Diamonds and Rust

Were you around in 1968?
I was, and it is one of the few things that make life today tolerable. The fact that I lived through the years that moved history.

40 years ago today on the 3rd of May 1968,students of the Sorbonne University in Paris occupied the building.It was the beginning of events that led to a general streik in France and sowed the heterogeneous seed that changed our society.

Looking back it is difficult to define what exactly happened,the movement was dissimilar and mostly unorganised. The moved were young,creative,spontane,and questioned everything established in the world. It was a apart from certain street riots a quiet revolution,but it changed the world.

68 a painfully beautiful year full of diamonds and rust.

Those of you that read my post “Prinsengracht 263″ will know that I am moved by the story of Anne Frank.

13 year old Isabela Castillo as Anne Frank

For weeks Anne Franks picture has been smiling from the posters in Madrid,Spain.

“El diario de Ana Frank:Un canto a la vida”

On Thursday the Anne Frank musical opened at the Teatro Caldéron, sponsered by the U.S Ice Cream Manufactures Haagen Dazs.

It was hailed as a “moving show for the whole family”.

There are no Mugs or T Shirts for sale.

Anne Frank as a Musical? Should that be?

Monika Schmid is head of the Catholic Community in the town that I live.

A Woman. It is difficult to find enough Catholic Priests these days in a country where half the population is Catholic.

Maybe people can’t believe in the preachings of the Catholic Church any more. In a five minute TV programme which runs just after the main news and before the evening peak viewing starts on a Saturday, representatives of the religious communities in the German speaking part of Switzerland alternately are asked to talk on some theme for thought on Sunday.
Monika Schmid was chosen lately, and she had the courage to sock it to 630′000 viewers in a true Harper Valley P.T.A. manner.

Based on the latest scandal in which yet again a Catholic Priest had abused a child and had been “hidden” by the Church in a small out of the way Parish.

Frau Schmid found it unbelievable that Priests who break the rules of celibacy must leave the Church and others that sexually abuse young boys are at least for a time hidden and may continue their role in a Parish. It was no wonder that the Church had fewer followers.

She was of course summoned to an audience with her Bishop.

I would say a woman was needed in the Vatican.

Amsterdam, 23 February 1944

“From my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare Chestnut tree on whose branches little raindrops shine,appearing like silver,and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind.

As long as this exists I thought and I may live to see it,this sunshine,the cloudless skies,while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.”

The fourteen year old Jewish girl wrote these words in her now world famous diary. Daily she would look out of the attic window in the Prinsengracht.It was the only one that wasn’t blacked out in the tiny warehouse hiding place of her family and four friends, on to the Chestnut tree. It gave her strength through the twenty five monthes confinement during the German occupation of the Netherlands by just being there.

Anne would look at it and note the changing foliage from season to season.
It was bare when they came for her in February 1945.

She died early March of Typhoid Fever in the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, a few days after her sister. She was fifteen.

The Chestnut tree lived, and is still there so many years after. But it was sentenced to die on the 21st of November 2007. Some experts said it was old and sick and couldn’t be saved. Others said it could but they had little weight in the matter.

I don’t know what has happened to Anne’s tree.

Photo:Peter Dejong

On the eleventh day of November 1918, at the eleventh hour, the Armistice Treaty that ended the the first World War was signed. They hoped it would be the last. It wasn’t.

Next Sunday we will remember those who took part and died in the wars of the last century,and the soldiers who are still dying today for their country right or wrong today.

The last line of Rudyard Kipling’ s poem Recessional is known by all.

The words of his poem apply more than ever today, the third verse especially.

Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature,exactly a hundred years ago. He lost his only son in WWI.

“Far called our navies melt away.

On dune and headland sinks the fire,

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.

Judge of the nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget-lest we forget.

“For the Fallen”

“They shall not grow old,as we who are left grow old,

Age will not weary them,or the years comdemn.

At the going down of the sun,and in the morning,

We will remember them.”
Laurence Binyon .1914

These words were engraved on a wooden plaque fixed to a wall of the Aula in one of my first schools. Underneath was a large wooden plaque telling us the names of Teachers and Pupils from Stepgates who had fallen in two world wars.

On November the 11th we will remember the fallen again. Some of us may wear a red poppy, others will just remember.

In London an ageing Queen will lay a wreath at the foot of the Cenotaph in Whitehall, and a handfull of Veterans will try and straighten their backs, shakingly salute, and with tears in their eyes march by.

Britain, the Commonwealth, and the USA will remember the Armistice, of 1918 and in many Churches services will be held to this purpose.

But according to an article in a London paper last Saturday,there are members of the Clergy who feel they can’t hold these services any more because they conflict with the ideolgy and lives of congregational members from other countries and cultures living in Britain. Must we all forget.?

“In Flanders’ field the poppies grow,

between the Crosses row on row.

We shall not sleep though Poppies grow

in Flanders’ fields.”

Lt,Col. John Mc Crea . Canadian Army 1872-1915

The words of this poem are for me the lovliest words of affection ever written.It is by no means any ordinary poem,it was chosen as a cypher for one of the bravest and highly decorated British women agents working in occupied France during World War II.Her name was VioletteSzabo, and she died in Ravensbruck concentration camp after being captured and atrociously tortured. She revealed nothing. I think with the words of the cypher, which were given her or chosen by her while she was in training atBletchly Park reminded her of her dead husband and helped her through her ordeal.

” The life that I have is all that I have,and the life that I have is yours.

The love that I have for the life that I have is yours and yours and yours.

The sleep I shall have ,a rest I shall have, yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years in the long green grass will be yours,and yours, and yours.”