Posts Tagged World War II

Wonder Women: 1942

August 1942. “Formerly a sociology major at the University of Southern California, Mrs. Eloise J. Ellis (left) now “keeps ‘em flyin’” at the Naval Air Base, Corpus Christi, Texas. She is a supervisor under civil service in the Assembly and Repair Department. It is her job to maintain morale among the women by helping them solve housing and other personal problems. With her is Jo Ann Whittington, an NYA trainee at the plant.” Large format Kodachrome transparency by Howard Hollem for the Office of War Information.

Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

Amnon Weinstein prepares a violin from the Holocaust for exhibit. He began restoring the violins in 1996 and now has 30 of them to display in an exhibit called "Violins of Hope."

Amnon Weinstein first encountered a violin from the Holocaust 50 years ago. He was a young violin maker in Israel, and a customer brought him an old instrument in terrible condition and wanted it restored.

The customer had played on the violin on the way to the gas chamber, but he survived because the Germans needed him for their death camp orchestra. He hadn’t played on it since.

“So I opened the violin, and there inside there [were] ashes,” Weinstein says.

Weinstein was horrified; were these incinerated remnants of concentration camp victims? The Nazis plucked Jewish musicians from arriving cattle cars and forced them to play as other prisoners went to their death. Hundreds of Weinstein’s relatives — grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins — died in the Holocaust. To handle one of those instruments was too much.

“I could not. I could not,” he says.

It was many decades later in 1996, when Weinstein was ready. He put out a call for violins from the Holocaust. One came from a survivor who played in the Auschwitz Men’s Orchestra.

UNC Charlotte music professor David Russell plays a violin that belonged to a member of the Auschwitz Men's Orchestra.

On a recent day, the violin was being played by David Russell, a music professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Russell and Weinstein are old friends, which is how Charlotte came to host the North American debut of Violins of Hope. Eighteen instruments are here; Russell says each carries the touch and playing style of its previous owner.

“When I play one of these instruments, I go through that same process of discovering what makes this instrument sound the best,” Russell says. “That means that I’m walking in their footsteps and their voice is actually heard by my playing of this violin.”

The violin was perhaps the most important instrument for the Jewish people, Weinstein says. He has restored more than 30 Holocaust violins, and many are inlaid with an intricate Star of David in mother-of-pearl. Orthodox Judaism forbade displaying portraits or sculpture, so Weinstein says violins often hung as art on the walls.

“Never [would you] see a Jewish house without an instrument on the wall. It was a kind of tradition,” he says.

Weinstein began collecting these violins to honor that tradition, but also to break the silence: His family never spoke of the Holocaust. Once, he asked about his grandfather and says his mother silently opened a book about the war and pointed to a pile of bodies.

The Auschwitz Men's Orchestra is seen here in an undated photo. Jewish musicians were forced to perform in Nazi concentration camps.

Weinstein then married Assi Bielski, whose father was a famous Jewish resistance fighter portrayed in the film Defiance. Weinstein was amazed how happily the Bielski family talked about the war.

“We are completely different in this way,” he says. “Her family killed Germans, by quantities, not by one. My family was all killed by the Germans.”

Bielski says her family was always very happy, and they were not humiliated.

“It’s the number tattooed on your arm that is a constant reminder of the humiliation,” Bielski says. “For us there was none of it.”

Weinstein says that perhaps what he’s doing with the violins is to make his life a little bit easier from “all [of] this heritage, which is unbelievable.”

The Violins of Hope are Weinstein’s resistance. They’re like tombstones, he says, for the thousands of Jewish instruments and musicians destroyed in the war.

You can listen to a documentary about Violins of Hope from member station WDAV here

NPR – “Violins of Hope”: Instruments from the Holocaust (found via the-seed-of-europe)

By an unknown photographer, unknown location, December 22, 1943

“A Bell System switchboard where overseas calls are handled. Not all of the services shown here are available under wartime conditions”

The most famous female worker of World War II was the mythical Rosie the Riveter, who patriotically joined the industrial workforce to do her bit in a shipyard or an aircraft factory. There were many real-life Rosies, but many more women worked in service or clerical jobs as secretaries, bank tellers, retail clerks, and telephone operators.

(National Archives, Records of the Women’s Bureau (86-WWT-28-3))

With some of New York’s skyscrapers looming through clouds of gas, some U.S. army nurses at the hospital post at Fort Jay, Governors Island, New York, wear gas masks as they drill on defense precautions, on November 27, 1941. (AP Photo)

(AP Photo/Source: The Atlantic)

“There are no great men, just great challenges which ordinary men, out of necessity, are forced by circumstances to meet.”

- William Halsey, Fleet Admiral of the United States Navy during World War II, stated this after being asked about his contribution and role in the Pacific against Japan.

Keeping a man "in his place" - A WAAF member demonstrates self-defense on January 15, 1942.

Specially chosen airwomen are being trained for police duties in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). They have to be quick-witted, intelligent and observant woman of the world – They attend an intensive course at the highly sufficient RAF police school – where their training runs parallel with that of the men.

(AP Photo/The Atlantic)

In this and dozens of other, similar pictures made at New York’s Penn Station, LIFE’s Alfred Eisenstaedt captured a private moment repeated in public millions of times over the course of the war: a guy, a girl, a goodbye — and no assurance that he’ll make it back. By war’s end, more than 400,000 American troops had been killed.

The history of the Pacific war can never be written without telling the story of the U.S.S. O’Bannon. Time after time the O’Bannon and her gallant little sisters were called upon to turn back the enemy. They never disappointed me.

- Admiral William F. Halsey

In 1942 the USS O’Bannon, an American destroyer, was dispatched to the South Pacific to face off against Japan’s naval forces. By the end of the Second World War, the O’Bannon earned more service and battle stars, a total of 17, than any other American destroyer. Additionally, it also participated in one of the oddest and most perplexing incidents during the War.

The USS O'Bannon 450, an American destroyer used during WWII in the South Pacific.

The event, later known as “The Maine Potato Episode,” occurred on April 5, 1943 when the destroyer came across a large Japanese submarine, the RO-35, which was cruising on the surface and oblivious to the approaching ship (someone was obviously neglecting their lookout duty). The O’Bannon decided to ram the sub to sink it. At the last minute, however, they decided against it because some feared the sub was a minelayer, a ship/sub used to lay out sea mines, and if it was rammed it would blow up the destroyer as well.

Because of this quick withdrawal, the O’Bannon found itself moving directly parallel to the RO-35. On closer inspection, Ernest Herr, a sailor onboard the destroyer, stated that the Japanese sailors were sleeping on the deck. The sleeping crew quickly woke up and found themselves directly across from their enemy.  The O’Bannon was at a disadvantage because it was too close to the sub to lower its guns and the sub had 3-inch deck guns at the ready.

Faced with the sub’s guns, the O’Bannon crew began to use whatever they had at their disposal to fight the Japanese. Reaching inside nearby storage bins, the crew began to pelt the Japanese sailors with the barrels’ content. Inside the containers were potatoes and soon an epic potato battle began. Either the Japanese were not used to potatoes or were expecting the worst since they believed the potatoes were actually hand grenades. The sub’s sailors were too preoccupied with throwing these potato “grenades” overboard, or right back at the O’Bannon, that they were not manning their deck guns.

The O’Bannon took the opportunity to gain distance as their enemies were busy handling their potato issue. Once the O’Bannon was far enough away, they properly lower their guns and began firing at the sub, who, by now, started their decent. Before the RO-35 was fully submerge, the O’Bannon damaged the sub’s conning tower. After it disappeared from the surface, the destroyer maneuvered over the sub and delivered a depth charge attack. After the war, information was released that the Japanese RO-35 submarine did, in fact, sink as a result of O’Bannon‘s actions.

Upon hearing about the potato incident, the Association of Potato Growers of Maine sent a plague commemorating the event. It was mounted near the crew’s mess hall, since, as Herr noted, “it was the crew’s battle.”

Prisoner of war picking potatoes at Camp Houlton in Maine around 1945.

Further Reading
USS O’Bannon at the Destroyer History Foundation’s website.
Ernest A. Herr, “The Maine Potato Episode.”
USS O’Bannon‘s website. (Photos & Information)
Photo: Prisoner of War Picking Potatoes, Houlton, 1945 via Maine Memory Network.

Members of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) pose at Camp Shanks, New York, before leaving from New York Port of Embarkation on Feb. 2, 1945. The women are with the first contingent of Black American WACs to go overseas for the war effort From left to right are, kneeling: Pvt. Rose Stone; Pvt. Virginia Blake; and Pfc. Marie B. Gillisspie. Second row: Pvt. Genevieve Marshall; T/5 Fanny L. Talbert; and Cpl. Callie K. Smith. Third row: Pvt. Gladys Schuster Carter; T/4 Evelyn C. Martin; and Pfc. Theodora Palmer.

via The Atlantic

Lone Star: 1942

Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

“In this Second World War women will be used physically as never before, for production of war materials, for substitute labor in factories and on farms as man power is drained by the armed forces, and for guard and emergency duty of all kinds in threatened areas, and for management of evacuations, if it comes to that. Women by themselves cannot win this war. But quite certainly it cannot be won without them.”

- Margaret Culkin Banning, author, stated this in her 1942 book Women For Defense.

Photo

Say Army: 1940

Washington, D.C., June 1940. “New recruits join up. Kermit Kuhn, 21 years old, of Bayard, West Virginia, being examined by Army doctor Major Seth Gayle Jr.” Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative.

Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

Awaiting evacuation, a young refugee hangs onto his dog’s leash in 1940. Vast numbers of pets were, not surprisingly, separated from their families during the war, while breeding progams and animal shelters were often shuttered or cast into disarray.

Actress Carole Landis, a hugely popular pin-up “poster girl” among Allied troops, logged over 100,000 miles during the war, and spent more time visiting with servicemen than any other American actress. Amoebic dysentery and malaria were just two of the illnesses she contracted during her travels. She also battled depression for years, and committed suicide, at the age of 29, in 1948.