Panama. The Path between the Seas by David McCullough 1976 617pg

The Story of the Panama Canal. 20/9/22

 French experience 1881 to 1889

1513 The Darien wilderness is on the isthmus of Panama where Balboa began his crossing of  only 40 miles. There is an  isthmus at Techantepec, Guatemala, Honduras , British Honduras , El Salvador , Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. There were 19 possible places that a canal might be build.

 1794 Paris Polytechnique This was a military collage that came out of the revolution, it was a military school and from it emerged French army  engineers in the service of the state. The French became very good engineers, the American's were more adept to  improvise.

1801in Haiti the black insurrection by Tousaint L'Ouveture was put down and with that accomplished the French army was to have occupied New Orleans and Louisiana but yellow fever struck and thousands of them died including General Leclerc. This was one of the reasons that Napoleon decided to sell the territory to the US in 1803.

1848 Gold found in California and to get there there were 3 routes " the Plains across , the Horn around or the Isthmus over."

1850  Panama Railroad began runs from Colon to Panama City. It took 5 years to build instead of 2 and cost 6 times beyond anyone's estimate. Workers came from far and wide to work including many Chinese.  It is estimated that 6 thousand died building this railway of Cholera, dysentery , smallpox, as well as the problem of flies and mosquitos , ticks, chiggers , spiders and poisonous snakes. Many of these cadavers were pickled in large barrels and sold to medical schools. They also had to deal with marshy flats and  swamps.

1854 Commodore  Mathew Perry opened Japan up another reason for a need of a canal.

1870 to 1875 A total of 7 US expedition sent by Grant to research a canal. 

1881 de Lesseps approached General Grant to run the Canal Organization, who replied that he would not have his name on a program that was doomed to failure. 

In Panama jungle  the rainfall is 10 feet per annum on the Caribbean slope and up to 6 feet per annum on the Pacific side.  The Charges river stood directly in the path of the canal.  Immense trees and tangled undergrowth had to be removed.

1881 many of the managers and engineers arrived with their wives.  In these parts iron and steel turned yellow with rust overnight and leather grew moldy. Glued furniture  fell apart.

None of the advisors, engineers, an admiral were willing or bold enough to challenge de Lesseps against the inevitable cost of a sea level canal. First residences , barracks and hospital were set up but by summer yellow fever had returned to the area and this caused the death of most people. A person had Yellow fever only once either he lived or died, but never gets it again.

1881 by the end of the year there were 2000 people at work a few from Colombia , Venezuela and Cuba but most were English speaking West Indian blacks mostly from Jamaica as well as 500 blacks from New Orleans.  Most machinery arrived in parts and had to be assembled. The French bought out this railway to be able to control it and use it in the construction. An earthquake struck doing extensive damage to the railroad.

In Paris the high death toll was no longer a secret and at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausees graduates were advised not to go to Panama. but there was still no shortage of recruits and some of the best trained technicians went there.

Where they wanted to dam the Chargres River they could not find a suitable rock formation to do this.

There were no theaters, libraries or entertainment for the workers and if you wanted to read a book at night a candle drew a swarm of insects.

Excavation done in the dry season was destroyed by the rainfall the next season and panama geology is made of 17 different rock formation with 5 major cores of volcanic rocks creating and engineering nightmare.

1885  Prestan Uprising, this part of the civil war in Colombia and the main town of the canal workers was Colon which this burned down with lots of riots amongst black workers. Pedro Prestan was  publicly hanged  and many black workers walked off the job to return to Kingston.

1885 Jules Isodore Dingler a very capable man in charge  gave up a defeated man and returned alone to France with all of his family buried in Panama. Others who followed him were younger less experience and gave up or died very soon.

1886 In NY  harbor the Statue of Liberty was unveiled by Grover Cleveland.  de Lesseps was present as this was a show of great French engineering.

1887 a commission convened  on the possibility of a lock canal, with the idea of using dredgers instead of diggers to excavate. 

1888 proposal to raise money with a lottery system. At this stage a sale of bonds did not even attract a third of investors.

1889 the Compagnie Universell du Canal Interoceanique was liquidated.

It was 3 years till the scandle broke loose. At this time Edourd Drumont brought out his anti Semitic tropes of La France Juive.  He blamed Jewish bankers for the failure.

From Suez on deLesseps enjoyed the privilege of being believed with out having to prove what one affirms, he was such a popular force and thus dangerous man. The black laborer's returned home at the expense of the Jamaican government.

 1892 it emerged that 150 French deputies had been bribed into voting for the allocation of financial aid to the Panama Canal Company, and in February 1893 Lesseps, his son Charles, and a number of others faced trial and were found guilty.

1894 de Lesseps died in Paris.

1896 Dryfus Affair which ended in his Presidential  pardon in 1906. Dryfus had learned engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique. This is an important aspect of the problems of French society at this period. France wanted to salvage lost honor from this crises.

Americans take over 1903 till 1914  

1901 Mc Kinley assassinated at Buffalo and Theodore Roosevelt become President at age 42. 

Roosevelt had read the book by Alfred Mahan The influence of Sea Power on History and decided that the Panama canal was vital  indispensable for American Sea Power and commercial supremacy would follow. Roosevelt had written the book the Naval  War of 1812 in 1882   and had been the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

1901 Britain was bogged down in the Boer War and was happy to leave Panama Canal to the Americans.  A lot of money had gone into research of the best place to build the canal and Nicaragua was favored, it had a better climate but volcanoes. In Panama the French had left an inventory of property as well as the Panama railroad, building hospital, machinery tugs, dredges, locomotives etc. and by buying them out they would buy the right from Colombia to land across the isthmus. They also left  extensive maps.

A Panama canal would need 5 locks while a Nicaragua one would need 8. Nicaragua had a better climate was closer north but a far wider crossing. 1902 Mount Pelee on Martinique exploded wiping out the city of St Pierre in 2 minutes so this put an end to the Nicaragua possibility.  Panama would take half the time for a ship to transit and had better harbours.

1898The American troops were in Cuba and 13 times their number died of malaria an yellow fever compared to those who died in battle and the army had to be withdrawn. 

1904 work under the American started with John F Wallace as Chief engineer, he resigned with fear of Yellow fever. Americans that came left and reported back on the terrible conditions and diseases including bubonic plague. They food workers got was bought from the locals and it was expensive and poor

Colonel William Gorgas was assigned as sanitary officer, he had had yellow fever survived and was now immune and had eradicated the plagues in Havana. The Anopheles mosquito travels widely and spread malaria. The Stegmomyla mosquito spread yellow fever but is only local and it takes 27 days incubation a persons body before the disease becomes infectious. Ronald Ross had proved the mosquito was the malaria carrier but when Gorgas came in 1904 he was not given the resources as the scientific evidence was not understood by the engineers "To spend money chasing mosquitoes"

1902 Ronald Ross had won the Nobel prize for his malaria discoveries . In 1904 he visited Panama and said Gorgas work was sound.

1903 In Paris, Walter Reeds work was an accepted fact that Yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes.

1903 Kitty Hawk with the Wright Brothers flying an heavier than air balloon also was not  an accepted idea till a few years later.

1904 The 95 ton Bucyrus steam shovel started working in the Culebra  Cut.

1905 John Steven the greatest railway engineer in the US took over. He had built the Great Northern Railroad to the Pacific through the Marius Pass over the Continental divide in 1889.  He accepted the Panama post because this was the largest public works ever attempted.

Stevens spent a time examining the situation and them stopped the digging and gave instructions that first housing , hospitals anything needed to get rid of the diseases was priority. Just the cost of screening alone was the same as the budget that sanitary had been allocated, also ordered was fumigation material rat traps etc. Running water installed in all houses to do away with open water tanks, even the holy water in the churches had to be changed daily.  In Havana Yellow fever had taken 8 months to eradicate in Panama a year and a half with 4000 workers. 

 Stevens now brought in experienced railway men and double tracked the Panama Railway with heavier rails. Americans were the skilled workers or Gold workers an were given housing and other perks to attract them. Later social clubs were opened baseball leagues and they were encouraged to bring their wives to stop the rapid turnover of Americans. All workers were given free medical treatment a thing that was never given in the USA.

Most unskilled workers called Silver class were black from Barbados as the Jamaica Government would not allow recruiting. 80% of these were illiterate and they were mostly cane field workers.

Stevens wanted to bring Chinese but there was the Chinese  Exclusion  Act. He also wanted to bring southern blacks but the Congressmen there did not want their states being deprived of cheap labour. At the canal the color line was part of daily life and not much was said about it in the press. Black women came to be with their husbands. Black labors were available in abundance but skilled white workers had to be attracted with perks. No one in Panama went hungry. Among the blacks the crime rate alcoholism , venereal disease was abnormally low. 80% of the black workers were illiterate.  Initially the blacks were poor workers but once the got better food their capability improved in Barbados they had eaten a low protein diet of rice and yams.

1855 completed  the Soo Canal between Lake Superior and Lake Huron the system and experience that the locks were to be based on. To build a dam the Charges River had to be tamed.

 The Panama Railway now had to be moved  at a   cost of $9 million as well as villages that would be flooded.

1906 President and Mrs. Roosevelt visited Panama this was the first time a President in office left the USA.

1907John Steven decided to resign he was offered a top railway engineering job. He was not one who knew how to build the locks, he had no experience in the large scale use of concrete to build the Gatun Dam.\

George Washington Goethals  now took over he was the top army engineer and brought other army engineers to work with him but nobody wore uniforms. The French butler who hardly spoke English worked at the chief engineers house and Goethals was the 7th and final resident.

He started a weekly paper. The locks had to be 1100 feet by95 feet to accommodate the widest warship. The Pacific lock had to be further inland so that it could not be bombarded from the sea. A lot of spoil was dumped into the pacific claiming a lot of land . The Gatun dam wall was a mile and a half across and the top was 15 times as wide as the base. During this time there were 3 passenger trains daily running in each direction.

There would be eventually  50 thousand on the payroll, of these only 3500 American workers  who would get  42 days paid leave p.a. to go home. Gemstones could be found in the digging and many men spent their Sunday searching for sapphires, opals ,garnets and fossil sharks teach. No private contractors were used and the Canal Company fed, housed and gave free medicine as well as education for children of  all the workers.  Some Congressmen commented on the danger of socialism but it was more of a caste system with a Brahman at the top.

Goethals would travel on a small locomotive with a gasoline powered engine along the track, and stayed the 7 years till completion of the canal.

1909 Taft becomes president he had been to Panama twice as Secretary of War.

The steam shovels all worked on rails that had to be moved at one period on the Culebre Cut the steam shovel just kept cutting away and the soil kept moving up to the rails as its weight sunk and sand slid.

1910 the Gatun Dam started filling up but it would take 4 years to build the locks, with chambers of 110 to by 1000 feet. The lock gates were built of vanadium steel, and Pittsburg had 50 different mills foundries and machine shops involved in making the parts. The locks and pumps were designed to raise or lower a ship in 15 minutes.

1912The sinking of the Titanic as well as the return of Haileys Comet.

1868 The steel cable knowledge came way back from the Brooklyn bridge construction. Everything was electrical and done by General Electric corp. The first electrical run factories had just started. The towing locomotives were the first of their kind.

Dr. William Gorgas left the canal to work in S. Africa dealing with pneumonia with the black gold mine workers but had been promised the position of surgeon general of the army.

1914 Goathals became the first governor of Panama. This canal opened almost the same day as years of peace in Europe ended with WW1  A few days after the canal was finished an earthquake struck but the locks were not damaged.

1914 and 1974 the rate was 90cents a ton for any ship from all nations including the US.

Costs of the canal for US Government. $ 10million bribe to the dictators of Colombia  plus $250000 rent per year. This was a totally clean project with no graft , kickbacks or payroll padding. 10 Years after it opened it had more than 5000 ships a year the same Suez.

Paid out the French $40 million  the total cost around $375 million to build.

Gangsters vs Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters battled Nazis in wartime America by Michael Benson. 2022 295pg

 Benson is not Jewish — he describes himself as a “lapsed Catholic”  24/8/22

By 1933, there were more than one hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States, “Judge Perlman thought outside the box.”

Jewish kids had a favorite gangster like Catholics had a patron Saint.

Meyer Lansky was the one who lead the anti Nazi effort. Fascism gained popularity in time of economic crises like the Great Depression. German immigrants about 12 million were second only to the Irish and the German Bund was out to promote Hitler's agenda .

Henry Ford gave out free copies of the Protocols of the elders of Zion and Jews refused to buy Ford cars. Fortune magazine revealed that 1 in 10 Americans wanted Jews deported in the 1930s.

Fritz Julius Kuhn was the leader of the German American Bund. His favorite target was FDR and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of NY. Many Germans had no intention of becoming American citizens, and Kuhn was funded by a hand full of American industrialists.

 John Metcalf was in the Anti American Committee who investigated both communists and fascist.   Kuhn admitted  to Metcalfe that he represented a foreign power.

Camp Upton was used in WW1 to train soldiers including Irving Berlin, after the war it was transformed into a school for   immigrants to learn English and abandoned, then taken over as a Hitler youth camp.

Irish mobs and Jewish mobs stuck to their own turf but  Jews and Italians worked well together. Jewish kids were bullied and believed they needed to be tough and stand up and fight. Many were encouraged to take up boxing and a few became professional. Boxing became a big thing within the Jewish community as well as Jewish bookmakers betting on it.

1919  The 18th Amendment brought prohibition which later the Volstead Act enforced by the treasury, repealed in 1933. Meyer Lansky made his money through bootlegging now went into casinos and had an elaborate system of paying off police and politicians. Judge Nathan Perlman and Rabbi Stephen Wise approached him. Now Perlman owed Lansky a favor. However there was a no kill rules and Lansky wanted the Jewish press not to write about what he did. The mafia often didn't do it s own killing but contracted out. For this Lucky Luciano went to Louis" Lepke" Buchhalter. Lansky felt that the Nazi's were for the Jews to deal with, even though the Italians hated Mussolini as he was anti Mafia an forced them out of Italy.

Judd Teller the journalist wrote about anti-Semitism. Undercover he got a list of Bund members in NY and their home addresses and many of them were approached in the streets and mugged.

1904 in East Village of the Lower east side the neighborhood the Lutheran Church  organized  a ride on the Slocum a ferry which caught on fire and 1021 people drowned after that most Germans moved to Yorkville NY. This was the deadliest NY incident till 9/11.

1938 a Bund meeting in NY celebrated Hitler's birthday . The gangster wearing American Legion hats  came in and beat up the Nazi's  afterwards  dumped the hats and fled . The press blamed the American league.

The next meeting in Westchester only a quarter of the number attended. A stink bomb was pushed into a window behind the stage and as the Nazi's fled they were beaten up leaving.

1938 June African American Joe Louis beat German Max Schmeling  at Yankee Stadium. Schmeling was not a Nazi however was Hitler's pride and joy.

The Bund complained to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia that the Jews were infringing on the Bunds rights. LaGuardia agreed to get the Jewish goons off them but in NY they must not wear uniforms, display swastikas or sing songs and march with drums. He also assigned Jewish police to protect them or German dignitaries visited NY. So the Bund moved across the river to New Jersey.

1936 Father Charles Edward Coughlin a catholic priest spoke on the radio via 46 syndicated channels. He defended Nazi Germany and praised the way Nazis deal with Jews. He knew about Kristallnacht that had been on Nov. 9th 1938. He had 22 million listeners. He wanted to run a Catholic candidate against FDR but could not find one. (The only Catholic presidents have been  Kennedy and Bieden). Eventually he went too far in making mistakes and was dropped by WMCA and the Detroit diocese made clear that his worldview was his own.

 In Chicago Wilhelm Kunz  said America should emulate Germany as Hitler got employment for 5 and a half million workers. "Sure they are in the German army" when the heckler was attacked by storm troopers it started a riot.

In Chicago "Greasy Thumb" Guzik was the most powerful Jewish gangster and was Al Capones right hand man.

Herb Brin was a gangland reporter. The anti Deformation League here was the only  organization watching the Nazis.

The group that was to meet outside the German club meeting were told to say they were patriots and veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought against Franco in Spain.

 Ernst Wilhelm Meyer a German diplomat in America resigned saying he could not represent the Nazi government as  Hitler had betrayed Germanies interests.

New Jersey this was a period when everyone was poor, possessions were few and everyone's grandma lived with them but she spoke no English. You had horse drawn carts  the iceman , a fish man and a milk man and others delivered.. Writer Phillip Roth and NY mayor Ed Koch came from here. Newark had 65 thousand German immigrants. Longie Swillman was the Jewish gangster in control. The police told him where there were Bund meetings. Nat Arno a boxer was Newark's Fighting Hebrew. Arno set up an army of close to a thousand people and they called them the Anti Nazi Minutemen of America. They also travelled  to Philadelphia and busted the Bund there, when it met at the Turgemeide hall to celebrate the Anschluss of Austria.

Tear gas was first used by the police during the depression and the public were terrified of it as they had heard of the poisonous gasses used in WW1

When Bund speaker bragged about his relationship to Rudolf Hess, the FBI arrested him as an agent of a foreign government.

There was no such thing as illegal hate speech at that time and the right to assemble was protected by the constitution. The Minutemen busted the screening of a recruitment movie aimed at getting German American parents to send their kids to Nazi camps.  At a meeting to celebrate the acquisition of the Sudetenland Czechoslovak sympathizers also congregated outside, while the gangsters did their work, the police to protect the Nazi's advised them to get out of the uniforms. 

When the police raided Camp Norland they found evidence of espionage and weapons violations so the Bund leader had legal woes.

Jewish immigrants arrived in Minnesota directly from Poland , Ukraine, Belarus and Galicia as well as Romania some came from the Eastern cities of the USA. In Minneapolis and St. Paul's the was large German community, here  the most anti-Semitic candidates often received the most votes. The Silver Legion was run by William Dudley Pelley. 

Eric Sevareid was he top reporter for CBS news to  the find out about the Silver Legion.

At this stage municipal  Judge Larson said that the hate mail and speeches caused a deliberate stirring up  of class against class and is indirect opposition to the tolerance of race and religion which our constitution protects. Hate speech was like inciting a riot. No longer was all speech protected as free speech.

Congress kept off father Couglin but The FBI raided the Front finding weapons and ammunition and plans to blow up bridges and power plants. 

 Hollywood was the one place that Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had an eye on and Nazi infiltration started in 1933. There were thousands arriving in LA every year especially during the depression in 1935 90% of the population had been there fewer than 15 years and there was no sizable German community. Corruption was assumed and the Silver League had a headquarters here. About 70 thousand Jews lived there mostly in Boyle Heights the movie moguls and stars lived in Beverly Hills. There were many down and out German and  dust bowl migrants. 

 1872 Oil boom money started at the Le Brea tar pits. The oil millionaires were big anti-Semites 

1910 movie studios moved there from Brooklyn, Queens 

1938 Hollywood's greatest year with Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz. Germany had so many cinemas that a lot money was being made there. Germany loved Hollywood movies.

Leon Lawrence Lewis a Jewish attorney put together a squad to spy on the Nazis. Grace Comfort and her daughter Sylvia  were non Jews and worked as a secretary of the Bund and spied on it. Nazis were planning to lynch 20 film moguls. The Aryan bookstore was the meeting place of pro Hitler propaganda and meetings. 

Hillcrest was a Jewish country club as other LA  clubs had restricted membership. The moguls were called to a secret meeting and were prepared to donate money anonymously. Lewis was able to sow disinformation and conflict within the Nazi community, and after Pearl Harbor he had a list of Nazi's to give to the FBI.

1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote the anti fascist novel "It can't Happen Here"

1939 Feb20th the Bund had a rally in Madison Square Garden to hear Gerhard Kunze who call Roosevelt Frank D Rosenfeld and the New Deal Jew Deal denouncing the Jewish Bolshevik leadership and resulted in extreme violence with protesters led by the gansters. The police  1,700 was the largest force in NY history. 2017 documental by Marshall Curry called Night in the Garden.  

The Bund now moved its headquarter to Mexico city. Kuhn was accused of stealing from his organization.

When war came Kunze was arrested under the Selective Service Act

By the time of  Pearl Harbor the Bund was through and Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts were on the run, not only from angry Jews but the Un American Activities Committee also. He was convicted of sedition and in jail till 1950. Most America Nazis went far underground and disappeared. Germans conscripted were sent to the Pacific. Many German American changed their names and said they were Swedish. In Chicago the Germania club got the name Lincoln Club.

With Lucky Luciano's help the docks were protected from infiltrators and for the invasion of Sicily, Luciano supplied all the information about Sicily and it coastline and arranged the American troops would be welcome there.

1938 Nazi Perverts and Thieves- the morality of the Bund leaders was questioned. Propagandist Winterscheidt was arrested for a child sex crime. He was secretly paroled in 1940  when he turned state witness about falsified applications for US citizenship. Thomas Dewey the NY District Attorney found the Bund had fraudulent tax returns. Several Bund officials returned to Germany. Kuhn's citizenship was revoked and he was arrested as an enemy agent once the US was at war, he was deported to Germany in 1945 but arrested again under the de-Nazification laws.

 Most of those Jews that fought the Nazis volunteered to go to war. The gangsters also did a lot for Israel.

Meyer Lansky was investigated by the IRS for tax evasion, but was never convicted as he had compromising photos of J.Edgar Hoover and his "close aide Clyde Tolson. Lansky died in 1983 aged 80. 

After Pearl Harbor FDR shut down Coughlins radio program and forbade his periodical Social Justice from being distributed. The Bishop forced him to get out of politics to remain in the Church.

The Jew Store : a family memoir by Stella Suberman 1998 297pg

A typical history of a Jewish family living in the southern states in the1920s /30s 15/8/22

I  found this interesting as I can compare it with Jewish life in rural South Africa the I was aware of in the 1950s.    In 1995 Stella went to visit the Tennessee which she had last seen in 1933 when her family left the town she named here Concordia.  Her parents got there by horse cart in 1920 with her brother Joey 7 and sister Miriam 5.At the time the town had a population of 5318 whites and  negroes. These town were steadily loosing population. What was called a" Jew store" was part of every town. The mother was not keen to leave her NY family but Nashville had a Jewish community, she looked back, while  he looked to the future.

When the arrived there the Medlin boys told them to go to Bookie Simmons who was a wealthy spinster and wanted company she was the daughter of Coco Cola wealth. "I child shall lead you" Isaih11.6 quoted T.

Late 1800s  a typhoid plague claimed Aaron's fathers mother, father and grandmother so grandfather brought him up in Podolska near Kiev. His only education was what he got from his grandfather in the evenings enough for his bar mitzvah. He worked in the grandfather business but with the pogrom's the business deteriorated  and took steerage from Hamburg  to NY. Amongst his jobs was delivering coal on a wagon. Paid a bribe and got recruited to  job in Miami but left the ship in Savanah where he worked for a Jewish store. Avram Plotchnikoff became Aaron Bronson.

 In the south Jewish stores opened on Saturdays unlike NY. Savannah had more blacks than whites, he got involved in a service league and girlfriends taught him to read and write English Palmer script and improve his speech and now became a US citizen but he wanted to marry a Jewish girl so returned to NY.

Her mother left the stetle at age 9 got 2 years schooling in the NY and got a job stuffing cuddly animals. 

Aaron married  Reba when she was 17 and convinced her to come with him south after Joey and Miriam were born. The went to Nashville. Because he was a good salesman his boss took him on a buying trip to St. Louis here , he was introduced to the  merchants who considered him trustworthy for credit.

A shoe factory was being build in Concordia and no Jewish dry goods  store was there. from Nashville the travelled with a wagon in 3 days to Concordia, cheaper than taking a train. The store was to serve working men and farmers as well as the coloreds(who came i the back door. There was suspicion of anybody not a southerner , white and Protestant. To  get a store on the main road  he happed to deal with 2 men who were foes of each other.

The author Stella Ruth was the only one born in Concordia and in the Southern tradition she was called by the 2 names.

What church do you belong to? One could change religion between the Protestant denominations. All life took place on the porch in the south. There was no Catholic church in the south then it came later with Hispanics coming.

1609 Henry Hudson discovery what he thought was the north west passage, Reba remembered the celebration of this in 1909

1914 to 1917John Purroy Mitchel was a very honest mayor of NY  and Reba fondly remembers attending his inauguration as a kid.

Bookie took a liking to Miriam and taught her to play the piano. We later find out that Bookie wanted to marry into a wealthy  German Jewish family but her father would not allow it. The Klu Klux  Klan had a big say here and we don't know why they left this Jewish family alone perhaps because of Bookie or their shop landlord. Workers would not patronize a store without their tacit approval. Saturdays farmers did their business shopping in the morning and personal shopping in the afternoon. 

The school year started late after the Tennessee harvesting season. They had storm cellars in case of tornadoes. They bought a Studebaker car that Joey at the age of 12 drove.  Purple Jesus a cocktail of grapes an moonshine.

1927 Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer was the first talkie movie. In the south you called you boyfriend your beau.

Aaron was part of every possible minority for the rural south  - a shopkeeper, foreign born , a Jew a white and Negroes were the majority in the town. When they were away their neighbours looked after their house and garden as was the norm.

1929 when the Wall Street collapse the shoe factory  was in debt, Aaron got the town leaders raised money to keep it ticking over. Because the factory was the biggest employer in town and workers were receiving IOUs for wages. Bookie insisted that she would loan money to the factory on condition that it stopped child labour, which was considered more reliable and cheaper than hiring Negros.

Reba insisted that Joey be sent away to learn for his bar mitzvah so he spent a year in NY at his mothers father home. When he returned to Concordia he was moved to a higher class but wanted to be in NY and so was returned there. 

Miriam was taught piano by Ms. Bookie and was the top girl in dancing. At 17 she wanted to go off with T but Reba said no and in 1933 they sold the store to a chain stores and came to NY where all 3 married Jewish spouses. Aaron got paid out for the business and 20 cents a $ for inventory as well as the money he had leant to the factory which returned slowly. The days of Jew Stores was coming to an end as chain stores took over  They bought a garage in NY and were able to run it successfully. Stella at arriving at the NY school was sent to speech lessons with foreign kids as her southern accent was considered unacceptable. Reba was the one that mow missed the south the most.

The Johnstown Flood by David Mc Cullough 1968 268pg

 The incredible story behind one of the most devastating disaster America has ever known, 2209 killed mostly at Johnstown.  12/8/22

1889 Memorial Day Thursday May 30. This occurred at the dam of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in Cambria County, Pennsylvania in the Allegheny Range. This club was owned by the wealthy Steel and Railway magnates to escape the dirt and noise of the cities. This area was settled by Germans and Welsh and those were the most prominent languages spoken, Cambria is another name of Wales.

1794 Washington put down the whiskey rebellion in Pittsburg.

1850 The Pennsylvania Company railroad came through and Cambrian Iron Company founded.

1879 Diphtheria killed 132 children within a few months.

1888 When Golf was first brought to the USA

Johnstown the more this city progressed the more uncomfortable it became to live there.

1838 the work began on the Water Reservoir to have water for dry summers.

1852 This earth  dam completed.

1879 Dam property taken over by the Pennsylvania Railway.

Trees were cut down to make space for the expanding town and the river channels were being narrowed, and to make it easier to put bridges across, resulting in more and more flooding. in 1885,87,88.

People got tired of hearing of the disaster that never happened

1856 Henry Bessemer, in Sheffield, England invented a blast furnace process for turning iron into steel that was far quicker and cheaper than what had been done at the time and in the 60s and 70s Johnstown was the most lively in the country. Henry Morrell used only American workers training farm boys to master the technology while others were importing English workers familiar with this process. David Morrell later became a member of Congress, he died in 1885.

Morrel wanted a discharge system put on the dam.  The spill way had a grating so that the fish could not escape and this jammed up. Then the dam was lowered so that a 2 lane road could be built on the top.

Heavy rain a logs jammed the bridges arches causing a flood in Johnstown.  A message was sent to East Conemaugh marshaling yard that the dam was liable to burst and prepare for the worst, but took no notice, a total of 3 warning messages were sent down the valley. When the dam burst it emptied in 45 .minutes  and the workers went into the mud with buckets to collect  the fish in the empty dam

.

Every locomotive driver used his whistle giving off his characteristic signal, freight trains used a different tone but a long  whistle with no letup indicated something was wrong., and a drivers whistle that was on for 5 minutes was the only warning that East Conemaugh heard . In Woodvale about 1000 people lived where there was a woolen mill build by Cambria Iron.  Rosensteel tannery  and a streetcar depot  she with 96 horses  that was left flattened.  345 people died here.

Johnstown was hit at 4.07pm. and it was hit harder than anything along the 14 mile route. The devastation was over in 10 minutes. All the flotsam ended up against the bridge and spread out as this formed a new dam and it caught alight with the oil of a derailed tank car.

The next morning people woke up to a silence as no industry was working and no mill whistles or wagons on cobbles or trains and nearly all Johnstown was destroyed. Dead were being found in large numbers. Many who escaped just  left and moved away. Every telephone and telegraph was cut, but farmers from around started bringing food.

Able bodied people crowded the schoolhouse and John Moxham took charge and immediately organized committees. The doctors established a temporary hospital and a police force was sworn in $6000 was recovered from what was left of  the bank. Many of the bodies could not be identified as there were a number of travelling men new in the territory

. The flood had killed 1 in 10 of the population. Millions in donation were give from all over the country both money and supplies like blankets etc, including the magnates. Many had family in Pittsburg and poured into the station , including lost or orphaned children.

A Lynch mob went to look for anyone left at the South Forks Club, in a court case criminal negligence was brought up, nobody was there. It was great wealth that was condemned not technology, and people said that every gain the magnates made people were losing something. They were accused of buying legislatures and cutting wages. The fact that the lake was designed purely for pleasure was unacceptable at the time. The South Forks club had a mortgage and not much money to claim against them. There were also suites against the Pennsylvania Railroad, but the  jury agreed it was a visitation of providence. Nobody had ever seen such a storm and no provision  could have been taken to prevent this. Several small dams build under Daniel J Morell had survived this.

The magnets Pitcairn , Frick and Phipps were named to serve on the Relief committee. Frick never ever made a statement.

1889 Carnegie had been at the Paris World Fair during the disaster, this was the time the Eifel Tower was inaugurated.. Robert Lincoln, Abraham's son was the US Minister in London who he visited. Carnegie later rebuild the library in Johnstown

The dam was a dramatic violation of the natural order. The homes at the dam left high and dry were abandoned and what was left was sold off by Sheriff auction.

1936  American Doctors Odyssey book  by Victor Heiser whose parents died and so he  left Johnstown became a physician and fought diseases all over the world especially the Philippines.

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The Ruthless Tide by Al Roker 2012 282pg  14/3/25

The heroes and villains' of the Johnstown flood . Americans astonishing Gilded age disaster.

This is a very readable book on the subject and starts off of the story of the Quinn family and their baby daughter who survives the flood with help and luck  David Mc Cullough who wrote the book in 1968, had interviewed her as an old women.

The Story of Clara Barton and the Red Cross. She was a hospital nurse in the US civil war in 1869 she went to Geneva, Switzerland. Was involved in the Franco Prussian War. She the managed  to set up the American Red Cross under President Chester Arthur by 1881. With the flood she arrived with the support of money raised by her committee and her organization helped and knew exactly how to go about it. She remained in Johnstown for 5 months organizing releif.

Rylands Rule This set a precedent in British Law. It establishes that a person who accumulates and keeps dangerous substances on their land is liable for any damage that results if those substances escape and cause harm, regardless of negligence.  Thus by changing anything that is not in nature or the geography of a area you take responsibility for harm to your neighbors , even if there is no negligence.

The end of the book asks the question why is it that people who were so powerful and keen to set up monopiles and exploits working people not allow workers unions.  Even hiring the Pinkerton gang or getting the police to stop strikes.  Yet when this type of tragedy happened people made such an big effort to help the people affected.  More money was collected than was necessary. However those who lost parents , spouses or children could never be compensated by money.  The people responsible never paid any price.

Carnegie only,  after he sold his businesses went into being a philanthropist.

Hope Comes knocking : Col(res)Dr. Micky Seiffe 2019

 A personal account of an IDF officer in Egyptian captivity during the Yom Kippur War 

 English version.267pg   26/7/22

This book was lent to me by a friend who worked with the author. Pelusium and Romani were Roman cities once near the Suez Canal.

 His parents were old people and he was 28. He was an only child of Holocaust survivors, who first kid had been born premature and died. In Sept. 1940 his one young cousin was killed when Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv, they were meant to bomb Haifa but were intercepted by the RAF and just dropped the bombs on TA.

 

After the end of the Six Day war in 1967 there was to be 8 UN positions watching on the Israeli side of the canal as peace keepers.

The author was doing a PhD is pharmacology and when he was called into army reserves it was always to be a medic or pharmacist.

There was a shortage of officers who spoke English and so he joined a group that did a 2 day course to be a liaison officer to be posted with UN observers. They have to communicate what is happening on the border and keep the 2 UN officers away from Israeli military secrets.

1973 Oct 6th At 1400 on Yom Kippur day   they were bombarded and saw the Egyptian coming to Israel controlled places en masse. He had time to write a note to go with the UN home, destroyed the army radio and codes and was taken by the Egyptians.  He was taken across the canal on boat but they pulled a rope get there. He was taken blindfolded to an army base near Port Said.

He and other Israelis were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their back and taken by truck to Cairo but shown on the way to others as spoils of war. The worst thing was the pain in his hand and he was worried he might get gangrene.

Lt. General Ensio Sillasvio from Finland Commanded UNICEF II in Sinai. The Israeli fortifications along the Suez Canal was called the (Haim)Bar Lev line.

At the Abbasiya  prison Cairo the interrogators tried to get information about the Israeli army but all he told them was that he was a pharmacist and reservist and sent as a liaison officer because he spoke English he was consistent in this story. At one time he in his cell Dr. Dan Peleg. 

The were forced to keep their hand tied and have covers over their face and he managed to take this off but had  to slip his hand back into before the jailors entered. Once they were taken to the court yard and forced to get into slimy smelly water trough.

Later a Arab prisoner came around and cut off their beards with a manual clipper. Another time they were taken out to the courtyard and given shaves and haircuts so that they could be photographed, in which he could hardly recognize himself. 

They were moved from cell to cell , one cell was full of lice and he spent time killing them until after 17 days they were given permanent cells according to the units they were in and no longer had to wear the handcuffs.. Now he realized that only 4 of the 8 liaison officers were captured later he met a 5th one. One captured pilot did not know what happened to his mate who parachuted with him. Their were days that the guards just came into the cells to beat them up and Michael was always worried he might loose teeth suffer permanent damage. He always escaped this situation by thought of normal life. They were given paper and told to write a letter home, so he wrote a personal family letter just saying that he was well and healthy. This however was never delivered.

1973 Oct 24th  Egyptian third army had been surrounded by Israeli troops

After 20 days they were given clean prison uniforms soap to wash, was this an indication that the war was changing?   A few days later he was taken to a high class area of Cairo to meet a government official Hussein who wanted to know as much as he could about Israeli society its divisions its education etc.  Israeli prisoners were now valuable bargaining chips.

He was interviewed by a Airforce Colonel and was able to tell what he read in the press about weapons but not any more. A pharmacist was sent to check if he really was a pharmacy Phd. student and the head of the Hebrew dept. at Cairo University took the opportunity to talk to him about Hebrew and its literature a thing they both were well  informed about..

1973Oct 29th  start of Ceasefire talks at Km 101 from Cairo.1973 Nov12 Ceasefire signed.

A Egyptian Minister informed them  that a ceasefire had been signed and they would be going home soon. The next day the Red Cross representative informed them that they would start going home by Red Cross Plane. The guy who had interrogated him at the beginning came and said to him "you were Green"  he now admitted that was his code name as he had been sending signals to the artillery' where to shoot. Someone else had spilled this information.

When they arrived in Israel first they were taken to be interviewed by intelligence officers to find out about missing airmen. For the first time he learned of the great losses it had cost for the victory and would suffer nightmares as a result he would work to very late and sleep very little. After being at home with family were sent by the army to a holiday resort at Mitvachim near Zichron Ya'acov to recover from the trauma.  This program  worked for soldiers after battle or after recovery from wounds but nobody had experience of the traumas suffered by prisoners. He had some therapy from Prof. Morris Kleinhaus who pointed out to him that he coped by having a double character in dealing with his tormentors. Some felt guilty if they had released information that had caused harm to their collogues or the military.

He discovered that he was the last person who just kept on sending information about what was happening on the canal and the chief of staff had heard about this. Oscar was the UN observation post nearest to him and his voice disappeared suddenly, he and the 2 UN people had been murdered shot at close range.

1996 A prisoner released from Syria in 1973 Yoav Ben-David wrote a book "Awake at Night" and it showed the Israeli public the terrible conditions that these prisoners had experienced. He went to Miri  Shalit of the Dept. of Defense and she wanted to know about his childhood. We now discover that his mother was undergoing treatment for Tuberculosis and he was sent to full time day care and boarding school kindergarten when he eventually came home he had neighbors looking after him till has  father came home. Thus as a small child he was always self reliant.  

He and his friend are always ready to volunteer help other who need to talk about CSR (Shell Shock)  or PTSD

Every therapist who deals with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should read this book.

Get Rommel by Michael Asher 2004 320pg

This is about the secret service mission to kill Hitlers greatest General in Operation Flipper.    1/7/22

The object of this was to disrupt communication behind the enemy and get Rommel.

Soon after this Operation Crusader followed it was a push by Sir Alan Cunningham (later last governor of Palestine 1945 to 1948) to push into Cyrenaica..

The commando concept came about soon after Dunkirk when Chirchill wanted to go onto the offensive. Colonel Dudley Clerk born in South Africa and was in Palestine to deal with the Arab rebellion of 1939. Denys Reits's book "Kommando" on the Boer War gave the concept. Volunteers with individual initiative were needed. British officers came from the upper class while German served in the ranks before becoming officers. Thus the British officers were not the most ideal.

This was to stop the German blitzkrieg across North Africa. Training was done on the Isle of Arran in the Clyde in Scotland.

Evelyn Waugh wrote about this in the novel "Officer and Gentleman "

1941 February Mussilini's 10th army surrendered  to General O'Connor, and so Lieut General Alan Cunningham had restored Haile Salassi to his throne of Ethiopia at the same time Rommel 's Afrika Korps landed to help the Itlaians.

Germany was also moving into Russia, Vichy territory gave Germany help and provided the Luftwaffe with airfields, Iraq was having a German supported revolution and the Germans appeared to be moving towards the oil fields of the gulf. Crete was taken by German paratroopers where 600 of the 800 British commando troops were killed or captured only 156men escaped of them 23 were officers this was a scandal.

1941 April landing on the Litani River in Lebanon was a failure but the commando troops got training from that.

1941 June Rommel defeated Operation Battleaxe, Wavelle and put 2/3 of his troops out of action. British Matilda tanks were no match for the Panzers. Where Rommel was there was the front, Rommel shared Hitlers contempt for the land owning aristocrats of WW1. Rommel admired Hitler, and Rommel seen invincibility was affecting British morale.

1941 July Churchill replaced  Wavelle with Achinleck. Rommel was obsessed with Tubruk and dismissed reports of the British planning an offensive. Captured S. African command vehicles indicated that British troops, if attacked must retreat.

SAS was made up of volunteers with subgroups of about 5 each with a specialized skill, medic , navigator, mechanic , explosives. No frontal attacks. John Haselden had been raised in Egypt and spoke Arabic dialects, French and Italian. You had a lot of European expatriates living in Egypt before the war who could be recruited with their Arabic skills.

1912 The Italian annexed Libya  and between 1922 and 1931 the Italians were determined to break the Senussian power. Italian General Rudolfo Graziani by bombarding and rounding up in concentration camps where many died of starvation and illnes till they caught the rebel leader Omar el Muktar and hanged him in front of a crowd of 20 thousand. In Alexander the Senussi leader in exile was Sayid Idress who later on became \king of Libya in 1951 till he was deposed by Muhammad Gadaffi in 1969.

Beside Rommel headquarters there was the Italian Intelligence centre at Apollonia and the Cyrene crossroads carried the phone and telegraph for the whole region. They wanted to attack the German airfields at Gazala and Timimi.

  One group  landed in stormy weather and were dragged along the ground by their parachutes, most of their supplies had blown away completely. Today each soldier has  all their supplies connected by a rope to their para harness. The torrential rainstorm turned the waddis into rivers. This weather ruined their operation but it also meant that German planes could not take off. It was the worst rain that Cyrenica had seen in 40 years.

Commando 11 had Avisholem Drori and Palestinian Jew who spoke Arabic and Italian. They landed by submarine on the coast with rubber dinghies.

British correspondent, explorer and writer Alan Moorhead travelled with British mobile columns.

1941 17 Nov.They attacked Rommel headquarters and killed a group of German officers and men who in fact were the people in charge of the German quartermaster stores. Rommel would be returning on 18th Nov. he had been on holiday in Rome with his wife for 3 weeks and celebrated his 50th Birthday on 15Nov.  This was information that Bleckley Park had from Ultra, who knew that Rommel was not in Africa before this unit  Ultra also knew that Rommel was to attack Tobruck on 21 Nov. so Cunningham  had scheduled Operation Crusader for 18th Nov. When Rommel heard about the attempt to get him he was indignant that the British thought he had his operation headquarters 250 miles behind the front lines.

They attacked the crossroads cable mast that joined Derna ,Slonta Bardia,  and Benghazi, surprisingly it had no guard but their explosives were very poor and the damage they did was easy to repair in a few days.

When patrols got back to the beach they could not find the rubber dinghies and Laycock had a poor grasp of morse code and the messages were misunderstood. The next night when the submarine came to search for them they were not there. Except for 3 men the rest were captured. Those 3 hid and waited for the British invasion to arrive a few weeks later.

The Rommel raid was one man's ambition to gain glory and ordinary enlisted men who had no part in the planning played their parts in this fiasco.

Later 3 men patrols were taken at night to sabotage and later met a prearranged position where the vehicle was,  these were well trained SAS patrols who learned from the previous fiascos.

This book give details of the background of every one of the individuals involved.

South Africans versus Rommel: The Untold Story of the Desert War in World War II Kindle David Brock Katz 2017 Only read the first 2 chapters as an introduction to book below The South Africans fought a mobilized warfare this was left over from the Boer War was extremely successful in driving the Italians out of East Africa. When they got to North Africa they fought as part of the British 8th army with a different approach. While the war was on and afterwards the real story never came out about the Battle of Sidi Resigue or of the fall of Tobruk and first Alamein battle. It has taken till now to research the primary sources. In 1910 the Union had 2 million whites 55% of whites were Afrikaans speaking, 33% English speaking, 25% of the population was of European origin. The Union Defense Force for was formed in 1912 by Jan Smuts Minister of Defense. 4 armies were combined with 2 languages and achieved equilibrium between the Afrikaners and Englishmen, using a combination of systems. It first kept control of internal strife and Afrikaner rebellion of 1914 - 1915. Then protecting the Witwatersrand with the miners’ strike of 1922 The conquered German South West Africa in 1915 and in German West Africa after the war ended in 1918. A quarter million UDF soldiers or 10% of the total white population were in uniform. This had united the army but it was felt that the army should only be used in Africa. The coast was protected by the British navy. The only other colonial power nearby was Portugal which had always been a British ally. George Brink was trained at Camberley in 1920 where he met Montgomery. Also Dan Pienaar both fought at Sidi Resegh. 1919 Smuts became PM after Botha died in office. In 1924 Hertzog won the election and as PM pushed towards Afrikaner nationalism. Belfour's declaration of 1931 gave dominion status on an equal footing with in the empire. The depression of the 30s stopped investment in the army. Under the Fusion government South Africa would remain neutral in a European conflict especially if the UK declared war but would support the UK if she were attacked. This neutralism was supported by Smuts till the Munich crises of 1938. Chief of Staff van Ryensveld was worried about France, Belgium , Portugal arming blacks in colonies. Italy in north Africa was regarded as a threat. In Sept 1939 parliament had the choice of Smuts proposal to join the war or Herzog's neutrality. Herzog made a tactical error by attempting to justify Hitler's actions. In a parliamentary vote Smuts won by 13 majority. Do you remember that Major General Freddy de Guingand  KBE, CB, DSO 1900 to 1979 was Max Feldman’s next door neighbor. He was Montgomery's chief of staff from the 2nd Battle of El Almaine till the end of the war.