Today, November 11, is Remembrance Day here in Canada and usually I write about my great Uncle Edwin Denner Buller who was in World War I and my father's first cousin Edward Raymond Blake who was shot down over France in World War II. It is 75 years since the end of World War II and my birth; I was born in September after Victory over Japan day and Victory in Europe Day. Born into peacetime but remembering well the footage shown in the movie theatres in my childhood remember the devastation of World War II and in particular the murder of six million Jewish people. The pictures of the Concentration Camps are forever seared into my childhood mind and everytime I heard about people being put into camps that is what I am reminded of and probably will be to the end of my days. Surely we learned from that cruelty that was dealt to the Jewish people (and anyone else who disagreed with the New Order in Germany).
It is overcast today but unusually warm for a Remembrance Day in Canada. If we were permitted to go to the Service at the War Memorial in Ottawa it would be extremely crowded but we are not. If we go we will be told to move along and not gather in groups. COVID-19 has changed our entire lives for the moment and likely for another year to come. Perhaps next year at Remembrance Day we can once again gather at the War Memorial and leave our poppies on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
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