The Oxbow Incident & Vigilantism

This excellent black and white movie based on the book of the same name by Walter van Tilburg Clark, was released in 1943, but it is just as relevant today, as in the past, because how justice is administered is always relevant. It received an Oscar nomination for best picture. The film starred Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Harry Morgan (later of "Dragnet" and "MASH" fame) and Anthony Quinn, with a couple of other well known faces in supporting roles: Jane Darwell (of "The Grapes of Wrath" fame) and Harry Davenport (of "Gone With The Wind" fame), along with some others. As was not uncommon in those times, the film was a relatively short 75 minutes in length.

If you've never seen this movie, be aware that this contains the basic story, ending and all. The crux of the story, set some 20 years after the Civil War, is about a group people from a small western town, who take out after the men they believe murdered one of the nearby ranchers to steal his cattle. Even before leaving town the calls for revenge and hanging fill the air, as reason and legal rights take a back seat to emotion and ego. When the posse captures three men, they indeed have the rancher's cattle, but the head of the group (played by Dana Andrews) tells the posse he bought the cattle, but did not get a bill of sale. This becomes the main evidence against the men, who are told the rancher was murdered. The man tells the posse they did not kill the rancher, but by this time a former Confederate army major, dressed in his old uniform, pushes for hanging the men, which goes against the order of the judge who authorized the posse. So we have a spit and polish military man who doesn't want to follow orders of a superior in an attempt to relive his past. The brooding Major had forced his adult son to come along with the posse in order to instill some "masculinity" into his sensitive son, who shows no inclination to be anything like his father (sometimes the apple falls further from the tree than the saying implies, or does it?). The Major's fear of weakness shows, when the head of the captured men whimpers a bit, and the Major tells him "you're taking it like a woman." One man (played by Harry Davenport) wholeheartedly opposes the vigilante justice being pushed by the Major, but he finds it difficult to rein in the escalating calls for the executions, although the Major's son joins him in opposing his father, as do a couple of others. One of the captured men is a Mexican (played by Anthony Quinn), which adds an element of racism and bigotry to the emotional mob, as they call him, "the Mex." The last of the three is an old man not completely in possession of his faculties, played by Francis Ford.* The three men are trapped in a nightmarish drama as the posse decides their fate, complete with one of the posse who likes to carry one of the nooses and hold it up and then make the distorted face of a man being strangled to death. Such is the further torture of the desperate men.

Instead of taking the men back to town to await the sheriff, who was at the rancher's home, the angry group, stirred by the Major and a couple of others, votes to hang the men, with only a few having the courage to oppose the action. The Major gives the head man time to write a letter to his wife and two children, which he then gives to the man who had tried so hard to save their lives, so that he can get it to the man's family. This man reads the letter and tries to get the Major to read it too, but to no avail. The Major tries to force his son to chase the horse out from under one of the doomed men, but the son can't do it. The men are hanged and then shot to make sure they are dead. The shots bring the now nearby sheriff and a deputy galloping up. The posse tells the sheriff how they got the killers and hanged them. The sheriff then tells them that the rancher is not dead and that he has the men who wounded the rancher. The sheriff hears that only seven men opposed the hangings, which brings him to say, "God better have mercy on you; you won't get any from me."

The posse returns to town and the Major heads home, followed a bit distantly by his son. The Major enters the house, but then locks the door so his son can't follow. When the son tries the door but can't get in, he yells into his father, calling him a "depraved, murderous beast," and adding, "You can't feel pity, you can't even feel guilt. You knew those men were innocent, but you were cold crazy to see them hanged and to make me watch it.... How does it feel to have begot a weakling Major? Does it make you fearful there may be some weakness in you too that other men may discover and whisper about?" The Major goes into another room and shoots himself.

The other members of the posse go to the saloon, where one of the seven who opposed the hangings (played by Henry Fonda) reads the hanged man's letter to all present. The letter mentions the man who tried to help them so much, and that, "I suppose there are some other good men here too, only they don't seem to realize what they're doing... Man just can't naturally take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurting everybody in the world... 'cause then he's not just breakin' one law, but all laws.... (Law) is everything  people have ever found out about justice... it's the very conscience of humanity ... There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience?"

* Francis Ford was the brother of famous movie director, John Ford.

This photo is from the DVD released in 2003 by 20th Century Fox.

WORD HISTORY:
Vigil-This word, the source of the word, "vigilante," goes back to Indo European "weg," which had the notion of "be active."^ This gave its Latin offspring "vigil," which meant "alert, watching, awake," and which produced Latin "vigilia," meaning "a watch (noun, but not the time piece)." This was passed on to Latin-based Old French as "vigile," with the meaning "watch (in the sense "stand guard")," but it also came to be used in the religious sense as "evening before a holy day." English borrowed the word from the French carried to England by the Normans, but not until the 1200s, and with the religious meaning, which has since broadened beyond religion to mean "observance of a cause, or in observance of a departed one," often with the use of lighted candles. 

^ "Vigil" is related to "vigor," a Latin-derived word borrowed by English from French, and distantly to "velocity," a word borrowed from Latin, and it is also distantly related to "waken," "wake" (verb) and "watch" (both noun and verb), all from the Germanic roots of English. 

Is It 'Rumania' or 'Romania?' Part One

I just want to set down a little basic historical information about this nation located in southeastern Europe. I hope some of you will take an interest and head to your local library to learn more about "Rumania" ... I mean "Romania." Actually, the form "Rumania," which I still use, is now considered outdated, with "Romania" being the preferred spelling. A good deal of my reading about this country over the years was done about its participation in World War Two, and it was done reading German text, which uses "Rumanien," so that likely has reinforced the use of "u" with me. I also recall seeing the spelling "Roumania," but I can't recall just where. Anyway, here's just a very brief sketch of "Rumania," the spelling I'll use. American readers should take note that somewhere between 500,000 and about a million Americans are of Rumanian descent.* For Clevelanders, a prominent Rumanian-American neighborhood has been on the near West Side in the Detroit-Shoreway area, where there have traditionally also been many Italian-Americans. There is a Rumanian Byzantine church on W. 65th Street and a Rumanian Orthodox church is located further out on the West Side of Cleveland on Warren Road.

The present day Rumanians trace back to an Indo European people called the Thracians, who also were known to some as the "Dacians," and indeed the Romans, who conquered the area inhabited by the Dacians in circa 105 A.D., called their colony "Dacia." This brought Latin to the region, and after all of these centuries, Latin is still the base of the modern Rumanian language, although a small number of words are presumed to have remained from Dacian, as these words do not seem to be linked to other languages which have had influences on Rumanian, like Slavic, which has provided a fair amount of borrowed vocabulary. German has also had some influence on vocabulary, as a sizable German settlement took place in Transylvania, known as "Siebenbürgen" in German (Seven Castles or Fortresses, after seven German fortified cities in the area).**

As Rome's empire struggled to endure incursions from invaders and internal strife, the Roman presence in Dacia diminished. Dacia too saw numerous invaders, including Magyars,*** who occupied the Transylvania area, although "seemingly" the native Dacians remained in the overall majority. The main regions of the area in southeastern Europe associated with Rumania are: Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvania, but Bukovina, Dobruja, Bessarabia and part of the Banat also have connections, although often contested by other countries, as has been the case with much of Transylvania.**** One of the historical debates about the Rumanians has involved their ancestry. Generally, Rumanians have said they are from the Dacians, who withdrew to safer areas to avoid the invaders who rampaged through their territory. As the invasions subsided, these people gradually moved back into their former lands. This "history" certainly has support, as the Latin dialect continued to be spoken by the people, later known as Vlachs, which would seem to tie in with the Latin speaking Dacians of previous centuries. I'll come back to this in "Part Two," which will follow shortly.

* From U.S. Census Bureau.

** A number of these Germans, generally known as "Transylvanian Saxons," immigrated to Cleveland beginning in the late 1800s, and indeed the "Alliance of Transylvanian Saxons" is headquartered here on Pearl Road (in the Cleveland suburb of Parma).

*** The Magyars were an ancient people generally believed to have been from the area of western Asia, in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains. Like many tribes, they moved around, eventually moving into Europe and settling in what is now the general area of Hungary, where they formed the basis for the modern Hungarians. As with all of the groups mentioned in this article, extensive modern DNA testing will provide better information on the history of the various ethnic groups in history, thus "perhaps" superseding some of the assumptions made by historians over time.

**** When nobles ruled the various parts of Europe, they acquired lands through conquest, heredity or marriage, often irrespective of the ethnic-linguistic composition of any given area. Natural resources were often a major driving force to acquire an area, as such resources could provide a direct economic benefit, and could also be a powerful source of economic benefit by selling or trading those resources, or a specific resource, with those in need of such. For example, in more modern times, when oil and its derivatives came into prominence for fuel, nations with large oil reserves became very important. As nationalism among ethnic groups developed, especially more from the 1800s onward, boundary adjustments based upon those ethnic groups became a major source of confrontation, not that the national resource or industrial benefit of an area no longer mattered.

I consulted the following sources for this article: 

"Kingdoms of Europe" (Chapter 17, Kingdom of Romania) by Gene Gurney, published by Crown Publishers, Inc. NY 1982

"Romania/An Illustrated History" by Nicolae Klepper, published by Hippocrene Books, NY 2002

WORD HISTORY:
Map-This word "seems" to trace back to some Semitic language source, as Hebrew has "mappa," which seems to have meant "cloth," thus, "banner." The Semitic languages are a group of related languages "centered" in the Middle East and eastern Africa, but also spoken beyond those areas. The most common modern Semitic languages are Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew and Tigrinya,^ but in ancient times it included Phoenician, which was spoken in the Middle East and in North Africa by the Carthaginians, a people who had much contact with the Romans, and thus, Latin. Latin borrowed the word as "mappa," which meant "cloth," thus "tablecloth, towel, napkin, banner." This was then used in a compound by Latin as "mappa mundi," which meant "map of the world," with "map" essentially meaning "cloth with drawings of geographic features." Old French, a Latin based language inherited the term as "mapemonde, which was later shortened to just "mappe" in common speech. English borrowed the longer expression from French in the early 1500s, but quickly picked up the shortened version as "map."

^ Arabic and Hebrew are commonly known in much of Europe and North America, but Amharic is spoken in a large part of Ethiopia. Tigrinya is also spoken in parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea, another East African nation.

North German Soup: Schnüsch

Photo added January 22, 2017

"Schnüsch" is a soup from the "Angelland" region of Schleswig, one of the parts of the modern German state of "Schleswig-Holstein," but the making of this soup has now spread beyond its place of origin, including into nearby Denmark. "Angelland" simply means "Land of the Angles," and the Angles migrated, along with other Germanic tribal elements, especially many Saxons, to Britain, where they founded "England," the contracted English form, meaning, "Land of the Angles." There are various versions of this soup, but the one here is what I make, and it is a creamy vegetable soup, but with the addition of herring, a common fish of the north, where the Baltic Sea and the North Sea provide the source of this fish. The ham used in the northern region of Germany for this dish is  "Katenschinken," a style of ham from that general area, where the ham is salt cured and then cold smoked, before going through a drying process of many months. Since you aren't likely to have some Katenschinken stored away somewhere, you can use any kind of ham and I guarantee Beethoven's ghost won't visit you ... well, I pretty much guarantee that. Of course, if you hear the repeated sound of, "DOT DOT DOT DASH," it might be a good idea to see if you can get a hold of some Katenschinken for the next time you make this soup.

Schnüsch (North German Creamy Vegetable Soup)
For about 6 servings:

2 strips bacon, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons of flour 
8 oz. sliced carrots (fresh or frozen)
8 oz. peas (frozen are great, canned not so much, because they are softened)
8 oz. green beans (frozen are great)
2 to 3 medium to large potatoes, cut into about quarter inch slices
1/2 cup ham, small cubes
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups milk 
pickled herring
parsley

Saute bacon until most fat is rendered, add 2 tablespoons butter (melt) to the bacon fat, stir in 6 tablespoons of  flour and cook for a minute or two to make a roux, but don't let the roux brown too much (I like this very thick, but you can use less butter and flour for a thinner soup). Meanwhile, in a separate pan, boil the potato and carrot slices until softened, but not falling apart. (Back to the roux) Add milk, a little at a time, stirring to avoid sticking, until all milk is incorporated and the liquid is somewhat thickened, add the sugar and salt and stir to mix in and dissolve. Stir in the peas and green beans, neither of which needs to cook a long time. Drain the potatoes and carrots (you can save some of the liquid, in case you want to thin the soup, or you can use more milk to do so), add to the soup and stir; likewise with the ham cubes. Add some parsley. Prior to serving, stir in some small pieces of pickled herring, giving the soup a minute to heat the herring, or you can just put the herring pieces on top of each serving. Many Germans serve the herring on the side.

NOTE: While the above recipe is my own adaptation, it is heavily based on the recipe in: "The Cuisines of Germany," by Horst Scharfenberg, Poseidon Press, New York, 1980.  

I put the herring pieces on top for this photo.
 
WORD HISTORY:
Herring-The ultimate origins of this word for a common fish are uncertain, but West Germanic, a branch of Old Germanic,^ had "heringaz," which was used for the fish name. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "haering," which then became "hering," before the second "r" was added to give us the modern form. The Old Germanic form "might" be from the the color of the fish, and thus from Old Germanic "(k)hairaz," which meant "gray/grey." ^^ Forms in the other West Germanic languages, all used for the fish name, are: German "Hering," Low German Saxon "heren," West Frisian "hjerring," Dutch "haring."
  
^ English, German, Dutch, and West Frisian are all West Germanic, while Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish are all from the North Germanic branch of Old Germanic. The East Germanic branch languages, like Gothic and Burgundian, died out. 

^^ If "herring" does come from Germanic "(k)hairaz," it would be a relative of English "hoar" and German "Herr," the word for "mister," but also meaning "sir," "gentleman," "master," "lord." For more: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2009/01/some-lines-from-inaugural-address.html 

Some Additions To We All Love A Mystery

This was first published in 2007, but I've since revised it ever so slightly and I've added a "Word History." The photo below was added 1-28-22.

 Anna Anderson had a fair number of supporters during her lifetime. If I remember correctly, however, opinion polls over the years showed that the overwhelming percentage of the public did NOT believe she was the Tsar's daughter, and this was well before any Romanov remains were unearthed or any DNA testing was conducted. As I noted in the main story, she had some very wealthy supporters who were her outright benefactors, providing housing, clothing and financial assistance, and at times, a pretty high lifestyle.

By the early to mid 1990s, when DNA testing had shown that Anderson was not the Tsar's daughter, the remaining supporters were just devastated. There was disbelief in the test results, as well as suspicions that testing samples had been planted in some way by Anderson's Romanov opponents. That's understandable. Some people had been very committed to Anna Anderson's cause, and to have that cause totally disintegrate brought about a common human reaction, denial. I don't doubt for one minute the sincerity of the affection that many of her supporters had for her, but at times, our emotional attachment to a cause can smack our own self esteem, when that cause comes crashing down. Certainly I'd have to believe that was the case with many of Anderson's supporters. While they protested the test results, they had to feel that they had been deceived by Anderson and that kind of thing leads to people questioning their own judgment. When Richard Nixon was re-elected as president in 1972, he received tens of millions of votes. Just about a year and a half later, with the Watergate scandal on the front page of every newspaper, it was tough to find anyone who admitted to voting for him.

 Now, was Anna Anderson just a flat out fraud? The bottom line answer would have to be that she was. When she dropped the grenade in the munitions factory, and the one worker was killed, and she herself was badly wounded, she was given much psychiatric treatment, but when she was released from the hospital, the doctors declared that she was not "cured" of her emotional troubles. As I mentioned in the main article, thereafter, she was treated at various other times in her life for mental instability. So, what am I getting at?

I had an acquaintance who passed away a couple of years ago. I won't go into the details, but he "claimed" to be fairly well off financially, to have property in Beverly Hills, and to have worked at a particular job for many years. For those of us who were around him, we could neither prove nor disprove his story, or stories, if you will. When we make friends, we like to know something about those friends, and we like to feel some sort of trust with our friends. In this case, most of us did not believe the guy's story (most of us still liked him very much, although a few felt deceived and they were angry). The reasons are not really important, but my feelings were always that he started out telling a bit of an exaggeration about himself, and that the story eventually just got out of hand, and I guess you could say, that it took on a life of it's own. He had gone so far with the story, that he would have been humiliated to have to recant. I've always felt sorry for him, in that he wanted so much to be something that he wasn't. Now, all of us have exaggerated (or downplayed) something about ourselves, and if exaggerating were a crime, I suppose all of YOU.....okay, all of US would be doing time. Just like Anna Anderson's story, this guy's story just did not always make sense, nor did it fit with his life. So, did Anderson's story just get out of hand, or did she just plain take advantage of gullible folks who wanted to believe that at least one Romanov princess had escaped the Bolsheviks? Remember, as time passed, she didn't have to work, and she lived a very extravagant lifestyle for a time, with wealthy benefactors footing the bill. With that in mind, I want all of you to know that I'm really Ross Perot's long lost son.

This photo of Franziska Schanzkowska, who took the name Anna Anderson, is from Wikipedia and it is in the public domain. It is listed on Wikipedia as having been taken in Berlin in 1922 by an unknown photographer.

WORD HISTORY: 

Canister-This noun for a "cylindrical container, originally metal, but in modern times often of plastic," seems to go back to some Semitic language^ of the Middle East, as Arabic has "qanah" and Assyrian "qanu," both meaning "reed." Ancient Greek had "kanastron," which meant "reed basket," from Greek "kanna"="reed," plus the "tron" ending, which comes from Indo European "-trom," a suffix used to form words to indicate a device or implement. The Greek word was borrowed by Latin as "canistrum," which meant the broader "wicker basket." English borrowed the word, as "canister," from Latin circa 1500. It also came to be used for some artillery shells or other explosive devices, and further for containers for smoke causing agents and for tear gas.

 ^  The Semitic languages are a group of related languages "centered" in the Middle East and eastern Africa, but also spoken beyond those areas. The most common modern Semitic languages are Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew and Tigrinya, but in ancient times Semitic included Assyrian and Phoenician, with Phoenician being spoken in ancient times in the Middle East and in North Africa by the Carthaginians. 

We All Love A Mystery: Anastasia

This was originally published in 2007, but I've updated it very slightly, and I've added a "Word History" and the photo of Robert K. Massie's book below.  

I'm going to write this just for the fun of it, and I'm not going to go back and refresh my memory, so keep in mind, this is from memory... MY memory!!! If that isn't an alarm.... Anyway, if you're interested in the subject, or if you just want to check old Randy's facts, there are a lot of books and articles available in libraries, and probably even online.

It is said that we all love a mystery, if you don't believe me, just check the title of this blog. One of the mysteries of the 20th Century was the story of a woman known as "Anna Anderson." Anna Anderson "claimed" to be the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra. The story went on for decades, and it so captured the public attention, that it spawned a hit movie during the 1950s, starring Ingrid Bergman, and a television mini series in the 1980s, starring Amy Irving. I should note, the Ingrid Bergman movie was for the most part fiction, and was just loosely based upon the Anna Anderson story. The television mini series was more factual, but, in my opinion, was much too skewed toward Anderson's side of the story, especially when compared to evidence that has come about since the filming of the series. All of this "disclaimer" stuff being said....

First a little background:

In July of 1918, the Tsar, his family, and some servants were executed by a Bolshevik execution squad in Ekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains' area of Russia. The Bolsheviks (later known as "Communists") were never terribly open about the executions, and this all prompted sensational stories to crop up, ala Elvis sitings, and President Kennedy living in South America, undoubtedly next door to Hitler, another person "known" to have gone to South America (hey, maybe its the weather there?). The Bolshevik government did admit to executing the Tsar (or Czar, if you prefer), but they played it very cagey about the rest of the Czar's family. Over time, some of the Bolsheviks involved directly in the case wrote articles and books on the subject. The basic gist of these stories was that after the executions, the bodies were hauled off, and eventually, two bodies were burned, or at least they attempted to burn them. If I recall correctly, the stories all agreed that the Tsar's son, Alexei, had been one of the bodies that had been burned. The other body, a female, was even said to have been the Empress Alexandra herself, but most often, stories named either Maria or Anastasia, both were daughters of the Tsar and Tsarina. With such discrepancies, this was an open invitation to "conspiracy theories" and to people claiming to be various persons from the Tsar's family.

Circa 1920, in Berlin, Germany, a woman was fished out of one of the many canals in the city. She was hospitalized for quite some time. At some point, she was looking at a magazine that had a story about the Tsar and his family. She showed another lady, I believe another patient, if I remember right, a picture of the Tsar's family, and then asked the lady if she thought she resembled any of the Tsar's daughters. The lady mentioned Maria, and at some point, the woman said that she was Maria. Later, she changed the story and said she was Anastasia. Well, all of this caused a great stir. This "Anastasia" had numerous scars and this certainly began to give some sort of credence to her claim.

Essentially, her story was this:

One of the Bolshevik guards, whom she said was named Tschaikovsky (no music jokes, please!), rescued her from the execution, as she was only badly wounded. He and some of his family, including his mother, gathered together some belongings in a wagon, and, along with the sick and wounded daughter of the Tsar, headed off from the Ural Mountains to Rumania. Now, this journey was not exactly like going by covered wagon from Dallas to Forth Worth in 1875, but it had to be something more on the order of 1200 to 1500 miles. Eventually, they reached Bucharest, the Rumanian capital. The woman said that by that time, she was pregnant with Tschaikovsky's child. They got married in Bucharest, she gave birth (to a boy, I believe), Tschaikovsky was killed one night in a street fight, and she gave the baby up for adoption. She decided to go to Berlin to see her mother's relatives, but she was despondent and jumped into the canal. (The Empress Alexandra was a German by birth, being born as "Alix," a princess of Hessen. Her well known grandmother, however, was Queen Victoria of England, who, by the way, was also the grandmother of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II).

Over time, the story captured lots of press attention, and this newly found "Anastasia" drew some supporters for her claim. Some of these supporters were financially well off, and they took to supporting her in many ways. Over the years, she was in mental institutions on and off, as her behavior, often times even towards her benefactors, was bizarre, and included her running naked on the roof of an upscale apartment building or hotel. Eventually, she came to the United States, and it was then, if I recall, that she began to call herself "Anna Anderson," as a cover to keep the press and other people from learning her true identity. Many times, she seemed disinterested in proving to anyone who she claimed to be. She returned to Europe and lived in various areas of Germany, including the Black Forest region, where she lived in a rundown cottage and had something like 20 or 30 cats!!! The property smelled so bad, the neighbors complained to the authorities. Later still, she came back to the United States and married a man by the name of Jack Manahan in Virginia. Manahan has been said to have been a bit eccentric himself. She passed away in Virginia in like 1984, and her body was cremated. Manahan died like about two years later.

During her time back in Germany, which included World War II, she filed legal action in the German courts for her claim to be "Anastasia," and thus to be declared a legal heir to the Tsar. The initial action came prior to WWII, but the war interrupted the proceedings, which took up again after the war, continuing until like the 1970s!!! (I just don't recall when the case finally closed, but I believe it was the longest legal case in German history.) During the long legal affair, her ears were compared to photos of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and many "experts" claimed that they matched. In the end, the court ruled that it had neither been proven that she was or was not Anastasia. Back to square one!

One of the contentious issues was the woman's ability to speak, or not speak, fluent Russian. The Grand Duchess Anastasia, and indeed all of the Tsar's children, spoke Russian with their father, and English with their mother. (By the way, Nicholas and Alexandra conversed in English!) The children were tutored in French by a Swiss teacher, and their own mother tutored them in German. During the many years of this whole episode, a few people claimed that they heard the woman speaking Russian. Most often, she told people that she refused to speak Russian, as Russians murdered her family. Many people agreed that she could understand Russian, even if she didn't offer to speak it.

With the fall of Communism in Russia, some people came forward claiming to have found the grave site of the Tsar and his family. In the early 1990s, the area was excavated, and skeletons were found. All sorts of testing was conducted, including DNA tests, and scientists and most folks were satisfied that the skeletons were indeed those of the Imperial family and servants; that is, the Imperial family minus two skeletons. (Did anybody check the closet?) Scientists concluded that Alexei's skeleton was NOT present. Some scientists concluded that the other missing skeleton was that of Maria, while other scientists concluded that it was Anastasia's skeleton that was missing. To my knowledge, that issue has never been clarified. Well, this sent the still present supporters of Anna Anderson into ecstasy, as with one female daughter being unaccounted for, this only helped their claim that she had in fact been Anastasia. With Anderson dead, and her body cremated, DNA testing seemed impossible.

Researchers found that Anna Anderson had had surgery in Virginia in the late 1970s or thereabouts. The surgery involved the removal of a section of her intestine. The hospital kept tissue samples from surgeries to help in research, and they had done so with Anderson's intestine. DNA testing showed that Anderson was NOT the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Her supporters, still persistent, wondered if the tissue sample could have been switched in some way over the years. The hospital procedures were examined up, down and sideways, and again, most scientists and historians were satisfied that the sample was indeed from Anna Anderson. Now, if I remember right, these tissue samples were not labeled out-and-out with the person's name, but with some kind of code number, which then had further cross references.

Then came even more devastating news to Anderson's supporters. Some background first: During the 1920s, after Anderson had claimed to be Anastasia, the Romanov and Hessen families sought to check out the woman's story. Alexandra's brother, Ernst, the Grand Duke of Hessen, hired a detective agency. After a while, it was reported that the woman claiming to be Anastasia was a missing Polish factory worker, named Franziska Schanzkowska. At one point, relatives of Schanzkowska were brought in, and a brother, standing a little distance from the woman, said that she was his sister, Franziska. Later, when asked to put his signature to an affidavit stating that the woman was his missing sister, he declined and said that he'd been mistaken in identifying the woman as his sister. Also at some point, I believe during the court proceedings in Germany, a woman from the Berlin area was brought in and testified that she had been the landlady for a woman by the name of Franziska Schanzkowska, who worked in a munitions factory during World War I. The woman had been severely wounded when she dropped a grenade or some sort of explosive device, actually killing a co-worker. The woman left home one day and never returned, but the landlady read of the mysterious woman fetched from the canal a few days later, noting that Schanzkowska was wearing the same type of clothing described in the newspaper story. She also supposedly identified a picture of the woman as Schanzkowska.

Well, after the DNA tests on the intestinal tissue convinced most people that Anderson was not Anastasia, the remaining question was, "Who was she?" After Alexandra's brother, Ernst, had hired the detective and the Schanzkowska woman was put forward as the claimant's real name, the Hessens and the Romanovs basically didn't bother much with the case again. Apparently, they were satisfied that the woman was not their relative. Unlike in the Ingrid Bergman movie, Anastasia's grandmother (Tsar Nicholas' mother) NEVER met with the woman.

In the 1990s, a grand nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska was located in Hamburg. He gave blood, and his DNA matched the tissue sample's DNA from the hospital. Further, after Jack Manahan died, many of his belongings were sold. A woman bought a book, and said that when she got the book home and went through it, an envelope was tucked inside. The envelope had "Anastasia's hair" written on the front. Inside were some hair follicles. The handwriting on the envelope was determined to have been Manahan's. DNA was able to be extracted from the hair follicles, and it too matched the intestinal tissue from the hospital. Anderson's supporters were devastated. Even with all of the evidence, some still claimed that the evidence had in some way been tampered with, and that Anderson's general demeanor was such that she could not possibly have been a Polish factory worker of peasant heritage. Over the years, too, supporters from different generations said that she could not have known some of the intimate details of the Imperial family without having been there as Anastasia.

Besides the grenade dropped in the munitions plant, Anderson also dropped another bomb later on. She claimed that Alexandra's brother, Ernst, aka Ernie, came to visit them during World War One! Now, during World War One, Russia and Germany were enemies! Ernie was a Grand Duke, and a general in the German Army. To cross lines and visit the Tsar and his sister would have been treason, unless of course, it was approved by none other than Kaiser Wilhelm, who was a cousin to both Nicholas* and Alexandra. Ernie's diaries made no mention of any such visit, nor was any such record found in the Russian or German archives, nor did Nicholas make any mention of such an occasion in his diaries. During the war, there was speculation that Russia and Germany might try to reach some peace accord, but no record of such has been found that involved Ernie. Further, Ernie was stationed on the Western Front (France/Belgium) for the entire war, if I remember correctly; not that he couldn't have been sent eastward quickly for a brief meeting with the Tsar. Then again, there was that nasty thing of having to get through the Russian lines and then back to the German lines. Such a problem would have required many people having some knowledge of what was going on, and no one ever surfaced with such information.

As to Franziska Schanzkowska, she was born in the Posen area (Poznan, in Polish). At the time of her birth, Posen was within the boundaries of Germany. Many people in the area had a passing knowledge of German, as Posen had been under German domination for more than a century. During much of Anderson's life, she used German as her main language, but later she learned English, at least to some extent, and she used this broken English to converse. As to Russian, there is no definite proof that she ever spoke the language, a little, or "like a native," as one supporter claimed. Polish and Russian are both Slavic languages, and not all that different, which is perhaps why she could UNDERSTAND Russian, but not speak it to answer back. As a cover, or perhaps in her own mixed up mind (even many of her supporters admitted she had mental problems, but they always attributed these problems to the terrible ordeal she'd been through during the executions and the aftermath), she said that she'd never speak Russian again, as Russians had murdered her family.

Just one last thing, if a grave with a communist had been uncovered, would it have contained a "Red skeleton?"


 * For a couple of centuries, the Russian Romanov dynasty had frequently married directly into German noble families, or they were related to German nobles in other ways. For instance, Tsar Nicholas' mother, Marie, was the daughter of the king of Denmark, but he too was a German prince, and her mother was a princess from Hessen, just as her future daughter-in-law Alexandra would be.

 

Photo is of the originally released edition of Robert K. Massie's "The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, published by Random House, 1995, which I bought when it was released. The dust jacket is a little worn now.

WORD HISTORY:

Lye-This noun for the alkali liquid used for cleaning (also in dried form in more modern times), is distantly related to "lavatory." ^ It goes back to Indo European "leue," which had the notion of "wash, cleanse." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "laugo," meaning "bathe, wash," but also by extension, "the solution used to bathe, soap." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "leag," meaning "alkaline liquid for washing." Eventually the "g" sound died out in English, leaving the modern form "lye," and "lye soap" was commonly used for washing for many centuries. The other Germanic languages have: German "Lauge" (lye), Low German Saxon and Dutch "loog" (lye), Icelandic "laug" (bathing pool), Norwegian "laug" (antiquated for "bath"), Swedish "lög," (antiquated for "bath"), Danish "lørdag" (literally "wash day" =Saturday, Swedish has "lördag" and Norwegian has "lørdag," and Icelandic has "Laugardagur"). I could not find a form in Frisian.  

^ "Lavatory" is a borrowing by English, but it originally meant "sink with flowing water," which shows the connection to "cleaning, washing," but that meaning also later led to the connection to "wash room" or "bathroom," although in my time, many plumbers still called the bathroom sink the "lav."

Schindler's List, Movie and History

This 1993 Steven Spielberg movie, based on a novel about real life Oskar Schindler, is both depressing and uplifting. Perhaps that is fitting, as Schindler himself displayed actions of darkness and light, but then I suppose we all do to some extent. The thing is, when the final bell sounds, hopefully we will have tallied far more light than darkness, and that certainly was the case with Oskar Schindler. When I look at a couple of examples of characters, one fictional, George Bailey of "It's A Wonderful Life," and one real, Claus von Stauffenberg, who almost succeeded in assassinating Hitler, I see that we need to be broadminded enough to accept the flaws of both men, and thus, others too. George Bailey wanted to leave his small hometown of Bedford Falls and go off to design and build great things, make lots of money and travel the world, but his sense of conscience and service to others had him choose to remain in Bedford Falls, although grudgingly, and to help many of the town's people, and to resist the ruthless greed of Mr. Potter.* Claus von Stauffenberg was a German officer from the nobility and a devout Catholic. As with many Germans, Stauffenberg sided with Hitler's foreign policy goals of regaining lost German claimed territories, and he developed an admiration for Hitler, but he then learned of the terrible atrocities being committed in the name of the German people, and his conscience switch was flipped to "on." Stauffenberg and many others paid with their lives for the attempted assassination of Hitler.**

Oskar Schindler was born in the Czech province of Moravia, which had some German populated areas. He later went into business and joined the Nazi Party in the late 1930s.*** Schindler wanted to make money at an enamelware business he took over in German-occupied Poland, in Krakow (German: Krakau). He used Jews to save labor costs and he paid bribes to various Nazi officials to keep using Jews in his plant. So Schindler's original motive in using Jews was to make money. When he witnessed the brutal, ruthless treatment and murder of Jews in the city, like Stauffenberg mentioned above, his conscience was activated and he saw things for what they really were. One little girl in a red coat stood out to him. The movie was filmed in black and white, except for the scenes of the little girl in the red coat. From then on, Schindler tried to save as many Jews from the Nazis as possible by keeping them employed for him and by paying more bribes to Nazi officials.

The film is generally historical in many of its depictions, including the depiction of Amon Göth, a psychopathic SS officer, who was tried and executed after the war, right near the site of many of his despicable crimes. The executions in the Krakow Jewish ghetto shown in the film are based on fact, as are Schindler's bribes to Nazis to save the lives of helpless Jews. PLEASE watch this movie, if you haven't already seen it, and please watch it again if you have seen it before. The fight against evil never ends and we need to constantly be reminded of the horrors we humans can inflict on the world. We also need to be reminded of the good and brave deeds done by some in opposing evil, at great risk to themselves. If you have difficulty in watching brutality and murder, I do have to advise, this is a very troubling movie, because it is based on fact. However, the ending showing how the real life survivors of the Nazis honored Oskar Schindler is very moving and swings the darkness of the film's and history's truth back to the light. It made me recall a scene in another film based on the life of Solomon Perel, "Europa, Europa," **** where a German soldier tells the German Jewish teenager, "not all Germans are the same, there are other Germans" ("nicht alle Deutschen sind gleich, es gibt noch anderen Deutsche"). "Schindler's List" was criticized by some, but any movie, play, book, or article attempting to depict or describe the horrible inhumanity of those times will be criticized, because there is so much pain and no adequate way to put into words or pictures that pain for those who went through it.

* For more on George Bailey and "It's A Wonderful Life," this is a link to a previous article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/12/its-wonderful-life-showed-conscience.html

** For more on Stauffenberg, this is the link to another article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/07/heroes-against-hitler-colonel-klaus-von.html

*** Germans joined the Nazi Party for various reasons, I'm sure, including for business reasons, to stay "in good" with the regime, and to derive any benefits from that association. Most Germans were not party members, and the process of becoming a Nazi Party member wasn't always easy, but that doesn't mean some non party members weren't supportive or fanatical in some beliefs.

**** Released in most of Europa as, "Hitlerjunge Salomon." For more on this movie, here is the link to the article I did:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2014/12/solomon-perel-staying-alive-among-nazis.html

Photo is from the DVD cover by Universal, 2013. 

WORD HISTORY:
Tear-This is the word pronounced as if, "teer," and meaning "salty liquid that comes from the eyes in droplets." It goes back to Indo European "dakru," which meant "tears," and it is has widespread forms throughout the Indo European languages. "Dakru" gave its Old Germanic offspring "tahra/taghr," meaning "tear." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "teahor" and "teagor," both meaning "tear," which then seemingly merged into "tear," and likely pronounced like "tee-are." This then became "teer/ter," before the modern version. The verb form, meaning "to produce tears, to shed tears," developed from the noun in the 1400s. The other Germanic languages have: German "Zähre," a form that is now very high style and poetic, and also the common form "Träne," where the "r" sound moved ahead of the vowel and the word was then contracted from "trahan" (see also the Low German and West Frisian forms); Low German Saxon "Traan," West Frisian "trien," Dutch "traan," Danish "tåre," Norwegian and Swedish "tår," Icelandic "tár."  

Caller ID and Spoofing

Below is the link to comments and recommendations at the FCC website about many of those telephone calls you get, even if you are on the "Do Not Call List," which was created by a law passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2003, and implemented in 2004. You have to remember, the law exempts some callers from being prohibited from calling you: charities, political calls, pollsters, companies you do business with, or companies you have recently done business with. The thing is, unscrupulous and criminal elements have figured out how to circumvent the law, and/or how to fool you into answering your phone because of the number or name that shows up on your caller ID. There are lots of things going on with some of these calls, as the caller may not necessarily being trying to sell you something, but rather they may be trying to get information about you, which then can be sold, or used for identity theft. Some of these bastards use computers to dial telephone numbers in sequence, so the fact that you may have an unlisted number means nothing, as sooner or later the computer is going to call you. If you answer the call, there is often a lag time of a couple of seconds or so before someone answers you, if you get an answer at all, as there may not be a person available at that moment to talk with you. Understand, just because you get these calls doesn't mean the caller is illegal, as it may be a legitimate charity, for instance. To check on charities, here are two links:   http://www.charitynavigator.org/    or http://www.give.org/ 

It's important to remember, many charities do GREAT work and provide valuable help to people, animals and the environment, so please don't dismiss all calls as scams, but it might be better to mail a contribution to them, as many do have promotions on television which provide a mailing address, and some send solicitations in the mail, complete with an envelope, often postage paid.

Another thing about these calls is, if you answer a scam call, they now know that the number is an active number with a live person who answers the phone, and even if you ask to be put on their no call list, which they likely will agree to do, whomever it is they actually work for may have all sorts of numbers, and you may end up getting more calls; plus, they may also sell the information to others seeking telephone lists with active numbers, so asking them to put you on their no call list is not likely to end these calls; after all, if you were on the government "Do Not Call List," these scumbags were already violating the law and your privacy in the first place, and if you think by nicely asking them not to bother you will stop their calls, you're being naive. They're criminals!  

Getting people's personal information for sale or for identity theft is big business. As you'll see in the link below, technology has moved so quickly, it has been impossible to keep up with the tricks of the telemarketing and personal information business. They now can route calls from outside the country, making it far more difficult to trace the calls, or they may actually be set up and operating out of foreign countries. They also have figured out how to represent themselves as "pollsters," so as to claim they aren't in violation of the law. Further still, they can now "disguise" their number, which will show up on your caller ID as some other number, with the intent of getting you to answer the call. Believe it or not, I've been called BY MY OWN TELEPHONE NUMBER!!!

At this time, I have no idea what the answer to this problem is. Likely government needs more funding to specifically help advance technology to deal with the scam calls and telemarketing violations, but it may take more than that. You can't "un-invent" the technology the scam artists use, but likely inventions can combat it, but those inventions will have to be refined and updated to keep up with the scammers. You can go buy the latest locks for your home or vehicle, and they may be highly effective, FOR NOW, but the criminals are always working on how to breach any security device that has been invented. Look at all of the security breeches in several big stores' accounts in the last year or two, and even in the U.S. military! It's a never ending battle, but it's a battle that must be fought. Then there are those private drones buzzing overhead of all of us.  How long before one brings down an airliner? That's another subject though. Here's the link to the government site: 

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/unwanted-telephone-marketing-calls

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/spoofing-and-caller-id

WORD HISTORY:
Call-This word goes back to the Indo European root, "gal," which had the meaning "to shout, to call out." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "kall," with the same meaning. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "ceallian," likewise with the same meaning. This was then altered and reinforced by the related Old Norse form "kalla," which also had the same meaning.^ This then became "callen," before the modern version. The noun was derived from the verb circa 1300. The other Germanic languages have: Low German "kallen" (to speak), Icelandic "kalla" (to call, to name), Swedish "kalla" (to call out to), Norwegian "kalle" (to call, to name), Danish "kalde" (to call). Dutch has the archaic "kallen" (to talk), and German and Frisian once had similar words, now no longer used.

^ Old Norse was a Germanic language that was the forerunner of the modern North Germanic languages, the most prominent of which are: Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. There are two other branches of Germanic, East Germanic (now extinct, but which included Burgundian and Gothic) and West Germanic. English is West Germanic, as are Dutch, German, Low German and Frisian.