Nice thread!!
-
-
-
Great images from the cemetery. Nicely preserved indeed.
Thanks for sharing.
DouglasComment
-
Well done. Thanks for sharing.Comment
-
Thanks to all, I am glad that you enjoyed my pictures. As written on a previous post, I have more of them to post...I simply need to have the proper time and it seems that it always miss!!
Comment
-
May they all rest in peace.
Many thanks for sharing.
AceComment
-
A precious info about this cemetary in order to underline who is buried between many soldiers, there is one in particular who was one of the most famous athlet during the 1936 Olympiadis, his name was Luz Long.
What makes so interesting this figure is the fact that he was a real close friend of the american legend Jessie Owens and the history says that thanks to a suggestion of Luz, Jessie was able to win the olympic games in his category....
It seems also that Hitler went crazy for this and during the war, in spite the fact the sporting activity of Luz was deeply involved, he sent him to the front where the death was waiting for him in 1943 during the allied invasion of Sicily. At the beginning he was wounded and no one recognised who he was. He died at the fieldhospital of San Pietro in Clarenza on July 14th 1943.
It seems also that the researches and the recovering of his body started during the sixties thanks to a german historical researcher.
For this reason I attach the translation of the history of this man taken from an italian web site and translated with on line translator due time reasons!!!Comment
-
Like a modern Caesar, Hitler was sitting at the Olympiastadion in Berlin gallery, and period documentaries portraying the passionate and nervous while watching the athletics, wrapped in the summer heat. These Olympics were his, and he needed a witness to the world the greatness of Germany, risen from the ashes of the deceased Repubbica Weimar. Even the stage was his creation. Capable of 110 thousand viewers and designed in 1934, just a year after the Reichstag fire and the seizure of power by the Nazi party, was completed in record time, and its inauguration took place on the occasion of the ceremony ' opening of the Olympic Games.
Those Olympics of 1936 was proving a huge success for the image of Nazi Germany. The organizational machinery works exactly like the clock at NIST. The Gestapo had instead engaged the silencer, and this event had been ordered to move stealthily and with the most accurate option. In the field, German athletes were reaping a harvest of medals in all sports, so much so that Hitler could be said to be proud of them, and gleefully watched them from places of honor reserved to him in all the sports complex in Berlin.
In athletics, however, things were not going so well, and except for the races launch, the Germans had to suffer the superiority of the Finns, the heirs of the great Paavo Nurmi in the middle distance, and the U.S. in the speed and jumps. And those Americans, whose best elements were almost always men of color, defined by Goebbels, "the auxiliaries American Negroes" were causing major embarrassment to the Nazi regime and the grass still in his myth of the superiority of the Aryan race. Even Hitler was visibly annoyed by their victories, and shaking off the aplomb that had been imposed during the Olympic festival, had ruled acidly:
"Americans should be ashamed of themselves, letting Negroes win the gold medals for their country"
The German team was left with the long jump competition to boast some ambition of glory, thanks largely to the presence of twenty-three law student Carl Ludwig Long, Luz said, the prototype air: tall, slim, light and above all fair . And Hitler, the head of Aryan small, dark ("to distinguish themselves from others," he joked as Charlie Chaplin in the film "The Great Dictator"), had high hopes for his young protege that the qualifications of the morning of August 4, 1936 had made the best jump among all competitors.
The favorite of the race however, the African-American Jesse Owens, was in danger of being excluded from the final, after having wasted the first jump, a misunderstanding Sgambati heating, and jumping in a state of total confusion the second. The judges, all strict German, they had lingered too long to raise the red flag. Jesse Owens, the gold medal in the 100 and 200 meters and 4 x 100 relay team, was in obvious trouble and began to see around the corner from the specter of elimination. But just when the worst had come unexpectedly to the rescue the arian Luz Long, who had approached him, reminding him of what had been wiped out its potential, and whispering in her English with a strong German accent:
"Someone like you should be able to qualify with your eyes closed"
.15 meters was the minimum amount to qualify for the finals, and Jesse Owens was credited with a personal best of 8.13 meters and the world, established during the Big Ten Conference (a kind of tournament U.S. university) in Ann Arbor 1935: a world record that would stand for other twenty-four, only surpassed in 1960 by the American Ralph Boston with eight centimeters away.
If he failed, Jesse Owens, the third and final jump, was then deleted from the final. Any sport of every flag and every time he breathed a sigh of relief to see ousted its most feared adversary. But an athlete Luz Long was not any, and animated by the most sincere and fair play from the deepest spirit decoubertiniano, came close again in the Alabama sample suggesting a disconnect at least nine inches before the service line. And to achieve this strategy of extreme caution, had supported a shirt (but other sources also speak of a handkerchief) on the side of the platform and the height of the ideal of detachment.
Encouraged by the loyalty of this opponent, unexpectedly became a new friend, the U.S. had found the right emotional balance, and discipline along with that suggestion, he had managed to successfully execute the jump and qualify for the final afternoon.Comment
-
Being a versatile athlete, Jesse Owens had taken part in the long jump final just minutes after winning his quarter-final battery of 200 meters. Luz Long instead that the long jump was a pure specialist, you could concentrate solely on this race, so eagerly waiting for the stadium, out for the occasion in its 110 thousand seats.
The competitors did not disappoint the audience in Berlin, and had created an exciting and spectacular racing. He competed on measures over seven feet, which would be considered prestigious in our day. And as for predictions, Jesse Owens was able to win her fourth Olympic laurel, with a final jump of 8.06 meters, with whom he had just passed Luz Long, who arrived at 7.87 meters. The bronze medal went to Japan Naoto Tajima with 7.74 meters, and less than an inch of our Arturo Maffei, ex aequo with the other German Wilhelm Leichum, had had to settle for that of wood.
The Führer was disappointed. The vision of a celestial arianissimo athlete on the highest podium to set the flag of the swastika fluttering into the sky, he would certainly go into raptures. But the reality had proved less idyllic, and in addition the protocol required that the awards would have to bear to shake hands with the winner. But Hitler had defiladed: according to the story because it invoked by another sudden engagement, and according to legend because he refused to publicly honor the victory of a black man.
Meanwhile, the Olympiastadion crowd that during the entire race had repeatedly chanted the name of the pet home, Luz Long, was enchanted by the victorious champion African-American, standing up and acclaimed stage and deafening applause. Luz Long was being suffered by him, first to congratulate him, and then hug him. The pictures were captured that strange couple formed by a blond darling of the Nazis and a black Alabama, in a picture that would become at once immortal icon of those Olympics and brotherhood among peoples.
The two had embarked along the tunnel leading to the dressing rooms of the stadium, where they had just crossed Adolf Hitler, who came specially to compliment his athlete. Then, according to the testimony of Arturo Maffei, ranked fourth with the historic Italian record of 7.73 meters, which would stand until 1968:
"Hitler went in front of Owens and saluted at arm's length, just when Jesse holding out his hand to shake. So Hitler was to reach out, but meanwhile Owens, correcting the first attitude, he brought his run to the front to salute. Matter of seconds, then Hitler went on. You decide who was to refuse the handshake. But he went right: the Ridolini."
The friendship between Owens and Long, conceived in that historic race, it was cemented in the following days, when they got into the habit of meeting at the Olympic Village to talk to each other in athletics, art, and politics. And after having exchanged their addresses, they never lost touch, and had continued to write without interruption.
Jesse Owens returned home in triumph. But the America of the thirties was not much less obtuse of Nazi Germany, and even President Franklin Roosevelt proved to be much less racist Hitler himself, as not received any official to congratulate him. Furthermore, although Owens was the undisputed hero of the Olympics, the federation that year the U.S. declared the best athlete in the country decathleta White Glenn Morris. For Owens began a sudden descent from the summit of success, and after being disqualified from athletics official to have attended some races as a professional, he failed to obtain a degree at the College and to earn a living had to arrange to interpret grotesque performances traveling halfway between the suburbs and the circus sideshow carnival, earning the miserable fee of five cents for every paying spectator.
With Luz Long's fate seemed more tender, at least for some time. Continued success with its business of long jumper, so that a year later, in 1937, improved the national record and personal with the measurement of 7.90 meters (German supremacy lasted forty years), and in 1941 also began to experiment specialties in the triple jump. Meanwhile he managed to complete his law studies, a lawyer in 1939, married in 1941, and have a child soon after. And her son, Kai, now retired, in an interview with French journalist Sylvain Cypel Le Monde dated September 2000, said the latest adventures of her father, thanks to its status as an athlete is deluded to avoid the call to arms. But the war was going badly for the Reich, and military headquarters, need to replace the fallen at the end of 1942 sent to the residence of Hamburg Luz Long, the board precept. The former champion of long jump was mobilized in the infantry with the rank of sergeant.Comment
-
After being assigned to the division in April of 1943, Hermann Goering, one month after he was sent to Sicily. Also according to the story of her son Kai, four days after the Allied landing in Sicily, July 14, 1943 south of Calton will be lost in combat after an American attack on German positions increasingly fragile. In fact Long was seriously wounded, captured by the Allies, and then transported to a field hospital in St. Peter's English Clarenza just inland from Catania, where military doctors could only declare him dead.
In the confusion and the collective drama of those days, nobody paid any attention to who that soldier was wounded and killed, and only the Red Cross in 1950 unearthed the remains in its war cemetery at Ponte Olivo, near Gela, then translate in that of Motta Santa Anastasia, where they are today.
After the war, Jesse Owens said that he had received by his German this moving letter from the Algerian front:
"My dear friend Jesse, where I am, it seems that there is nothing but sand and blood. I'm not afraid for myself but for my wife and my child, who has never really known her father. My heart tells me that this could be the last letter I write. If that should be, I ask you this: When the war is over, go to Germany to visit my son and tell him of his father. And also tell him that not even the war has never managed to break our friendship. Your brother, Luz. "
However, as pointed out by the journalist of Le Monde, Luz Long was never in Algeria during the Second World War, for which there are strong doubts about the authenticity of this letter. But there are still doubts on the soul truly cosmopolitan Long, and confirm it is a brief reflection, which is contained in another letter, this time unquestionably true, sent to her grandmother in 1932:
"All the nations of the world have their own heroes, Semites as well as the Aryans. And each of them should abandon the arrogance of being a superior race"
Luz Long was not only a great champion. It was especially a young man with a sensibility that could not adapt to the fanaticism prevalent in Germany of his time. And with its nobility became, almost inevitably, a victim of those tensions and war.Comment
-
.,../Comment
-
:Comment
-
Luz Long & Jesse Owens.....Comment
-
more..Comment
-
I read this story several times, I really think that it must be enclosed into the history books...Comment
Comment