{"id":33,"date":"2007-09-12T21:28:17","date_gmt":"2007-09-13T02:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/12\/inferno\/"},"modified":"2007-09-13T19:07:43","modified_gmt":"2007-09-14T00:07:43","slug":"inferno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/12\/inferno\/","title":{"rendered":"Inferno"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hamburg, Germany was a major port of embarkation for\u00a0emigrants bound for America\u00a0during the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Since the Germans are good record keepers, detailed records were undoubtedly kept about these emigrants, our ancestors.\u00a0 My grandmother Ida Pohl was a little girl when she emigrated with her mother and siblings from Hamburg in 1893.\u00a0 As\u00a0an amateur genealogist, I was frustrated to learn that most of these records were destroyed by British and American bombers during World War II.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Interested to learn more about what happened, I found Keith Lowe’s book, Inferno<\/em> <\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, which\u00a0describes the Allied bombing raids on Hamburg, Germany during World War II.\u00a0 I highly recommend this book to history buffs and genealogists alike.<\/p>\n

It’s a difficult book to read at night before retiring.\u00a0 The sad eyewitness accounts are <\/a>gruesome, and although riveting, they make for an uneasy night’s sleep.\u00a0 Lowe tells the story from both sides.\u00a0 He describes\u00a0the mission preparation and the consternation, fear and\u00a0courage of the aircrews as they dodged antiaircraft guns and Nazi fighter planes.\u00a0 He then describes the civilians in the aftermath of each raid.\u00a0 They suffered almost total destruction.<\/p>\n

The Inferno <\/em>is the firestorm that happened on the night of July 27, 1943.\u00a0 A firestorm is a ghastly thing.\u00a0 Everything burns.\u00a0 Temperatures can reach 1,400 degrees Celsius.\u00a0 Enough to melt glass and liquefy asphalt streets onto which people ran and soon died.\u00a0 It\u00a0produces a suffocating smoke over a vast area and sucks the oxygen out of\u00a0basement shelters where the doomed\u00a0hid.\u00a0 The wind vortex created by the firestorm reached hurricane strength, up to 170 mph, enough to whisk children out of the arms of parents and pull the elderly down the street into the fire.<\/p>\n

I learned why there are no emigration records.\u00a0 It seems unimportant now.<\/p>\n

Lowe also describes the history of Hamburg and the rise of Nazi power prior to the war.\u00a0 I’ve often wondered how a people could witness such transgressions and allow it to happen.\u00a0 One quote <\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, about the persecution of the Jews\u00a0offers somewhat of an explanation:<\/p>\n

For me nothing was more devastating than the fact that nobody, not even those who opposed the [Nazi] regime most vehemently, stood up against this, but remained passive and weak.\u00a0 I cannot stress these facts too strongly.\u00a0 It was as if we were caught in a stranglehold.\u00a0 And, worst of all, one even gets used to being half throttled; what at first appeard to be unbearable pressure becomes a habit, becomes easier to tolerate; hate and desperation are diluted with time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps it is the same with everyone in every age though.\u00a0 For example if you disagree with the current war in Iraq, what can you do about it?\u00a0 How can one person stop an administration?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hamburg, Germany was a major port of embarkation for\u00a0emigrants bound for America\u00a0during the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Since the Germans are good record keepers, detailed records were undoubtedly kept about these emigrants, our ancestors.\u00a0 My grandmother Ida Pohl was a little girl when she emigrated with her mother and siblings from Hamburg in 1893.\u00a0 As\u00a0an amateur genealogist, … Continue reading “Inferno”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-genealogy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/home.iseeancestors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}