V2: A novel of WW2 by Robert Harris 2020 307pg

4/12/20

At the end of November 1944 Germans fired missiles from Scheveningen on the Dutch Coast. From the RAF base at Medmenham they  were working on photographic reconnaissance  Werner von Braun and SS General Hans Kammler were involved in these rockets. Von Braun had once stated that the rocket would not save Germany and that the aim had been to build a spaceship. 1934 Werner von Braun said there are people alive today that will get to the moon. To develop space ships he convinced the military that rockets could be used as  weapons and they set up an Army Research Centre at Peenemunde. 

V1 and V2 stand for Vergeltungswaffe or Vengeance Weapon. 1942  Oct first space travel type rocket succeeded.

1943 Aug Operation Hydra was launched to destroy Peenemunde which had 20, thousand engineers , scientists, teachers , construction workers and slaves mostly from France and Russia.1944 V2s attacked both London and Antwerp.  The fuel was methyl alcohol, liquid oxygen and hydrogen peroxide.  They launched the rockets during periods of heavy cloud so that the RAF could not find them. The V2 weighed 4 ton empty but 8 and a half to when fueled. It reached the speed of 3500mph in the atmosphere. It detonated a ton of amatol high explosives. V2 landed without warning of time to shelter. The bulk of Germany's potato crop was commandeered to distill alcohol fuel for this. the failure rate of the rocket was about 1in 10.  At Peenemunde, a power station , airfield and liquid oxygen plant were set up, the Luftwaffe paid for the construction of this. After this had been destroyed the SS took over the project and took a gypsum mine in Thuringia to be the V2 factory. Dr. Hans Kammler SS was a civil engineer, the mine was opened so that trains could enter it and cross the tunnel. Capacity would be 900 missiles a month. The supply of slave labour was inexhaustible. Himmler was formally given control of the rocket project "you could be shot by the SS  imprisoned by them or work for them. The RAF recruited Women, well educated middle class with different professions like archaeology were recruited to study reconnaissance photos. 8 were sent to Mechelen, Belgium which had been under Germany 3 months previously. With slide rules and log books and Euler formula of the theorem of the parabolic curve.  Raidar would measure the point of the ballistic curve and get the report of where it landed in London, this way the location of the launch pad could be worked out in 6 minutes and the RAF informed to bomb it before it moved away. There was no Luftwaffe left to speak of at the time. Von Braun and his closest colleagues Walter Dombergerand, Bernard Tessman had all their plans on microfilm and as soon as the war ended they would be in great demand by the Americans in White Sands , New Mexico. When they were later driven through London, remarked "We fired more than a thousand rockets at London. "All they places that propaganda had said were destroyed like Buckingham Palace , Parliament , Piccalilli Circus were all intact. 20000 people had died making the V2  2700 people were killed in London with 6500 wounded. This program had cost Germany more dollars that the whole Manhattan Project The last V2 was fired 6 weeks before the end of the war and killed 140 people in Whitechapel

The Wolf Hunt by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen 2023 289pg 30/9/24

Relocation  is the original title in Hebrew and shows a   split and tension in the lives of expatriate Israelis who have relocated to America. 

 Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s 4th book. Note the original Hebrew published in 2021.

Silicon Valley, tells us that her son Adam, 16, has been accused of killing a Black boy from his school.

 “We raised an American child who went to high school with American children, and now they say he killed another American child.”   “Since when do Blacks attack Jews? That’s always been the white people’s job.”  ​“The great­est mys­tery in people’s lives is their children.” 

 Parenting, antisemitism, masculinity are the themes   Displacement of Black communities in certain parts of America (in this case Palo Alto) through gentrification with the arrival of High Tech workers.. The factors that have pushed Israelis to leave their home country which they want to stay connected to but that also puts pressure on them to succeed in America.  Her husband is the sole breadwinner and she with a doctorate can't advance her career. Had she stayed in Israel she would have got her doctorate published. She has job part time at a care home with little challenge and doesn't pay much. She screened the movie East of Eden which is a Cain and Able Plot.  You had consultants for breastfeeding and consultants for  toilet training but the people who did the work were the Hispanic women.

In Pittsburg synagogue on Rosh Hashana a man goes in with a machete wounding several and killing a woman. There are kids that choose to do karate classes and those who are the chess types.

Adam enrolls in a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli Special Forces officer. There, for the first time, he finds a sense of confidence and belonging. Lilach is  glad that there is at least one adult Uri  who can communicate with her son.

Visitors from Israel bring sunflower seeds. His visiting cousins Assi and Aviv were up running every morning to be able to join an elite combat unit. As boys they had a  competition to see who could pee the furthest - Now they compared their children in the same way as they compared their pricks then. 

Uri had been part of the IDF general staff and after leaving the army the boys heard he had joined the mossad. Is the class of Krav Maga a cover story. Israelis hardly ever come to the synagogue.

Adam had not been keen to go to this party at Josh but his parents persuaded him to.

Uri's voice not only commanded people but also forces of nature.

Adam saved a puppy which he named Kelev (dog in Hebrew) that had been badly beaten and because it had a scar kids did not pet it "The scar isn't ugly only the people who gave it to him are ugly"  These same boys bullied Adam and were led by Jamal Jones.

Another dead boy in America , Jamal Jones was a black Moslem. He died at the party of cardiac arrest  later it is called drug overdose.. For almost 20 years there were get togethers with Israelis and they always discussed where you served in the army..

Tethys Ocean area of ocean in the period of Gwondaland before it split up. Before Mikhail  met  Lilach he had never thought of opening his adoption file,

Uri - Adam didn't tell you that he was being bullied at school, Jamal was the worst bully, .and made up songs about Adam that he posted on the class chat  group. School bullying is very common. Kids are hassled for wearing glasses or being fat. A child who hurts other is a child who is hurt by others.   Mikhael had planned to recommend Uri to Berman to offer him a job. Programmers are a dime a dozen but good people are rare.

After the graffiti the police kept everyone out the school till they had checked it for bombs. There were only 20 Jewish kids in the high school of 400 students. Jamal's mother had left her drunk husband and worked as a room cleaner in the hotel.

When Lilach visited Jamal's mother she was shown Jamal's room with a picture of Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. She never said anything but Adam's  Jordan sneakers and  other thing taken from him with his name on them were in the room. She was almost glad the boy was dead. The press said that he had overdosed on a home made drug.

Lilach had wanted to raise Adam in a place that had no wars but maybe she was exposing him to a different kind of insanity. Boys need motorcycles to prove to themselves they are boys. They discuss the difference between friendship in nature and friendship in captivity. Of the Israeli community abroad.

Uri advised Adam to erase his search history on the computers and phone before the police ask for it.  Uri came into their lives a few months ago and knew more about their son than the parents did. Uri's slogan was "if someone wants to kill you, rise up and kill him first.

On the kibbutz Omer Shapiro  teased him as they said he was adopted.(true ) as he was a darker shade than his parents, In the pool he held Omer under water to punish him and when he pulled him out he was regarded as a hero for saving him. Omer kept his distance after that.

The worst thing that can happen to an 18 year old kid is he is told he can do anything he wants.

People in Silicon Valley put everything The Nation the politics aside to get rich. Money is the most dangerous ideology, it holds nothing sacred and allows you to do everything. American children smelled foreignness the way great white sharks smell blood.

After refusing to speak Hebrew outside the house at 6,  at 16 the dormant Israeliness awoke at once. Netta left Uri's class there were 3 rats caught and he asked for volunteers who could kill them with their bare hands, he made a ritual of it. Your son is a nutcase like the Uri that he admires.

Mikhaels company developed security products i.e. weapons. Typical Lilack prepares schnitzels. The narcotics squad visits the house with dogs. Embarrassing the family and took Adam's laptop and notebooks, but the chemistry lab had vanished. In Jamal's room they found traces of weed and his mother admitted her son was gay and liked boys. How well do you know your son she asked Lilach.

 Kids got Ritalin from friends to cope with exams and half the class takes it in pill form. In the states when children grew up they rolled all over the continent like marbles.

The rabbi says he didn't think that there would be a blood libel against Jews in this day and age. A rock came through the window.

In the Galilee while Lilach was pregnant their was missiles falling and she later lost the daughter. I loved Israel the way a women loves an abusive husband and understands she must get away from him to save the children. They were suspicious of the same car driving around till somebody said it the neighbors driving to get his baby to fall asleep

People on their deathbeds always spoke the languages they were born into.

Their Kelev was killed and they phoned Uri to help. Uri helped them bury the dog and stayed the night and they feel safer. Adam is in shock.

When Lilach phoned the Hotel in Washington DC, she discovered that he never stayed there and realizes that he took a different hotel with his secretary secretly.  All vice president fuck their secretaries. It turns out that they arrived switched hotels as they were in the same hotel as their  competitors and were worried about espionage. His secretary didn't come and another secretary took her place.

Meanwhile she had a relationship with Uri and he had to send an email message and asked her for the code to Mikhael computer as he didn't have his cellphone with him.. The more they worried about Adam the more the let Uri insinuate into their lives.

Uri was arrested when he tried to sell information to the competitor  and found stuff on Uri's computer. He needed a lot of money and fast so he could get near to his kids.

The reason he trusted Uri was comradeship amongst solders but the Pentagon could not take up their product as a result as it had been compromised.

Annabel Jones will present  Jamal Jones Scholarship for excellence at graduation.

 Adam after graduation goes for 3 weeks Birthright trip to Israel and it hints that he will remain there.

The books ends with her visiting Uri in jail where he is for industrial espionage, he will have no other visitors and he bites his nails..

 

Orphan Train by Christine Baker Kline 2012 278pg

                                                                                                                                                   2/9/2024

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children. transported more than 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children between the ages of 2 and 14.  Some children were orphaned when their parents died in epidemics of typhoid, yellow fever or the flu.^[1] Others were abandoned due to poverty, illness, or addiction The phrase "orphan train" was first used in 1854.Many teenage boys and girls went to orphan train sponsoring organizations simply in search of work or a free ticket out of the city. Most children on the trains were white. Prospective parents could choose to take a single child, separating siblings .Average of 3,000 children via train each year from 1855 to 1875. Children were not sent to the southern states, as Brace was an ardent abolitionist. Many rural people viewed the orphan train children with suspicion, as the incorrigible offspring of drunkards and prostitutes. The majority of children under fourteen were leading satisfactory lives. Charles Loring  Brace's notion that children are better cared for by families than in institutions is the most basic tenet of present-day foster care

Very much like On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry,

Orphan Train opens with Vivian  Daly, now aged 91, sitting in her home in Maine 2011.  Molly is an orphan who is in the foster system she gets into trouble and has to do community work so she is helping Vivian go through her attic and sorting Vivian's past.  Later she discovers that Vivian was on Orphan Train child.

Another story starts in  of 1929 Naanh and her family have immigrated from Galway Ireland to New York city. There is a fire in the tenement, killing her family and she is taken over by Children's Aid who send orphan children out of the city to the Midwest for adoption. She is given a baby Carmine to look after as she is skilled with looking after he younger siblings. She an the boy Dutchy get on well.

The greatest demand is for small babies by childless couples.  Then young boys are wanted by farmers on their farms and Naanh is taken by a couple who have a cottage industry of dress making. She and Dutchy promise that they will find each other.

In Minneapolis area children are supposed to be sent to school and brought up a devout Christians  but there is no implementation of the rules. Naanh is given the name Dorothy and becomes a skilled seamstress but gets no schooling . The fall of Wall street and the depression result in the collapse of this factory and she is returned to the Child Aid Agent. Then is put on a farm with poverty, an incapable sick mother with lots of children. She is sent to school  but on the farm she suffers, from the dirt , hunger a lice outbreak where they shave off all their hair. Eventually the farmer tries to rape her and the wife packs her off in the middle of the night and she takes refuge at the school.

Dorothy's teacher's landlady places her with a couple who lost their only daughter to diphtheria. She goes to school, helps run their store and is adopted by this couple and takes on the name Vivian of their dead daughter.

On an outing Duchy recognizes her orange hair and freckles and they get married he is a musician and a music teacher, but after Pearl Harbour he goes off to war and dies in action. 

Molly now is looked after by the 90 year old rich Vivian and it through Molly  that Vivian's story is put together. With computerization one is able to trace what happened to Naanh's sister Maisie who was adopted by the neighbour and had children and grandchildren.

Home Children  from the British Isles.

1869, Annie Mc  Pherson founded a child migration scheme, under which more than 100,000 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The program  was largely discontinued in the 1930s but not entirely terminated until the 1970s.

In the 18th century, labour shortages in the overseas colonies also encouraged the transportation of children for work in the Americas,

"The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy through the reformation and emigration of children." In 1832, the first group of children was sent to the Cape Colony in South Africa and the Swan River Colony in Australia, and in 1833, 230 children were shipped to Toronto  and New Brunswick  in Canada.

2011 Home Children, Canada claimed  that one in ten Canadians is a descendant of a home child.