I have read so much on the Holocaust and consumed as many WW2 documentaries/movies as possible. This lady's story is so powerful and inspiring.
I remember once talking with my mother about some things. I had been living in Thailand, and was home visiting. I recall sitting at the kitchen dining table - she at one end, I at the other - and sharing a quote I had heard from a survivor of the Holocaust. It was something like this: "Forgive, but don't forget." Sometimes people think.... forgive, bury and never talk about again. They might even be guilted into thinking that they haven't truly forgiven if there's a need to still talk about a past wrong or hurt. If you were a survivor of the Holocaust or any kind of trauma, talking is essential. From a historical and certainly moral perspective, reminding others is a way to avoid seeing something repeated. Yes, forgive. But forgetting? No way. When I listened to this sweet, strong lady, it reminded of that quote I shared with my mom. And she thought it was really good.
If I had not traveled, I doubt I would have read anything by Kurt Vonnegut. I think I read Slaughterhouse-Five while in Bangkok, and then A Man Without a Country in 2005, when it was published.
“The nicest veterans...the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.”
“But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.”
“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”
“No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.”
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.... It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.”
“The most important thing I learnt on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When any Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.”
“The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.
But the Gospels actually taught this:
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes.
The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:
Oh, boy–they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch _that_ time!
And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes.
The visitor from outer space made a gift to the Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.
And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections.”
“...when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
“You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.”
“He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.”
“That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.”
“They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
“Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?”
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
“Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.”
“Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”
“Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself. Finally, you get just too tired, and the news is too awful, and humor doesn't work anymore.”
“The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
“We humanists try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife.”
“Marx’s statement that “religion is the opium of the people.” Marx said that back in 1844, when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective painkillers anyone could take. Marx himself had taken them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting to those in economic or social distress. It was a casual truism, not a dictum.”
On April 18, 1931 JJE, Jr. enlisted as a Private in The Army of the United States. He was stationed at Fort McDowell, California, and spent a period at Ft. Kamehameha, Honolulu, H.T. On February 19, 1932 he received an Honorable Discharge. The discharge document shows that JJE had blue eyes, light brown hair, a fair complexion, and was 5 feet 9-1/2 inches in height. To this I add that his ethnic geographical background was British Isles. While he did not receive a Medical Discharge, he did leave the Army for health reasons. His discharge shows that his physical condition was Poor. However, his character was reported as Excellent. - Beverly (Espy) Dayries
These are the World War II videos (and one book on tape) that belonged to Watt Espy at the time of his death in 2009. I gathered them up, inventoried them, watched lots, then hauled them off to Goodwill. Shoah, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and The Bunker were my favorites. Notice the Anne Frank movie. In June, my wife and I are touring the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. It has been a dream of mine.
The Bunker, VHS
Hitler, Portrait of a Tyrant, VHS
The Hitler Years, VHS
Hitler, VHS
Hitler:The Last Ten
Days, VHS
He Lives:The Search
for the Evil One, VHS
Inside the Third Reich, VHS (Part One and Part Two)
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, VHS (two copies)
Hitler’s SS, VHS (Part One and Part Two)
Downfall, DVD
Conspiracy, DVD
Killing Hitler, DVD
Anne Frank, VHS (Part One and Part Two), never opened
Murderers Among Us, VHS
Nuremberg
Trials, VHS
Nuremberg,
DVD
Shoah, VHS (Parts Two, Three, Four)
Dark Lullabies, VHS
The World at War, VHS (Volumes 13, 17 and 18), never opened
During the Nuremberg trials, Dr. Leon Goldensohn–a psychiatrist for the U.S. Army–monitored the mental health of two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years, until Robert Gellately–one of the premier historians of Nazi Germany–made them available to the public in this remarkable collection. Here are interviews with the likes of Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop–the highest ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails. Here too are interviews with lesser-known officials essential to the inner workings of the Third Reich. Candid and often shockingly truthful, The Nuremberg Interviews is a profound addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission. - goodreads
Even if you don't have a strong interest in World War II history, I would still highly recommend reading these interviews as a reminder of how "great" evil can be perpetrated by seemingly ordinary individuals - men who loved their families, kissed their wives as they left home each morning, celebrated their children's birthdays and relaxed on holidays. And we need to remind ourselves that any of us are capable of doing the exact same thing.
Click here for an interview with a German who served as interpreter for the psychiatrists who "studied" the Nazi leaders awaiting trial for their war crimes.
This could be the incoming crop of new legislators for the Alabama State Legislature (circa 1943). Major W. Espy, Sr. is left of center, holding a black hat.
I remember Uncle Watty sharing that he went many times up to Montgomery with Granddad Major when he was a state senator, and that he especially liked those times with his dad. They would stay overnight or for the whole weekend.
The Dothan Eagle
Feb. 1949
The Wiregrass Farmer
January 19, 1950
The Montgomery Advertiser
February 7, 1950
April 27, 1950
(campaign for re-election)
The Dothan Eagle
April 20, 1950
The Abbeville Herald
July 20, 1978
The Abbeville Herald
July 20, 1978
Click here for more on Major Espy's role as chairman of Henry County's Defense Bond Sales. Click here for a hotel where Major and Watty would sometimes stay. Click here for Watt Espy in the Boy Scouts.
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