2005-01-20 - 1:40 p.m.

Speaking of Nazi regimes, I had the most fascinating conversation with Dean's dad, Len, last weekend. Len's father, Dean's grandfather, lived in Holland during WWII and passed down stories of what it was like to live in Holland while it was occupied by the nazis. This is what Len told us:

*There was no heat for 5 years! Holland is COLD. During that time, they had no coal, because the Germans were taking it all away. They heated their homes/apartments with whatever wood they could scrounge. On several occasions, Dean's grandfather actually crept up to the Nazi trains with an empty box and stole coal from the piles next to the trains. They did this at night. There were always Nazis on gaurd, and if they had seen them stealing the coal, they would have shot them! But Dean's grandfather managed to steal coal and get away with it.

*Everyone in Holland was rationed 1/2 a loaf of bread to eat, per week. That's all they had to eat. All the vegetables and livestock were taken by the Nazis to feed their own troops, and nothing was left for the people in Holland. Dean's grandfather resorted to stealing vegetables from farmers on occasion out of desperation.

*There was no electricity, or at least none at night. Dean's grandfather had a bicycle that had a headlight which would shine when the bicycle was in motion. So, in order for Dean's grandmother to read at night, his grandfather had made the bike stationary and would pedal it while she sat in front of it with her book.

*Dean's grandfather had been a skilled factory worker before the war. So when the Nazis came into power, they hired him and another man to train 5,000 Russian girls how to make parts for Airplanes. Dean's grandfather was not allowed to say no to this job, he was forced to do it. The nazis had build a factory camp that was made to look from the air like a village so that it wouldn't be bombed by the Allies. The women stayed in dormitories. At night, when the Allies would bomb, the girls were afraid to stay in the buildings in case they were bombed, so they dug trenches on the ground and covered them with tin roofing, and stood in the trenches. One night, a bomb dropped directly onto the trench. The girls inside were killed, of course -- but their clothes were burned off their bodies and they were flattened into the dirt on either side of the trench.

*Nazi soldiers were on the streets of Amsterdam every day, carrying guns. They shot people in the streets for any provocation.

Ok, I know this entry was a downer, but I just wanted to remember what Len told us. I think it's important to write history down and remember it whenever possible. We must never forget injustice! We must keep treating each other with dignity and love and fighting for what we know is right!