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Suffering, Redemption and Triumph: The first wave of post-war Australian immigrants 1945-66

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Peter Brune

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“Political calculation and local suffering do not entirely explain the participation in these pogroms. Violence against Jews served to bring the Germans and elements of the local non-Jewish populations closer together. Anger was directed, as the Germans wished, toward the Jews, rather than against collaborators with the Soviet regime as such. People who reacted to the Germans' urging knew that they were pleasing their new masters, whether or not they believed that the Jews were responsible for their own woes. By their actions they were confirming the Nazi worldview. The act of killing Jews as revenge for NKVD executions confirmed the Nazi understanding of the Soviet Union as a Jewish state. Violence against Jews also allowed local Estonians, Latvian, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles who had themselves cooperated with the Soviet regime to escape any such taint. The idea that only Jews served communists was convenient not just for the occupiers but for some of the occupied as well. Yet this psychic nazification would have been much more difficult without the palpable evidence of Soviet atrocities. The pogroms took place where the Soviets had recently arrived and where Soviet power was recently installed, where for the previous months Soviet organs of coercion had organized arrests, executions, and deportations. They were a joint production, a Nazi edition of a Soviet text. P. 196”

CollaborationHolocaustNaziSoviet UnionWwiiUkraineSecond World WarPolandEastern EuropeEstoniaLithuaniaLatviaBelarusBloodlands
Book:Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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“Okupācija ir nenormāla situācija. Tās sekas vēl gadu desmitiem plosa atbrīvotās valsts cilvēkus, un "pareizie" vaino "nepareizos" piedzīvotajās nelaimēs un pastrādātajos noziegumos. [...] Latvija vienu pec otras pārdzīvoja trīs okupācijas, kuru kopējais ilgums - piecdesmit gadi - pārsniedz jebko, kas Eiropā 20. gadsimtā ir pieredzēts, tāpēc jautājums par katra individuālo atbildību un sadarbību ar dažādajiem okupācijas režīmiem ir īpaši sāpīgs. Tikai pēc neatkarības atjaunošanas mēs pilnībā esam ieguvuši brīvību spriest par savu vēsturi un to attīrīt no svešu režīmu iestrādātajiem meliem un propagandas. Noziegumus Latvijā pastrādāja abi režīmi, un vainīgajiem, neatkarīgi no tā, vai viņi darbojās nacistu vai komunistu doktrīnas vārdā, tāpat kā viņu kolaborantiem, kas ir noziegušies pret civiliedzīvotājiem, par savu rīcību ir jāatbild. Noziegumiem pret cilvēci nav noilguma.”

HistoryLatvia
Book:With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows
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“Although populated, cultivated, ruined and transformed, the basic scenery of Latvia is considerably more ancient than we are, whichever generation we belong to, and in all likelihood, it must have influenced us much more deeply than the other way round. In a sense, our landscape is akin to our language, for we were not the ones who created it, whatever assumptions we may have. Nor is it our possession. Resulting from chains of random coincidence, it has been allotted for our use for a brief stretch of time. And the only thing we can do and should do is to try not to mess it up too badly or lose it altogether.”

LandscapeLatvia
Book:18
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“Eve is a different sort of girl. She tries to make herself fit. She works tirelessly, exhaustingly at it. There certainly is a safety to the prescribed, neat little boxes. But the snake touches an ache that finds healing in every hiss. And when Eve sits at the roots of the tree, they wrapped around her like a mother's hug, welcoming her home, too. She breathes in the mossy bark, the flowers that grow around it, finds comfort in the way the wind whistles through its dancing leaves. In reply she murmurs, not a prayer, but a portrait of the seeds she hides in the depths of her soul. And the tree at the heart of the walled garden called Paradise listens. Sometimes, she thinks, I am not the name he's given me and therefore maybe neither is the grass or that animal in the distance or even the sky. Words become their own walls of sort, especially when everything is made to fit his definition. Eve swears she can feel a rumble from deep within the bark, a bumble bee's hum. If you wish to own something, you give it a name, comes the answer. If you wish to know something, you listen to what it tells you. Yes, the snake hisses. - excerpt from “Her True Name: A Story from the Grandmother Tree” – featured in Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree.”

Asherah
Author:Ellie Lieberman
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“Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna Over and over their voices filled the air calling in these Ancient ones, their energies, magic and wisdom, their rage and righteous anger as shouts of No More and Never Again filled the air. Asherah Erishkigal Cerridwen Brigid Maat Hathor Freya Skadi Sigyn Voices invoked the battle energies as the Warrior Goddesses arrived. Lilith Andraste Durga Athena Hel Mami Wata Pele Ixchel Freya An’ Morrighan Boudicca of the Iceni Zenobia of Palmyra Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi Through the night they chanted the invocation “show us another way” to the ancient Mothers, Queens, Warrioresses, Witches. Voices raising power and raised IN power as both Queen Boudicca and An’ Morrighan held the circle, swords in hand symbols of both peace and truth as well as strength and protection. Eyes of the night still held vigil for this sacred activist work as each woman plucked her part of the web weaving new threads of hope and spinning the wheel of change. Fox, wolf and coyote opossum, turtle and deer bear, raccoon and hare held vigil as the moths danced, spiders wove webs, and serpents shed skins no longer needed, all while the calls of the owls and night birds echoed in synchronous harmony. As the darkness of night gave way to the light of a new dawn, the Ravens and Crows and birds of the day arrived calling out as the women prayed their work had been enough to alter the events of this day... They prayed it was enough to alter the events of the Coming Days. As they walked back through the woods, sunlight streaming through the trees and with eyes still watching, the women held the Rim of the Eternal Circle safely in their hearts and womb space, encased in a deep knowing that Whatever this new day held... Whatever and Whomever was to come... Their work, the ancient ways and this Rim of Power would always continue For the Circle never ends and the Weaver always weaves. Excerpt from "Holding the Rim", featured in Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree”

Asherah
Author:Arlene Bailey
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