officials of dread SS
Schutzstaffel (SS)
and Gestapo thugs
their vile missions;
the annihilation of Jews
Gypsies Soviet political
Commissars to kill Jews
all Polish intellectuals;
Romani, communists
NKVD collaborators
in captured territories
behind the advancing;
German front lines
Nazi occupiers
were also aided
by a unit of native;
Latvians known
as Arājs Commando
Latvian auxiliary police
Wehrmacht commanders;
bolstered the strength
of the Einsatzgruppen
with regular-army troops
whenever required.
Latvia July 29,1941
forty mental patients
from Lódz in Poland
are taken from hospital;
executed in nearby forest
July 31,1941 Hermann
Göring instructs SS Reich
Security Service chief;
Reinhard Heydrich
to evacuate eliminate
all European Jews
in German-held territory;
Göring's letter mentions
'complete solution'
to European Jewry
Jews purified in death;
July 1941 Germans
establish a Jewish
ghetto at Dvinsk Latvia
July-August 1941;
Jews are murdered
by the tens of thousands
throughout western
Soviet Union Lithuania;
Romania and Latvia
who are the murders?
German Einsatzgruppen
Romanian troops militia;
Ukrainian peasants
Lithuanian civilians
August 1941 German
slaughter of Jews;
at Cesis Latvia
is celebrated
by German troops
security police;
celebrate with
a Totenmahl
'death banquet'
August 1941;
in Belgium
collaborationist
military
organization;
Legion Wallonie
Wallonian Legion
is established
September 29-30 1941;
Babi Yar Kiev
Soviet Ukraine
33,771 Jews
killed in two days;
by SS and German
police units
November 30 and
December 8 1941;
at Rumbula forest
near Riga Latvia
25,000 Jews
killed in two days;
Einsatzgruppen
will murder
over one million
people in occupied;
territories the first
Nazi organized
policy mass killing
of European Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Aearial Painting
Aerial Painting
The painting in the hall of an old bi-plane flying
a across a blue sky, was different this morning,
it had landed by a waterfall and the pilots stood
leaning against the plane’s fuselage slowly
smoking a cigarette, eyes closed enjoying every
moment, every inhale of scented tobacco.
I looked at the painting again the sky was dark,
there was lightning in the air the pilot had flown to
the front and collided with a barrage balloon,
the plane was a broken as thrown to the ground by
a spoilt boy who had wanted a fire-engine for his
birthday, and know only the blue sky prevails.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Twenty years ago, I said there was going to be something that would stop the Soviet Union from taking over the world. And now we see that the Soviet Union has been stopped, through its own disintegration.
quote by Hal Lindsey
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The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge.
quote by Jeffrey Sachs
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My buddies (a reply to Boris Slutsky)
All young white men at a time
was forced into the military, into war
or had to serve a three year jail term
and most of my buddies came home,
but some did not:
Parachuting into a enemy camp
there was one close friend that died,
the other three I hardly knew
and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
seven hundred and fifty
enemy SWAPO and Cuban casualties
and on one patrol one close buddy
stepped on a landmine
were blown up and no one else was hurt,
and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
the enemy that had lost
little lest than a full platoon.
In Angola when we met enemy armour,
turned FAPLA / Cuban divisions
under Soviet leadership into junk
I saw a Ratel armoured car
that was trapped in a landmine field
that had been shot out
with the holes
were enemy tank projectiles went in
and every one inside was burnt, incinerated
if not blown to bits, turned into ash
and it had been only one of eleven
armoured cars
and troop carriers that was lost
some of only thirty-one soldiers dead
but there was pain that flashed through me
when I saw it
and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
four thousand seven hundred and eighty five killed
on the Cuban/FAPLAN side,94 tanks
and hundreds of enemy combat vehicles destroyed
and now no one thinks
of the sacrifice that all of these soldiers made,
of the hundreds of thousands
of returning citizen force soldiers
who were nuts, bomb happy
with post traumatic stress syndrome
or whatever you want to call it
as to the government it is
an incidental small thing,
that happened in a distant past
as if the ex-soldiers are non-existing,
even seen as apartheid criminals by some.
[References: Buddies here used as name used in the South African Defence Force for comrades. Ex-soldiers here used instead of war veterans, as in African circles the word war veterans has got a new derogatory meaning connected to it. My Comrades by Boris Slutsky.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Just as the 99% of Soviet citizens who supported the Soviet regime in 1985 was no indication of what the people inside the USSR really thought, the army of true believers that we think we see in the Arab world is an illusion.
quote by Natan Sharansky
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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K-Car
To the memory of the Rhodesian Helicopter Pilots and
the 20mm cannon Gunner.Two men one helicopter;
known as K-car…..Killer-car.
A formidable force in the Rhodesian Bush War.
RHODESIAN K-CAR
‘Chopper’ pilot calmness,
Cannon gunner’s skill,
Two minds in perfect harmony,
Flew in now for the kill,
Ten comrades in arms,
Pinned down by enemy fire,
Ambushed and compromised,
Their backs now to the wire.
One pilot and one gunner,
Men who knew no fear,
S.O.S. came through to them,
Urgent… but so clear,
“K-car, Call sign Bravo, ”
“Contact, contact, contact”!
Pilot with nerves of steel,
And veraciously exact,
“We have you visual, four o’clock”,
Crackled in the pilot’s ear
He responded calmly “Roger
Call sign Bravo… illuminate a flare”
Flare lit up and in they flew,
Oblivious of the danger;
Twas deaths turn to roll the dice,
With life their coin of wager.
Two hands upon the cannon grips,
One finger on the trigger,
Gunner’s eye took a site,
Through peep site to the jigger;
Bullets ripped into the cockpit,
Of that killer-car machine,
Barely two year out of school,
K-car gunner… aged nineteen
Fire Force airborne pilot,
Turned cannon to the smoke,
Gunner pressed the trigger,
And the dragon now awoke;
Twenty millimeter cannon,
Boomed forth volcanic life
Spewing deadly rounds,
Of instant death and strife.
No place for enemy to hide,
From this matchless opponent;
Terrorists now in full flight,
Were gunned down in a moment.
The Kill-car hovered overhead,
Just six foot off the ground,
Two enemy lay screaming,
But from thirty dead…no sound.
Most men of war, whom I knew then,
Have turned now to the Lord,
They have turned into plow shears,
Their weapons and their sword.
Lord please teach us here in Africa,
Love for one another;
Take xenophobic intolerance from us,
Teach us to love our brother.
poem by Alf Hutchison
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The point is, once they have a missile that can hit the United States, we are now back in the kind of game we used to worry about with the Soviet Union, only the Soviet Union was more mature about this whole thing than I think the North Koreans will be.
quote by Lawrence Eagleburger
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on Earth. This is what every Soviet man wants.
quote by Yuri Andropov
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The difficulties of conducting espionage against the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union were such that historically the Agency had backed away from the task.
quote by Aldrich Ames
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Our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union.
quote by Aldrich Ames
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I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union.
quote by Aldrich Ames
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Little-Known Death Factory
Operation Barbarossa,
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
commenced on June 22,1941.
Behind the rapidly advancing Wehrmacht forces
mobile SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen,
went into action. They killed Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war and political commissars.
The historian Raul Hilberg estimated
the number of Jewish men, women and children
murdered by the Einsatzgruppen
in the ravines of Babi Yar, in the forests of Riga
and many other places at 1.3 million.
On the outspread yards of a former kolkhoz,
a dusty Soviet collective farm,
the SS task forces set up a secret death factory.
Its horrible assembly lines creaked and cried
in the outskirts of Minsk of Byelorussia,
near the village of Maly Trostenets.
Here the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, Gypsies
and other Byelorussian civilians.
And then, on May 19,1942,
the first transport of Jews from Germany,
Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived.
Maly Trostenets became
a Vernichtungslager, an extermination camp.
Men, women and children
Were shot daily in the forests.
Others, thousands of them,
were killed in mobile gas chamber vans,
on the way from Minsk to Maly Trostenets.
Special groups of prisoners threw the corpses
Of the murdered into deep pits of mass graves.
The 'final solution',
the euphemistic code used in Hitler's Reich
for the extermination of the Jews,
was conducted in great secrecy.
The guards were ordered under oath
to shut their mouth.
The perpetrators of the massacres tried
to obliterate the evidence
that the camp ever existed.
As the Red Army advanced
the inmates were forced to exhume the bodies
from the mass graves and to cremate the corpses.
After they completed their terrible task
the guards killed them as well.
Finally, on June 28,1944,
the SS guards blew up the camp.
One of the victims who was shot by the Nazis
at Maly Trostenets was Vincent Hadleuski,
a Catholic priest and Byelorussian patriot.
Another victim who died here was Cora Berliner,
a German Jewess born in 1942 in Hannover,
She was known in her homeland
as a pioneer of social work and as an economist.
The Austrian-born soprano Grete Forst
was murdered in Maly Trostenets, too.
History has recorded the date: June 1,1942.
The psychologist Margarete Hilferding,
her compatriot, also lost her life here,
on September 23 of the same year.
No survivors of the lager are known
to be alive today.
Since the Nazis did not keep camp records
the exact number of people who perished here
in the genocide is unknown.
Estimates range from 200,000
to half million murdered men, women
and children. At least 65,000 of them
were Jews.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Battle Of Britain: Attacking Enemy Aircraft
Life is diced in fatal split seconds agonized flying.
Hurricane's weakness is comparative acceleration
offset by frame design extreme strength ruggedness.
Spitfire Me109 are dueling paired equals between
12,000 and 17,000 feet but above cut 20,000 feet;
Messerschmitt preys supreme out dived opponents;
but required much more skilled physical effort to fly.
Weak narrow undercarriage caused many fatal accidents
in take off especially landings in cramped cockpit but;
over Battle of Britain skies skill fate decides who dies?
Nazi Germany flies fighter aircraft veteran blood bathed legions.
Me109B-C models achieved blooded success in Civil War Spain.
Legion Condor's fighter unit spat swift death in floods of flames.
Lufwaffe's most successful wartime fighter pilots many received
operational blooding in Spain on developing early Me109 models.
August 1940 twenty-three Gruppen are in action on Channel front;
equipped mainly with new improved Me109E-3 which mounted;
death two machine guns in the nose two machine guns in the wings.
Nerves stretch various strengths shortcomings of Nazi Messerschmitt;
against RAF Hurricane RAF Spitfire largely cancelled out in combat.
Radar warns mass attacking enemy aircraft are;
coming in fighters fast scramble climb how far?
Operational heights gunfights haunt shot bar!
Good pilots dance a screaming dive dice death
combat inexperience quickly sliced new deck!
Youth pilots strapped into rotating blades in flight;
powered motors surge at prey target enemy bomber bay.
Rain of steel or bombs away a deadly game to play!
Good pilots trace desperate spins loops sky dives
roulette wheel slots death chanced blacks to reds!
Compasses fuel gauges throttle spinning rip firing burning;
fighting in 'Vic' fives on wing leader dealt death loosing.
Fighting in finger fours meant twos stay together winning?
Life survival paired few fighters survived lamb split alone
experienced Messerschmitt ME109s sought out stray solo sheep!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Just an Idle Poem
A cargo plane, loaded with white rabbits, got lost in a heavenly
storm and landed on the moon, the pilot declared himself king.
The second pilot would have none of it, slew the pilot, declared
a republic, with him as president, and freed the rabbits.
When all the little bottles of booze planes carry for hospitality,
were empty the president got depressed and threw himself;
off the moon, was sucked up into a black hole and woke up on
the Australian outback and got a job a camel rider with an all
consuming hatred for airline pilots. The moon rabbits, however,
thrived lived on nourishing dust and moon dew. But slowly they
changed appearance and became moonbeams that lit up parks
summer nights and make lovers swoon. A cynic may say they
became inconsequent spectres, useless as a poem written for
pleasure and lacking in moral judiciousness.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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This Could Not Be The War We Fought In (Cavatina)
The new government talks down; they deceive
about winning
against us, the war in which we did fight;
the beginning
of this deceit is at primary school
and by sinning
they rewrite history to suit their lies,
to look brave in their supporters eyes.
We did destroy a Soviet controlled
Cuban army,
never lost any battle nor the war,
but liberty
given to their imprisoned leaders,
they are now free
to say whatever nonsense they want to,
in their actions atrocities to do.
Citizens did pay the ultimate price,
and went to war,
some died from cowardly terrorist acts,
as was in store;
some women and children were slaughtered
in blood and gore
by planted bombs, some in church mowed down,
in these things this government finds renown.
[References: 'The battle at Cuito Cuanavale: 'The results of the campaign up to April 1988 were 4,785 killed on the Cuban/Faplan side, with 94 tanks and hundreds of combat vehicles destroyed, against 31 South Africans killed in action,3 tanks destroyed (SADF tanks entered the war after the Lomba River campaign) and 11 SADF armoured cars and troop carriers lost. A total of 9 Migs were destroyed and only 1 SAAF Mirage shot down.' (General) Jannie Geldenhuys. (1994) : At the front. Jonathan Ball Publishers. P240.
'The South African force, under the command of Colonel Deon Ferreira, was tasked with carrying out three operations (1) Operation Modular - The aim of which was to halt and reverse the FAPLA / Cuban advance on the UNITA strongholds of Mavinga and Jamba, (2) Operation Hooper - The aim of which was to inflict maximum casualties on the retreating FAPLA / Cuban forces after they had been halted and (3) Operation Packer - The aim of which was to force the FAPLA / Cuban forces to retreat to the west of the Cuito River.' Nortje, Piet (2003) .32 Battalion. Zebra Press.
'In early October the Soviet-Fapla offensive was smashed at the Lomba River near Mavinga. It turned into a headlong retreat over the 120 miles back to the primary launching point at Cuito Cuanavale. In some of the bloodiest battles of the entire civil war, a combined force of some 8,000 UNITA fighters and 4,000 SADF troops destroyed one Fapla brigade and mauled several others out of a total Fapla force of some 18,000 engaged in the three-pronged offensive. Estimates of Fapla losses ranged upward of 4,000 killed and wounded. This offensive had been a Soviet conception from start to finish. Senior Soviet officers played a central role in its execution.... Huge quantities of Soviet equipment were destroyed or fell into UNITA and SADF hands when Fapla broke into a disorganized retreat... The 1987 military campaign represented a stunning humiliation for the Soviet Union, its arms and its strategy.... As of mid-November, the UNITA/SADF force had destroyed the Cuito Cuanavale airfield and pinned down thousands of FAPLA's best remaining units clinging onto the town's defensive perimeters.' Crocker, Chester A. (1992) High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighbourhood. (Crocker was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the Reagan Administration.)
John Turner claims that: 'following their losses, the Cubans were convinced that further military confrontation with the SADF would not succeed.' Turner, John W. (1998) . Continent Ablaze; The Insurgency Wars in Africa,1960 to the Present. Cassell Plc.
Comments made by a Soviet adviser to the Cubans in Angola: 'The people's armed forces for the liberation of Angola have not been able either, even with the help of the Cubans, to decisively defeat the enemy and drive him out of the territory or the country.' M. Ponomariov, Krasnaya Zvezda Magazine; 20 May 1988.]
poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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