"for the sake of humanity"… A small town American high school history project changes lives worldwide. These are the observations of a veteran teacher- on the Power of Teaching, the importance of the study of History, and especially the lessons we must learn, and teach, on the Holocaust. Click on "Holocaust Survivors, Liberators Reunited" tab above to begin.
Rehearsals and recording of the musical score and the soundtrack to our mini-series,A Train Near Magdeburg. Featuring Joshua Bell, violinist, Jim Papoulis, Composer and Conductor, with theColumbus Symphony Orchestra.
Half the episodes for the film series A Train Near Magdeburg have been completed and recording was finished in Columbus Ohio in early March. My wife and I were invited to attend the recording sessions that featured the Columbus Symphony Orchestra conducted by composer extraordinaire Jim Papoulis and featuring top shelf violinist Joshua Bell [‘m told he’s probably the greatest living violinist in the world (my aunt Kathleen at lunch the other day, a classical music guru)]. House was pretty much to ourselves: Ohio Theater, Columbus Ohio. Great to have them onboard… and all the talented musicians are a part of it now.
This post is an update, two years on, on the occasion of the recording for the soundtrack to our film. In it, we use eight of master luthier and restorer Amnon Weinstein’s Violins of Hope, rescued from the destruction and oblivion of the Holocaust.
On March 4, 2024, Amnon Weinstein passed at the age of 84. Exactly one year to the day of his passing, eight of his violins were in the hands of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, to record the soundtrack to our mini-series, A Train Near Magdeburg, under the direction of Jim Papoulis, Composer and Conductor, with the Columbus [Ohio] Symphony Orchestra. Please watch the clip to see Amnon’s violins brought to life again, and read the article for more about his life. Director Mike Edwards reads the biographies of the violin’s original owners to the musicians who will play them.
Violins of Hope. Train to Magdeburg tour of Israel, 2023.
We are in Jerusalem now, the City of God, after 22 hours of travel.
The last time I was here, I was studying at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in the summer of 2016. That is when liberating soldier Frank Towers left us.
I am here with filmmaker Mike Edwards, crew Joe Hammers and Josh Fronduti, scriptwriter Lee Shackleford and his wife Karen and my wife Laura. Our mission is to interview a dozen Holocaust survivors of the train near Magdeburg. We landed on Shabbat, the sabbath day morning. Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv was very quiet.
Returning impression of Jerusalem. Growing upward, the city of cranes. Busy.
Hotel Agripas in Jerusalem, a central location found for us by our friend Ellen, a fifteen-minute stroll from the Old City. My wife and I walked down the first day, made it to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. My third time, Laura’s first. She was moved to tears. Trapped in a procession of Eastern European pilgrims chanting prayers on the Via Dolorosa going the opposite direction. We wait for the Spirit to pass by, and we are back to our hotel for the transport to film at our first stop, the family behind the Violins of Hope project in Tel Aviv.
We arrive after an hour or so, greeted outside by nearly 84-year-old Amnon Weinstein at his ground level workshop. Joe and Josh set up the film shoot, as always, and we go across the street to meet his beautiful wife at an outdoor café. They are so happy to see us, Assi his wife is radiating goodness and love for the Americans who have come to tell a story of the Holocaust, passionate about history and life, the daughter of one of the famed Bielski partisans. She won’t let us pay or clear away the cups at the end.
We retire back at the shop, and Amnon begins to tell his story. The family emigrated to Palestine in 1938 from Poland, his father a violin maker, opening a shop right here in Tel Aviv when it was a brand new city, growing along the coast. As a boy, Amnon is puzzled one day in school when a teacher asks about families and grandparents; only one child in an elementary class of 35 has grandparents. He asks his mother; he remembers to this day the first shock of his life- when she wordlessly opens a book, directing the youngster’s attention to the graphic photos of the horrors of the Holocaust.
He became a master luthier, like his father, building and repairing violins for world class performers; he knows them all. Over time, though, survivors brought their violins, many German made fine specimens, and tell him that he must buy them, take them off their hands, or they will discard them. Many cannot bear to pick up the instrument that once brought them so much joy, after surviving the Holocaust, some even forced to play as train transports arrived at the camps, to add a false sense of comfort, for those about to be murdered. So he does acquire them-how can he not?-and others with a provenance of the Holocaust.
Mike asks how he feels when he plays, or sees others play these now restored instruments, the Violins of Hope. Amnon puts his hands on his shoulders. “I feel like I am carrying the weight, the music, telling in a way the stories of the six million. The violins are their voices speaking to us once more.” His son and third generation luthier Avi travels the world now showcasing the violins from the collection now numbers about 120.
Joe, Mike, Amnon setting up the shoot.
He moves to his workbench, sometimes using his ‘stick’, his cane. “I am nearly eight-four. This is all I do now; I no longer build from scratch. It is important, and I think I can get the collection up to 140 or so pieces before I ‘move on’. I do not welcome death, but I think it is a natural progression”, he gestures with a wave of the hand.
We record him working, picking up many of the same carving knives I see in my own woodworking shop at home. I ask him about the wood, the sharpening of his tools. “At the bench I am 21 years old again. I get lost in the work for hours.”
He has summoned one of his young clients from across town, and Tamir arrives, a natural 21-year-old prodigy, a future virtuoso in training. We move to Amnon’s office. Amnon goes to the vault and brings out one of the prized restored Violins of Hope. Young Tamir begins to play. Amnon watches him contentedly from his desk. Mike asks Tamir to play Hatikvah (The Hope), now Israel’s national anthem. The 140-year-old violin of a victim is playing the 21-year-old soon to be master. “The violin is playing me.”
Violin master luthier Amnon listens to the young prodigy Tamir.
Violin-Hatikva-Tamir Tavor and Amnon Weinstein at the shop. From the Train to Magdeburg tour of Israel, 2023.
Amnon will admit to being concerned about the state of the world, the terrible war in Ukraine, the state of political turmoil in his own land where he has virtually lived the history of the state of Israel since before its birth in 1948, but now to the point of losing sleep at night, to the point of impatience and frustration. When asked to comment on the famous Benjamin photograph of the liberation of the train in the spring of 1945, he simply says, “And why did it take so long?” In hindsight, liberator Carrol Walsh had reached the same conclusion years before. Film director Mike points out, and the title of this blog points out, that education is the key. We hope that our film helps in some small way to heal the world, as Amnon’s Violins of Hope travel the world with the same mission, to remember the millions, and to hopefully help the world refocus its energies away from hate, war, persecution, destruction.
Matthew Rozell and Amnon Weinstein at the bench.
Michael Edwards and Amnon Weinstein at the bench.
It has been a wonderful, emotionally draining day. We bid our new friends goodbye, and promise to carry on the mission.
We sit down with our first survivor tomorrow.
Amnon Weinstein, Who Restored Violins From the Holocaust, Dies at 84
Many were left behind by victims of the gas chambers. He let the instruments be heard again in musical tributes through his organization, Violins of Hope.
By Michael S. Rosenwald, The New York Times
Published March 21, 2024
Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli luthier who restored violins belonging to Jews during the Holocaust so that musicians around the world could play them in hopeful, melodic tributes to those silenced in Nazi death camps, died on March 4 in Tel Aviv. He was 84.
His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Avshalom Weinstein.
Mr. Weinstein was the founder of Violins of Hope, an organization that provides the violins he restored to orchestras for concerts and educational programs commemorating the Holocaust. The instruments have been played in dozens of cities worldwide, including Berlin, at an event marking the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
“Violins of Hope, it’s like a huge forest of sounds,” he said in a 2016 PBS documentary. “Each sound is standing for a boy, a girl and men and women that will never talk again. But the violins, when they are played on, will speak for them.”
There are more than 60 Holocaust-era violins in his collection.
Some belonged to Jews who carried them in suitcases to concentration camps, and who were then forced to play them in orchestras as prisoners marched to the gas chambers. Others were played to pass the time in Jewish ghettos. One was tossed from a train to a railway worker by a man who knew his fate.
“In the place where I now go, I don’t need a violin,” the man told the worker, in Mr. Weinstein’s telling. “Here, take my violin so it may live.”
Mr. Weinstein hunched over his desk over a violin that he is in the middle of repairing. He wears the same outfit as in the last photo, as well as glasses and a large wristwatch. A row of violins hang from the ceiling behind him.
The son of a violin repairman, Mr. Weinstein worked in a cramped and dusty workshop in the basement of an apartment building on King Solomon Street in Tel Aviv.
“Walking in there was like stepping in time,” James A. Grymes, a University of North Carolina-Charlotte music professor who wrote a book about Violins of Hope, said in an interview. “It really felt like you were in Stradivarius’s workshop — the smells of varnish, there’s parts of violins everywhere. It’s like he was the Willy Wonka of the violin.”
One afternoon in the 1980s, a man with a prisoner identification tattoo on his arm arrived with a beaten-up violin that had, like him, survived Auschwitz.
“The top of the violin was damaged from having been played in the rain and snow,” Mr. Grymes wrote in “Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust — Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour” (2014). “When Amnon took the instrument apart, he discovered ashes inside that he could only assume to be fallout from the crematoria at Auschwitz.”
Mr. Weinstein, who had lost hundreds of members of his extended family in the Holocaust, nearly turned the man away; working on such an instrument seemed too emotionally fraught. But he ultimately repaired the violin, and the man gave it to his grandson to play.
Mr. Weinstein didn’t reflect much about working on Holocaust-era violins again until the late 1990s, when he was training his son to become a luthier. The experience made him reflect on the role of violins in Jewish culture, from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to klezmer bands to Itzhak Perlman’s soaring concertos.
“It was kind of a must for the young generation to learn to play the violin,” he said in the PBS documentary. “And when you have a violin, Friday or Saturday evening, always somebody was taking it and playing on it.”
During a radio interview, he asked listeners to bring him instruments connected to the Holocaust. Soon, families began showing up at his workshop with violins that had been stored away in attics and cellars, each with its own haunting story.
Mr. Weinstein was especially shaken by those recovered from concentration camps after the Allied invasion of Germany in 1945.
“This was the last human sound that all of those people heard, the violin,” he said in a 2016 radio interview on WKSU in Ohio. “You cannot use the name beauty. But this was the beauty of this time, these violins.”
Mr. Weinstein holding the body of a violin with a swastika and other symbols etched into it. Behind him are various instruments hanging on the walls as well as portraits of people holding their violins.
Three old violins on display, each with Jewish symbols etched into them.
Amnon Weinstein was born on July 21, 1939, in Mandatory Palestine and grew up in Tel Aviv. His father, Moshe Weinstein, was a musician and violin repairman. His mother, Golda (Yevirovitz) Weinstein, was a pianist and a secretary in her husband’s workshop. They had immigrated from Lithuania in 1938, just as the persecution of Jews was escalating in Germany.
Mr. Weinstein grew up helping in his father’s violin shop. In his early 20s, he moved to Cremona, Italy — a city long known for its master luthiers — to study violin making. He continued his training in Paris under Étienne Vatelot, one of the world’s most renowned luthiers. In 1975, he married Assaela Bielski Gershoni, whose father was a Jewish resistance fighter during World War II who was made famous in the 2008 film “Defiance.”
After his father’s death in 1986, Mr. Weinstein took over the family violin shop; he started Violins of Hope a decade later. The first concerts with the violins in the collection took place in Turkey and Israel in 2008. Others followed in Switzerland, Spain and Mexico, as well as in Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia.
“Each concert is a victory,” he would often say.
A man in a black T-shirt stands while playing a violin that is tucked beneath his chin. Behind him are other musicians, seated in front of music stands and holding their own instruments.
Musicians, especially Jewish ones, have described playing violins from the collection as a soul-stirring experience.
“It’s emotional for me because I’m not there to play this violin, I’m there to let it speak,” Niv Ashkenazi, a violinist who recorded an album featuring an instrument from the collection, said in an interview. “Our jobs as musicians is to just let these violins shine through.”
In addition to his son Avshalom, who plans to continue the Violins of Hope project, Mr. Weinstein is survived by his wife; two other children, Merav Vonshak and Yehonatan Weinstein; and seven grandchildren.
In 2016, Mr. Weinstein was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, one of the country’s highest honors.
During the award ceremony, Germany’s foreign minister at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, spoke directly to Mr. Weinstein.
“A human soul lies behind each of your priceless violins,” he said. “A human who was persecuted, tormented, silenced by unimaginable violence and cruelty.”
Mr. Steinmeier spoke about the man who had tossed his violin from the train. He described a prisoner playing a violin in Auschwitz.
“Each violin represents a person, Amnon,” he said. “And when your violins play, they represent six million people.”
Welcome to 2025, a momentous year for World War II remembrance and history. So glad that you can join us for these updates, the ‘octogintennial’ anniversary of the end of the war, and of the greatest crime in the history of the world, the Holocaust. Iwo Jima,1945. National Archives.
As we look back on this week in history, we reflect on two defining moments of World War II that occurred in March of 1945, each marked by incredible human bravery and sacrifice: the end of the Battle of Iwo Jima and the crossing of the Rhine River by U.S. forces. Both events shaped the course of history, and their stories remind us of the extraordinary courage and resilience of those who fought. The End of the Battle of Iwo Jima In my last post, I wrote about my friend Art LaPorte, the 17-year-old Marine who was puzzled by the flag raising on Iwo four days into the campaign, since the battle was far from over with. 80 years ago, on March 26, the Battle of Iwo Jima was declared completed, though some defenders were surrendering as late as 1949! For the U.S. Marines, after weeks of intense fighting, the toll was overwhelming. The famous photograph of the flag raising atop Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23 finally symbolized not just military triumph, but the deep human cost—nearly 7,000 American lives were lost, over 19,000 wounded, and the toll on the Japanese defenders was far worse. ***********************************************************************************************************
The Crossing of the Rhine River Meanwhile, on the European front, U.S. forces were preparing for their own major breakthrough: crossing the Rhine River. By March 1945, Allied forces were closing in on Germany, and the crossing of this natural barrier was a decisive move toward victory. On the night of March 23, 1945, treadway rafts were launched and pontoon bridges were under construction. The stakes were high: As one writer put it, “The Rhine was more than a river. It was a sacred waterway to the Germans, the source of most of their legends and myths. And at this stage in the war, crossing the Rhine was the last barrier between the advancing Allied armies and the conquest of Germany. If the Germans could hold their beloved river, they might be able to stand off the Allies.”
The cost was also high. Albert Tarbell, a paratrooper with the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, recalled:
“The 505th made the river crossing first, and when we got there, just as we got off the pontoon onto the dry land, we see this tank hit a mine on the road, and took this 40-ton tank and it just flipped it right over! That’s how powerful the mine was. The Germans had planted the mines, and they had put detonators in there so that after maybe the 10th of each vehicle went over, it would set it off, so you didn’t know when it was going to blow up, or where it was.
And so they said, ‘Go over on the side, go over around it, and go alongside the road.’ We had no sooner gone about 20 feet up ahead when a truck hit another mine, and it blew the guys right out. I could see one guy, he looked like he must have been sitting in the back of the truck, it looked like if you threw a hat up in the air, you know, just flopping up in the air, and the truck went way up in the air! Boy, that was awful!”
Yet as the spring progressed, it was clear that the war in Europe might end soon.
“Now, we really were [moving fast], and we started getting more prisoners giving up to us; groups, maybe platoon-sized. We started getting jeeps up there to ride in. I said, ‘God, this is the way to fight a war.’ It was walking and running, and we were riding in jeeps across this open field; there was a whole line of us, we got to the end of this open field and there was a little bit of woods, and behind the woods there was three Tiger tanks sitting there! That’s when I knew, I said, ‘Hey, this war’s winding down.’ Those guys could have had a field day with us. They could have just wiped us right out.
So we went from one town to the other. One place there was a whole company, their platoon all lined up, ready to surrender to us. And then another time we kept on going, the truck traffic kept getting heavier, and heavier, and heavier. At one point, I don’t know whether it was that same day, I think it was, or it might have been the day after, we got to this one point where it got so bad, we put outposts out to direct traffic. Zimmerman, myself, and George Height was with me again, it seems like everywhere I went he was with me, following me, so we directed traffic. ‘Vehicles to your right, walk on foot to your left.’ Those German guys were throwing their weapons away, and this and that, and oh man. And they even had a calvary ride through [to surrender], God, beautiful horses. But some of these solders were pathetic, you know, worn out, clothes worn and torn, beat up, you know, tired, battle worn.
Towards about dark, a staff car pulled up and out got, you know how you see in movies, German officers, got shiny boots on, got shiny long leather jackets on, the whole nine yards of it—that’s the way these guys were dressed. One said, in perfect English, he said, ‘Where is your general’s command post? This is the commanding general here!’
From what I gathered after, it must’ve been the commanding general of that 21st German Army that surrendered to us. They wanted to surrender to us instead of to the Russians, to get out of the path of the Russians as they were coming in.
So I said, ‘What do you want to see our general for?’ He said, ‘This is the commanding general here, we’re going back there with your general, and we’re going to regroup and fight the Russians!’
I looked at Zimmerman, then I looked at Height, and I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what you do, you just go right down this road here, to my right, there’s some MPs down the road, they’ll show you right where to go.’ And I think that was the commanding general of the 21st German Army! They looked like they were in pretty good shape. We laughed, but they were serious. They probably were put in prison; our general wouldn’t have had anything to do with them.”
For those who survived the final push into Germany, the crossing marked a turning point in the war in Europe. They were pushing toward the heart of Nazi Germany, with the prospect of victory finally within reach—but then they encountered the evidence of the greatest crime in the history of the world—the Holocaust. For battle hardened soldiers, it was almost too much.
The Human Cost of War
Both of these events—though separated by vast oceans—remind us today of the price of freedom. These soldiers, almost all of whom were young men just beginning their adult lives, faced insurmountable odds. Their experiences, full of courage, sacrifice, and determination, offer us powerful lessons in resilience and hope.
Welcome to 2025, a momentous year for World War II remembrance and history. So glad that you can join us for these updates, the ‘octogintennial’ anniversary of the end of the war, and of the greatest crime in the history of the world, the Holocaust.Today is special for several reasons, two of which I will outline below.
Road to St. Vith, January 24, 1945. National Archives.
On December 16, 1944, the Battle of the Bulge began as Hitler’s last ditch effort to drive a wedge between the advancing American and British forces with a quarter million man German counteroffensive following D-Day and the Normandy breakouts of the summer and fall. Today, January 25, eighty years ago, all German forces had been pushed back to their original starting points; while the fight was not over for a long shot, today marked a turning point in the war in Europe. Nineteen thousand American boys were killed in the bloodiest US battle of WWII, over the course of six weeks, in the coldest winter in European memory. Average age, 19. 80 years? Was it really that long ago?
USHMM via Reuters.
Also on this day in 1945, the German SS dynamited the building of gas chamber and crematorium V in Auschwitz-Birkenau to destroy the evidence of their crimes as the Red Army approached from the east. The liberation of Auschwitz, the most notorious killing center of World War II, was at hand, the eightieth anniversary of which will be commemorated on Monday, January 27; one of my good Holocaust educator friends is co-leading a delegation of 50 or so survivors for this occasion. Talli and I were there together in an emotional journey I wrote about in my book, A Train Near Magdeburg.
This gas chamber operated from April 1943 to January 1945; Zyklon B was dumped in through openings after people were inside. 1.1 million people were murdered here, in a VERY short amount of time.
So what does it all mean, eighty years on? Time marches on, but as you may have read in my books, it’s not so much ‘how soon we forget’, as it is, ‘did we take the time to listen‘ the first time around, to our teachers, to our veterans? Do we as Americans even know our history? You know, in my books, I let the veterans and survivors speak for themselves, and for their friends and family who were killed or murdered. [I’m preaching to the choir now, and that’s the last thing I want to do-but hopefully we don’t move on until we pause and say their names.]
And I’ll leave you with an upbeat note- I went into the classroom again in December to talk about Pearl Harbor and a local kid who died there, as I discussed in my first book, The Things Our Fathers Saw, Vol. 1, Voices of the Pacific. First time since retirement, and I’m happy to report the old man still has it, and the teenagers were HUNGRY for this knowledge, just like they were when I taught them at this high school in upstate NY. I left them all with free copies of that book with 19 year old Randy Holmes remembered in it. I’ll leave you with some books mentioned in this email below for further reading, and report back soon with some updates as 2025 moves on, with the anniversaries, and with our upcoming mini-series.Exciting!
Nineteen thousand American boys were killed in the bloodiest US battle of WWII, over the course of six weeks, in the coldest winter in European memory. Average age, 19. Here is one 19-year-old’s story. 80 years? Was it really that long ago?
Just a quick note: I’m at my old holiday haunt at the Shirt Factory, 21 Cooper Street, Glens Falls, NY., 11 to 5, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in the tea shop first floor 106, 11 to 5, to accommodate my fans for in person meet and greet and signings, and see my local friends! Don’t forget, I will have the new book OVER THE HUMP, now 11 in total (3600 pages and a million words, no fooling), with bundle Black Friday savings. I retired my shop space there on the 3rd floor focus on my creative endeavors. There’s only one of me… thanks always for the love and support. Mini-series news soon!
25 or 30 years ago, during a symposium with Pacific veterans in the Hudson Falls High School library, I overheard local Pacific veterans discussing among themselves during a break about a kid, Randy Holmes, from Hudson Falls who was killed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. I asked them more, and snuck down to the ‘vault’, and dug out the 1942 yearbook. His classmates had dedicated it to him as he had left school early to join the Navy. He was killed on the Oklahoma. Yesterday, his finally identified remains were interred at Arlington 83 years later. Trishna Begam, local Albany anchor and reporter, knew of my connections to WW2 and HF, and told me after getting a press release from the navy, and found Randy’s great niece. Then she took the time to come up to Moss St. Cemetery to interview me, and Randy’s great-niece, also in the story below, contacted me. Though my lifelong mission was to bring him back to HF to lay next to his parents, Arlington will do! I am glad he is remembered, but my students and I never forgot. No one called him Harry, by their way. He was Randy to his friends and family in our hometown of Hudson Falls. He opens and closes my first [2015] book.
Pearl Harbor sailor from Hudson Falls buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
HUDSON FALLS, N.Y. (NEWS10) — The remains of a local Navy sailor who died 82 years ago were laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery Thursday afternoon. The U.S. Navy says Harry R. Holmes was aboard the USS Oklahoma during the attack on Pearl Harbor. His local connection is still cemented in his hometown of Hudson Falls and well documented by retired high school history teacher Matthew Rozell.
At the Moss Street Cemetery in Hudson Falls, Rozell showed NEWS10 the marker that sits in place for the hometown hero who was almost lost to time.
Rozell explained, “His grave is right here. He left school early. He would’ve graduated with the class of 1942.”
The young sailor died in action at Pearl Harbor. “My big question was ‘Where is his body? Where is he?’” Rozell wondered for years.
The Navy answered that this year. According to Capt. Jeff Druade, the director of the Navy Casualty Office, Project Oklahoma was started in 2015 to identify service members lost on the Oklahoma during the attack. Three hundred eighty-eight service members were unaccounted for — among them Fireman 3rd Class Harry Randolph Holmes. On December 7, 1941, Holmes was aboard the USS Oklahoma when Japanese torpedoes hit the hull and capsized the battleship in less than 12 minutes. His remains were identified eight decades later through DNA profiling.
“He was loved. He had a mother, father who are over there behind us. And they were never able to bring their son back,” Rozell added.
Letter reveals what soldier who inspired ‘Saving Private Ryan’ left at Normandy This October, 82 years after his death, his country was determined not to forget the young sailor’s sacrifice. He was brought to his final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
“A young boy at 19 years old, set foot out to protect our country,” said Rachael Bubbs, a great niece to Holmes.
Bubbs was present, along with her father, to honor her great uncle’s bravery and service. Through DNA profiling and matching samples with surviving family members, the Navy tracked down Bubbs in Florida.
“He was buried in the Punch Bowl for so many years, but now he’s going to one of the greatest cemeteries,” she said. “When everything was presented to me, it was an honor to be truly connected back to that true piece of history.”
It’s history that’s been etched into the stone in his hometown. Rozell explained, “It’s an important moment in the North Country because he was one of the first killed in WWII from New York. He was only 19. He didn’t get to graduate with his classmates.”
Those classmates knew Holmes by his middle name, Randy, as Rozell would learn from members of the class of 1942. “Listening to his friends, WWII vets, all gone now, they are no longer with us — it was Randy, Randy, Randy. H Randolph Holmes.”
They helped keep his life of service alive. “I dug through the archives, found the yearbook. That’s when I saw the picture of him taken in the backyard of his family home in Hudson Falls.
It’s the only photo of Holmes from a full page from the high school yearbook. He was known as a popular student with a sterling character. Bubbs said, “He went to war for our country, to fight for it. Pearl Harbor is the start of where we are today.”
His country ensuring that Holmes is revered for the generations to follow.
Project Oklahoma has individually identified 356 crew members of the Oklahoma through DNA and matched with surviving family members.
We lost a good, good friend in our community this week.
I really don’t remember the first time I made the acquaintance of Kendall McKernon, but it doesn’t really matter. I know it was relatively late in life, and we got to know each other at the Sandy Hill Farmers Market in Juckett Park. Here’s this guy, poking around with his camera taking shots wide and long, but also up close and candid, engaging in conversation with the vendors and just reveling and eating up the back and forth. I was sitting there hawking my first book, and he would come by the table to chat me up, and take photos of me and book subject WWII veteran and fellow former HFHS history teacher Alvin Peachman, which somehow wound up in the local weekly The Chronicle. Alvin was our own embodiment of Hudson Falls and Kingsbury, but Kendall was becoming one as well.
Matthew Rozell and WWII veteran Alvin Peachman, Juckett Park, September 2015, by Kendall.
Later, he came to Juckett Park for the dedication of a tree in my name, and wrote up a succinct summary of the event, complete with his candid photos—he just had the knack, the artist’s eye, for framing his subjects, no matter what the subject—and conveying the emotion, the beauty to the viewer, as all in the community who witnessed his work can attest. I recognized the inherent uniqueness in his work, and helped him learn how to watermark the images that he was posting out to the world. In the article, he deflected attention from himself as a ‘chronicler of all things Hudson Falls’—but you were, Kendall. You just were.
I was happy for him when he opened his shop at the Sandy Hill Arts Center at the former Masonic Temple, a vision he helped Bill realize with his own love and faith of our community. Naturally, he wanted to carry my history books. My regret right now, as with many of us, is that maybe we didn’t just drop in and sit with him for a while in our busy worlds. As a former shopkeeper myself, sometimes it can get a bit lonely in slow times, though a few times when I slowed my truck driving past, to see an opening, he was definitely holding court with the ladies or some customers. It made me smile, because the times when I did stop, I got some good stories with a twinkle, and caught up on the local happenings, of course.
I’m sad for Kathleen, his daughter, my former student (sorry Kat, but you were Kathleen to me!) for his friends and former classmates who really knew him better, especially Joyce, Bill, and Tom—but he was ours for a moment; he certainly was a kindred soul.
The memory of Kendall is just a warm bath moment for me. Kendall McKernon was ‘Mr. Hudson Falls’ in my book, for our era, and his work will live on, like his memory and his legacy.
The Man, by one of his friends.
You have made your mark; go forward, sweet sir and gentle prince of Hudson Falls and Washington County, and be free with your beloved and all the ancestors greeting you right now. ~MR
I recently finished my 10th book in The Things Our Fathers Saw series. It covers a pretty much unknown aspect of American involvement in World War II, the China/Burma/India arena of the war.
In the writing of this series, I have been approached by people, generally children of combatants, and sometimes in slightly indignant fashion, wanting to know ‘why there is no CBI Theater’ focus in my books, as if I considered these men and women who served in that arena somehow less worthy of recognition and study. The ordinary unfortunate explanation was simply that comparatively few Americans served there, a complex and confusing pocket of activity that technically is not even classified a ‘theater’ of operations in the sense of, let’s say, the European or Pacific Theaters. It did not have a unified combat command per se; there weren’t any conventional U.S. infantry divisions slogging it out in China, Burma, or India—most of the ground fighting was done by British, Indian, and Chinese troops. Only about a percent and a half of Americans in uniform during World War II were engaged here, most in supporting roles; less than 3,000 U.S. ground troop volunteers made up legendary long-range fighting forces known as Merrill’s Marauders and others, who were pushed to the brink of extinction after just five months of combat.
Yet I found some amazing stories, from a nurse who was just one of two accompanying Claire Chennault’s famed mercenary ‘Flying Tigers’ taking out Japanese bombers over China and Burma, to the men who flew dangerous high altitude cargo missions from India to China over the Himalayas, to the Marauders on the ground and the fighter pilots who supported them from the sky. It clocked in at 362 pages of narrative oral history, and I hope it closes this gap in the knowledge of World War II; the last Marauder died just as I began writing it in January. You can get it at my direct store above in the SHOP MY BOOKS tab, or look it up at that behemoth, Amazon. The TOC is pasted below. Thanks for reading and your support.
In VOLUME 10 of The Things Our Fathers Saw® series,‘Over The Hump/China, Burma, India’, we will visit with the veterans of most overlooked theater of World War II as they prepare to fly over and march through the most inhospitable terrain on the planet, from the Himalaya Mountains to the jungles and mountains of Burma, battling elite Japanese forces, sickness and tropical disease. Ride with the cargo pilots as they are buffeted by 200 MPH+ winds over some of the highest mountains in the world; join fighter pilots taking to the skies to attack Japanese bombers and other aircraft as the enemy tries to disrupt the flow of supplies from India to China. Accompany the long range American penetration forces as they go deep into the heart of enemy held territory to stem the Japanese onslaught. Gain a better understanding of why these forgotten men need to be remembered and celebrated today.
AUTHOR’S NOTE INTRODUCTION COMMUNISTS AND NATIONALISTS WORLD WAR II BEGINS IN ASIA ‘VINEGAR JOE’ STILWELL ‘WE GOT A HELL OF A BEATING’ THE AVG STATIONMASTER ‘WE WRECKED A LOT OF PLANES’ NO REPLACEMENTS CHENNAULT’S EARLY WARNING SYSTEM THE BURMA SALWEEN GORGE MISSION CONDITIONS OTHER MISSIONS ‘I WENT AROUND THE WORLD’ THE MARINES BOOZE FOR SPARE PARTS THE SLIT TRENCH ENCOUNTER HOME THE FLYING TIGERS NURSE ‘I FELT LIKE ALICE IN WONDERLAND’ A ‘FOREIGN DEVIL’ GETTING BACK TO CHINA ‘THESE KIDS, THEY’RE GOING TO FIGHT?’ SPENDING TIME WITH CHENNAULT WAR THE WARNING SYSTEM MARRIED WITH A BLACK EYE ‘WHEN THEY CAME BACK, THEY WERE MEN’ ‘THAT’S WHEN I LOST HIM’ HOME ‘WOMEN DIDN’T TALK ABOUT THOSE THINGS’ THE CARGO PILOT THE LIFELINE OF CHINA HAZARDOUS DUTY MEDALS THE COMMUNIST CHINESE THE GRAND PIANO THE CHINESE PEOPLE GOING HOME THE HOSPITAL SHIP THE RESERVES KEEPING IN TOUCH CIVILIAN LIFE THE B-24 RADIOMAN SHIPPING OUT TO INDIA MISSIONS WEIGHTLESS ANOXIA DETACHED SERVICE COMING HOME THE B-29 RADARMAN THE B-29S RADAR MISSIONS SINGAPORE BOMBING JAPAN ‘WE LOST OUR PILOT’ A SECRET WEAPON AFTER THE WAR THE ACE PILOT TRAINING INDIA FIRST KILL ‘I BELIEVE I’M GOING TO GET KILLED TOMORROW’ PURPLE HEART ‘PETE, DON’T SHOOT!’ 87 MISSIONS THE CHINESE WAR’S END JAPAN OCCUPATION DUTY THE THUNDERBOLT PILOT THE TEST CALLED UP PILOT TRAINING THE THUNDERBOLT TO THE CBI BURMA MARAUDERS’ SUPPORT THE NATIVE PEOPLE WAR’S END HOME ‘THEY WERE SOLDIERS’ THE VIRGINIA FARMBOY ‘I LIED LIKE A RUG’ FORCED MARCHES AT HIGH SPEED STILWELL’S GOALS WINNING SUPPORT OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES INSPIRED TO LEARN THE HEAVY WEAPONS COMMANDER ‘I’M NOT ASKING YOU’ ‘A MINIMUM OF 90% CASUALTIES’ LIVING CONDITIONS THE IMPERIAL MARINES FIGHT AT WALAWBUM WOUNDED HOME ‘GENERAL STILWELL JUST LAUGHED’ GOING BACK ‘YOU VOLUNTEERED FOR THIS MISSION’ ‘I’LL TAKE CARE OF IT’ REUNIONS THE ENGINEER DEPRESSION DAYS ‘YOU’LL GO WHERE I TELL YOU TO GO’ INDIA COMBAT TEAMS THE RIVER CROSSING ‘WE WERE THROUGH’ THE END OF THE WAR ‘HE BELONGS TO ME’ SOUVENIRS STILL ALIVE THE 4-F VOLUNTEER UNIT ‘GALAHAD’ ‘EVERYBODY WAS A MARAUDER’ THE NATIVES GENERAL MERRILL ‘WE HAD NO DANCING GIRLS’ GOING HOME OBSERVATIONS THE RADIO WIZARD ‘I WANTED TO DO MY PART’ THE ‘SONG OF INDIA’ MULES SHOOTING ‘THEY WOULD GO WILD’ MARCHING PAST THE HOSPITAL FOOD AND SICKNESS ON THE MOVE HOME LAST WORDS THE IMMIGRANT ‘YOU BECOME A FATALIST’ POINT MAN ‘WE DIDN’T GET DECORATED’ ‘KILLED IN ACTION’ THE CHIEF THE LEDO ROAD ‘A VERY TOUGH THING’ HOME THE COMBAT CAMERAMAN I DEPRESSION DAYS BECOMING A CAMERAMAN ‘WE NEED THE FIVE DOLLARS’ ‘THE WAR WAS ON TOP OF US’ ‘I WON WORLD WAR II’ GOING OVERSEAS THE VOLUNTEER ‘YOU HAVE TO STAY HOME AND FARM’ ‘YOU’RE THE SON OF A GUN THAT WENT AWOL’ IN THE BRIG ‘MY GOD, A TORPEDO!” PICKING UP THE DEAD ‘ONE DAY THE SALVATION CAME’ ‘MY SQUAD LEADER WAS A CONVICTED FELON’ ‘POOREST GODDAM EXCUSE FOR A MULE SKINNER’ THE LETTER ‘WE CAN DISAPPEAR IN THE JUNGLE’ COMBAT WOUNDED ‘I CAN SAVE THAT LEG’ THE NISEI INTERPRETER ‘THE MEN WHO ALTERED MY LIFE’ RECONNECTING WITH TRUCK ‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT A HERO IS’ THE COMBAT CAMERAMAN II GETTING TO INDIA GETTING TO STILWELL’S HEADQUARTERS THE CHINESE NEWSREEL WONG GOING AWOL TRAVERSING THE MOUNTAINS ‘I’M NO DAMNED VOLUNTEER’ ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS OUTFIT’ HIT BY A C-47 AIR DROP ‘I HAD NEVER CRIED IN MY LIFE’ “YOU’RE THE GUY I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR’ THE LAST WORD
Teaching History Matters 