Remembrance
Friday, March 29, 2024
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Memorial from under 2 

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, located in Montgomery, Alabama is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence. Set on a six-acre site, the memorial uses sculpture, art, and design to contextualize racial terror. The site includes a memorial square with 800 six-foot monuments to symbolize thousands of racial terror lynching victims in the United States and the counties and states where this terrorism took place.

Aristedes de Sousa Mendes

Anyone who has seen “Casablanca” knows the connection between Portugal and World War II refugees. But few know the story of the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who in 1940 saved tens of thousands of lives only to be punished for this heroism by his own government. As we mark Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, we should honor this man who engaged in what one historian called “perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.”

Post_Marjorie_Merriweather_portrait

March 15, 1887 - September 12, 1973

The Feisty Female Mogul Who Built Trump's Florida Palace: Before women were even allowed to vote, Marjorie Merriweather Post was running her father's corporation—and entertaining in her gilded Mar-a-Lago estate.During her second marriage, Marjorie Merriweather Post became the proud owner of the biggest privately owned, sea-going yacht in the world, the Sea Cloud. It was a Roaring Twenties floating bastion of luxury, decked out in only the finest furniture and art and able to host up to 400 people for tea. The Sea Cloud was so grand that one royal guest, Queen Maud of Norway, saw the Louis XVI master suite and reportedly exclaimed, "Why, you live like a queen, don't you?"

Image of World War I hero Marcelino Serna 2

On April 26, 1896, in Chihuahua, Mexico, Marcelino Serna was born into a very poor family. He left home at the age of twenty, and crossed the border into the United States, traveling to El Paso, Texas to find a job and improve his life. Since he didn’t speak English, he had to take low-paying jobs and was soon working in Denver, Colorado on a sugar beet farm. When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Serna was in Denver working with a group of men who were picked up by federal officers checking the draft status of potential soldiers. To prevent his deportation to Mexico, Serna volunteered to join the Army.

Edward Sames at 99 

Colonel Edward David Shames (June 13, 1922 – December 3, 2021) was a United States Army enlisted man and officer who later served in the U.S. Army Reserve. During World War II he was assigned to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. At the time of his death, Shames was the last surviving officer and, following the death of Roderick G. Strohl in December 2019, oldest surviving member of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was Jewish and reported being deeply affected by his personal viewing of Nazi Germany's concentration camps.