I found reference to Mr. Williams in our local paper today. He is going to be in our capitol city in October releasing balloons. One for each West Virginian killed in Iraq.

I thought you all would like to read about him and the effort being made to get a ship named after him.

http://www.shadowwolf.org/woody.html

Brooke

July 31

1941 Goering orders Heydrich to prepare for the Final Solution

On this day in 1941, Herman Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler's number-two man, "to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."

Goering recounted briefly the outline for that "final solution" that had been drawn up on January 24, 1939: "emigration and evacuation in the best possible way." This program of what would become mass, systematic extermination was to encompass "all the territories of Europe under German occupation."

Heydrich already had some experience with organizing such a plan, having reintroduced the cruel medieval concept of the ghetto in Warsaw after the German occupation of Poland. Jews were crammed into cramped walled areas of major cities and held as prisoners, as their property was confiscated and given to either local Germans or non-Jewish Polish peasants.

Behind this horrendous scheme, carried out month by month, country by country, was Hitler, whose "greatest weakness was found in the vast numbers of oppressed peoples who hated [him] and the immoral ways of his government." This assessment was Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's, given at a Kremlin meeting that same day, July 31, with American adviser to the president Harry Hopkins.

Does this sink in? Hardly seems imaginable does it?

My dear friend Alice Knudson sent the following clip to me this week, so I thought I would share it with you. Another vet's great memory from the war.

True short arm

patton_Rhine_River.doc

Attached Files

  patton_Rhine_River.doc (Size: 48 KB / Downloads: 0)

Ray Gonzales

patton_Rhine_River.doc

Attached Files

  patton_Rhine_River.doc (Size: 48 KB / Downloads: 0)