Olympics More Than Athletics

First published August 9, 2012, but I have added notes ** and *** for explanation and information, August 13, 2016. 

I love to watch the Olympics, especially the gymnastics, swimming, and track events, but the Olympics can be about more than who is the fastest runner, the best diver, or who is best at maneuvering on parallel bars. Even today we look back at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where Jesse Owens, a young black man from Cleveland, Ohio,* won four gold medals for the American team, leaving egg dripping from the faces of many a Nazi nutcase... ah, I mean leader... no, I DID mean nutcase. Reports indicated that Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens, although Jesse says Hitler actually waved to him and sent him an autographed picture, something American political leaders did NOT do. More important is what Hitler said in private and which was recounted by close associate and architect Albert Speer, who noted that the fanatical furious Führer was upset that black athletes were permitted to compete in the Olympics, because their jungle ancestry gave them an unfair advantage over white athletes. Hitler felt blacks should be banned from the competition. So for Hitler the saying "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," became "If you can't beat 'em, ban 'em!"

This year in London we have had Michael Phelps' medal total passing all others in history. He says he will now retire, although some question that he will be able to remain on the sidelines in 2016, when the games are in Rio de Janeiro. Then we have 15 year old Katie Ledecky, 16 year old Gabby Douglas, and 17 year old Missy Franklin winning gold medals for the U.S. in certain events. Of course, if the fanatical furious Führer had had his way, little Gabby would have been banned.

Two things especially stand out in my mind about these Olympics so far: first, the participation of Oscar Pistorius, from South Africa,** who runs on two artificial lower legs, his lower legs having been amputated when he was a baby. Talk about guts! This man puts many of us to shame with the courage he displays in his daily life, not even counting his desire to compete on the running track. He made it to the semi-finals of the Mens 400-metre, but he didn't qualify for the finals, finishing last. I saw him in an interview the next morning and he didn't whine or bellyache, instead he wished his performance hadn't been so "pathetic." It would be far easier for Oscar to wallow in self-pity. I was so happy to hear the tremendous ovation he received from the crowd for his participation and it gives me hope that humans respect other human beings, instead of the hatred so often expressed, such as the massacre that took place this past weekend in Wisconsin.*** While Oscar finished last in the semi-finals, the first place finisher, Kirani James of Grenada, went to him and exchanged name tags with him, showing respect for this courageous man. Whether or not Kirani James wins the finals, he has already won gold by this action alone. This is the true Olympic spirit.

The second thing that stood out for me was runner Felix Sanchez, an American of Dominican heritage, who represents the Dominican Republic in international athletic competition. Felix runs in the 400m Hurdles, and in 2008 his beloved grandmother died just before his run in Beijing. Distraught over his grandmother's passing, Felix finished far down in the field, although he had previously won the event. This year, keeping a picture of his grandmother tucked inside his shirt next to his heart, he decided to give it all he had in his grandmother's memory and he WON! Taking her picture out he kissed it and cried as the crowd roared its approval for this man who has done many charity events in his career. He is the oldest (34 years old) to ever win this event, as I understand. Felix took me back in time to both of my grandmothers. I've been so lucky, because I had two wonderful grandmas. They weren't perfect and they weren't saints, but that's okay, because they were great human beings and I miss them so much! I can't sit here typing this without tears streaming down my cheeks, just as Felix Sanchez did the other day in memory of his grandmother.

* Owens was born in Alabama, but his family moved to Cleveland when he was a child. Also, the Berlin Games were not the result of Hitler wanting to showcase a revived Germany, as the site had been picked well in advance and years before Hitler was even in power, although the Nazi spectacle actually set the precedent for the extravagant opening ceremonies still expected to this day.

** In February 2013, Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in Pretoria, South Africa. He was convicted of "culpable homicide" in 2014, being sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, a verdict and sentence that was appealed by the prosecution. In late 2015 the previous verdict was overturned to a verdict of "murder" by the South African court system and Pistorius was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. Of course, it wasn't until this terrible murder that we heard from people who knew Pistorius personally about his temperament, including his nasty side, which was unleashed on this poor woman.

*** A mass shooting had occurred at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin on August 5, 2012, killing six and wounding four. The gunman, Wade Michael Page, a white supremacist, was wounded by a police officer and then killed himself, shooting himself in the head, like the fanatical furious Führer had done in 1945.

 

WORD HISTORY:
Run-The history of "run" is rather complicated, but I'll keep it simple. "Run" seems to go back to Indo European "rei/reu," which had the notion of "movement, set in motion." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "rinnanan" (to run, to flow) AND "rannjanan" (to cause to run or move). This gave Old English "rinnan"  and "iernan," both meaning "to run." "Iernan" seems to be one of those words which actually had the sounds transposed, and it may well have been "rennan" or "riennan," before the change. Whatever the case, the two Old English words joined to become Middle English "ronnen," but it didn't become "run" until the 1500s. Common in the other Germanic languages: German has "rennen" ("to run, to race") and "rinnen" ("to run, also in the sense "flow"); Low German Saxon has "rinnen" and "rännen;" "Dutch has "rennen;" West Frisian has "rinne" (which means "to march"); Danish has "rinde" ("to run, to flow"); Icelandic has "renna" ("to glide, to flow"); Norwegian has "renne" ("to run, to flow"); and Swedish has "rinna" ("to run, to flow").

Poison Gas & The War On Innocents

Having done a couple of articles on poison gas, I can't finish with the subject without covering the Nazi use of poison gas against innocent, defenseless people, namely Jews and Gypsies (also known to some as the "Romani" or "Roma").* The Nazis murdered many other people, and this article is not meant to diminish their loss, but Jews and Gypsies were specifically targeted for eradication by the insane Nazi racial nonsense, just because of their heritage. Many Gypsies and many Jews lived in communities together in various countries, although they learned the language and customs of their respective country.** Most of these people came to view themselves as being true citizens of the country in which they lived, in spite of periods of persecution, including some outbreaks of intense violence. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, persecution of minorities, especially German Jews, intensified, coming into full view for the world to see in November 1938 with the "Kristallnacht," "the night of broken glass," when Nazi thugs broke into Jewish businesses and religious facilities throughout Germany (which then included Austria, and Vienna had a substantial Jewish population). Many Jewish properties were burned or otherwise severely damaged, many Jews were hauled off to concentration camps, and others were killed.

The Nazis were murderers long before they started using poison gas, but the conquest of much of Europe, and especially of eastern European, where millions of Europe's Jews lived, brought them the desire to come up with a more "efficient" way to kill other human beings. They had tried mobile vans, pumping in carbon monoxide to kill their victims, but for the Nazi nutcases, led by nutcase-in-chief Adolf Hitler and his henchman, assistant nutcase, Heinrich Himmler, the process was much too slow. By 1941-42, the Nazis had discovered that using a cyanide-based pesticide gas, they could kill people faster than ever, an important point to these murderous bastards. The gas was called "Zyklon B," and it was kept in canisters. Usually pellets of the gas were dropped into fake shower rooms filled with victims. The most notorious of the sites where Zyklon B was used was "Auschwitz," a combination labor-extermination camp complex in a part of southeastern Poland annexed to Germany after Poland's defeat in 1939. The Nazis "sorted" people into those who could work, putting them into the labor camp areas, and into those they wanted to eliminate immediately. Once "workers" became too exhausted, sick or weak from malnutrition to work anymore, they too became expendable. The whole thing so boggles the mind, it is no wonder that many survivors and liberators feared the world would not believe such things had taken place. The Nazis used the poison gas in other camps too, but it was in Auschwitz where it has been figured that somewhere between about one and a half million to two and a half million people were gassed, with Jews being the overwhelming percentage of those killed. Records on how many Gypsies were gassed is not known, but it is estimated that about a quarter million Gypsies perished at the hands of the Nazi butchers, with quite a few of these victims having been gassed at Auschwitz.

* Gypsies or the Romani are a people who trace their roots back to India, and indeed, their language is from the Indo-Aryan part of the Indo European language family. English is part of the Germanic sub-branch of the Indo European languages, so Romani and English are related, although much further down the family tree. The Romani people migrated from India and many reached Europe at some point between 1000 and 1100.

** Jews were often forced by European "Christians" (I only use the term because that's what they called themselves) to live in particular areas of cities and towns, usually less appealing areas. Eventually these Jewish areas came to be called "ghettos." I plan to do an article, or a series of articles, on the history of ghettos very soon.

WORD HISTORY:
Lose-This word goes back to Indo European "leu" or "lu," which had the notion of "undo, loosen, separate." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "lausam," with the same basic meanings. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "los," a noun which meant "loss," in the sense "total loss, destruction." From this came the verb "losian," which meant "to lose, to perish." Gradually "losian" overtook the then common word for "lose;" that is, its close relative, "leosan." "Losian" later became "losen" before the modern version. German has "lösen," which means "to solve or resolve (a problem)," from the original notion of 'undo,' and some Low German has "leese," also meaning "solve," Dutch has "oplossen" (also solve, resolve), West Frisian has "ferlieze" (lose), Norwegian and Danish have "løse" (solve), Icelandic has "leysa" (solve, also "untie") and Swedish has "lösa" (solve). Old English also had "liesan," from the same Germanic source. It meant, "to loosen, to free from something," but also had the the secondary meaning, "to redeem," perhaps from the notion of "loosening, or freeing something by giving up something." The related German word, "lösen," also has a secondary meaning of "buy a ticket" (usually for travel), and this is just purely speculation on my part, but tickets are often torn off or dispensed by machines, which ties in with the meanings of the Old English form "liesan."  Interestingly I could not find the Old English word for "solve" (English borrowed "solve"), but I've got to believe it was similar to its other Germanic relatives and thus would be related to "lose." I will keep checking. I will also do the history for "solve" very soon, and it may surprise you to learn that "solve" is distantly related to "lose."

The German Question, Part One Hundred Forty-Nine

Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/C
"Germany In World War Two" Part Three/B
"The Greatest Shame of German History"

Not long after the Nazis took power, the first concentration camps were set up. They were prison camps, often for political prisoners like communists, or opponents of the regime, real or perceived. Since German Jews were seen by the Nazis as enemies of the state, some Jews were also incarcerated in these camps during the earlier years of Nazi rule. Prisoners led a wretched existence, often doing forced labor, where they were mistreated and malnourished. Some were executed for any number of reasons. When the war started, the first country to fall, Poland, contained a large Jewish population, although initially, a good number of these people lived in what became the Soviet annexed areas, as much of this territory had belonged to the former Russian Empire, where Jews had been more concentrated in western Russia.* When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, special execution units, called "Einsatzgruppen" (literally "action groups")** followed right behind the army forces to round up and execute Jews, Communist officials, and anyone perceived as a potential threat to the German occupation. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were executed throughout the western regions of the Soviet Union.

In Germany, German Jews had dwindled in number since the 1933 appointment of Hitler as chancellor. Many had emigrated, although some did not go far enough, as they crossed into other European countries soon to be taken over by the Nazis. Still others had been put into concentration camps or had already been killed by the time of the early war years. With the occupation of Poland and large areas of the Soviet Union, the Nazis then had control over millions of European Jews, and they planned their destruction, as a businessman would plan to increase production in his factory. It is absolutely mind boggling, and no matter how much actual newsreel footage I've seen over the years, or how many books and articles I've read, it is still difficult to get my mind around these terrible events. And by the Germans! (Although often aided by non-Germans.) Nothing I write here can even scratch the surface of this disturbing subject, which is about sheer evil.

The overall plan for the extermination of European Jews was under the control of Heinrich Himmler's "SS."*** In various parts of Europe, but especially in Poland, camps were set up with the purpose of using Jews (Gypsies were also a major target of Nazi racial theories) for labor purposes, but with the ultimate aim of killing them; that is, if they hadn't already been worked to death. Those deemed unfit for work were killed, often within just a short time after their arrival at a camp. The organization for transporting Jews from across Europe to these death camps came under one SS officer, Adolf Eichmann (he had the right first name, if you get my point).**** Of all of the camps set up in Germany and throughout Europe during Nazi rule, "Auschwitz" was the most notorious, and millions died there. Rooms were made to look like shower areas, but once inside, victims were locked in, and poison gas canisters were dropped inside, killing everyone. The bodies were then burned in huge ovens, "crematoria." Any and all valuables were confiscated from these helpless people. Even when dead, gold or silver fillings were extracted.

Amidst all of the hatred and death, there were still some acts of heroism, and if you haven't seen "Schindler's List," please do so; you will never forget it. Above all, DON'T BE A RACIST OR A HATER!

* This area was known as the "Pale" in Russia. It was the western part of the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to settle and live on a permanent basis beginning in the late 1700s. Most Russian Jews were not permitted to live east of the Pale (in interior Russia) for any major period of time, but there were exceptions.

** The "Einsatzgruppen" were part of the "SD," the initials of the "Sicherheitsdienst" ("Security Service), which was a branch of the SS.

*** Himmler was a Bavarian, born in Munich, and he joined the Nazi Party in the early 1920s.

**** Eichmann was born in Germany, but his family moved to Linz, Austria when he was just a child. Interestingly, besides the shared first name, Hitler, who was considerably older than Eichmann, had lived in and around Linz as a child, too, and he always considered the city to be his home town, so much so, that he had grand plans to make Linz into one of the primary cities of Nazism, if they had won the war.

WORD HISTORY:
Camp (noun and verb)-This is another one of those words with an uncertain ancient history. What is known is, it goes back to Latin "campus,"^ with the general meaning "open area or field," which then progressed to "field of military contest, battlefield." Old Germanic borrowed the word as "kampan," with this "contest, battle" meaning. This then gave Old English "camp," but with that same "contest" meaning. This also gave Old High German "champf," which then later became "Kampf," meaning "battle, struggle," still in use today, and it is part of the title of Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf," covered earlier in this series on "The German Question." The same word also gave German the verb form "kämpfen," meaning "to fight." English "camp" then got a bit of a twist in meaning via French "camp" (also from the Latin source) in the 1500s, this being a "field used for military training and lodging," which then later in English also came to be applied to non-military situations, and both military and non military senses are still used today.^^ The "contest" meaning died out in English. The verb form, as in, "we'll camp by the river," came from the noun during the 1500s. So here we have English and German with essentially the same word, "camp/Kampf," and both from the same source, but with different meanings; the German word retaining much of the original "contest" notion. By the way, Italian has "campo," obviously from its Latin roots, and it means "field." 

^ "Camp" is related to "campaign" and to "champion" (also the shortened form "champ"), Latin-derived words borrowed by English from French, and to "campus," a word English borrowed directly from Latin.  

^^ Generally, the modern meaning in English means, "a place in the rural countryside, often, but not always, near a lake, river or stream, where people congregate for some temporary purpose, like hunting, fishing, vacationing, recreation, or some educational or instructional purpose, often with tents, cabins, huts or other type of basic shelter. This meaning came from an older meaning in English based around "a place to temporarily stay ("put up/set up camp") to provide shelter to sleep and to fix food around a fire, called a campfire." 

Hitler The Jew?

Recently, DNA samples were gathered from some of Hitler's relatives, only to give some credibility to what many had suspected about Hitler for quite some time, that he was part Jewish, and that he certainly was not pure "Aryan." Understand, this is not conclusive, but some of the family genetic matter traces back to Berber people from North Africa. Berbers are a people historically, and to this day, mainly located in Morocco, Algeria, Libya or Tunisia. This genetic material also is fairly common in European Jews, and many Jews went to Europe via North Africa centuries ago.

Hitler's father was illegitimate, being born to an unwed mother whose family name was Schicklgruber.* Hitler's father, Alois, went by "Alois Schicklgruber" well into adulthood, as his mother supposedly never revealed to anyone who her son's father was. She later married a "Hitler," also spelled "Hiedler," and I believe I've even seen the spelling "Hüttler." Many people in those times did not have much education, so it is my understanding that spelling variations were quite common, and don't forget those German dialects with different pronunciations I mention so often here. A word can be pronounced a particular way in one town, and somewhat, to very, differently just a village or two away. Many German dialects never had, and still do not have, "standardized" spellings, either. Anyway, I guess it is safe to say that we still don't know for sure who Hitler's grandfather was. Many stories surfaced over the years, even before Hitler gained power, but whether any of these stories is true, or whether they were just done to discredit him is another matter. While we now see Hitler as having been a powerful, ruthless dictator, we have to remember he started out in that often less than honest profession of "politics." Lots of potentially damaging stories circulate about virtually all politicians, but how much of the information is true or false is the question, not that I'm expecting a roaring tide to come forth seeking "fairness" to Hitler.

I haven't kept up on all of the stories about Hitler and other Nazi leaders for quite some time, so you might want to double check my information, and it is extremely difficult to sort out fact from fiction on such a nefarious figure as Hitler, but I recall that it was said a while back, that Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking officer in the SS, especially in the department dealing with "intelligence" matters; that is, elements that initially gathered information on German citizens, including German Jews, and then later on citizens in occupied areas of Europe; the best known being the Gestapo,** allegedly found out information about Hitler's ancestry, which he kept in a highly secret file available only to him. The rumor was that the info showed Hitler to be part Jewish, otherwise, why would Heydrich have kept it so secret, or so the rumor went. Whether any such info was uncovered in captured SS records, I don't know for certain, but I doubt it, as it certainly would have been major news, especially now with this DNA testing of Hitler's relatives.*** Rumors had surfaced that Hitler's actual grandfather had been Jewish, and that his grandmother had worked for a Jewish family named Frankenberg, whose (then) teenage son was "supposedly" the father of her child. "Supposedly" the rumors about Hitler's ancestry troubled him so much, that he asked one of his close Nazi advisers, Hans Frank, to delve into his ancestry and report the findings to him. "Supposedly" Frank gave an "all clear," thus easing Hitler's mind.****

Of course, if the Jewish ancestry can be proven to be true, this would be the most tragic of ironies; Hitler the hate-filled murderer of so many Jews, a part Jew himself. Traudl Junge, one of his personal secretaries, said in an interview not long before she died (she was in her 80s), that if she could have still asked Hitler one question, it would have been if he would have gassed himself, if he had found out he was part Jewish.

* If I remember correctly, William L. Shirer, a correspondent for CBS in Germany during much of the time of Hitler's rise and prewar rule, speculated humorously in his book "The Rise and Fall Of The Third Reich," that he doubted Adolf Hitler could have become ruler of Germany if his father had not changed the family name from Schicklgruber, because he couldn't imagine Germans screaming "Heil Schicklgruber!!!" In one of those short "Three Stooges' " films from during the war, a picture of Hitler is shown, and I believe it is Moe who screams, "Yikes, it's Schicklgruber!"

** The word "Gestapo" was created by lumping abbreviations together to form the word; in this case, Geheime Staats Polizei, or "Secret State Police." The organization became so well known for its terror tactics, that I imagine any survivors from those times still shudder at the mere mention of the word.

*** During the course of the war, especially in its waning days, and thereafter, literally tons and tons of Nazi military and government documents were captured by the Allies and the Soviet Union. Those records captured by the Western Allies were microfilmed and are available in the U.S. Archives in Washington, D.C. I believe the original records were eventually returned to the then "West" German government. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the records they captured from the Nazis have become available, and historians are still "mining" information from those records. It is my understanding, however, that there are still records and artifacts (including some of Hitler's blood, for a possible DNA sample) in Russian possession that are highly classified and unavailable to the public. Since the Russians were the ones who captured Berlin, they must have made a major haul on German documents; after all, Berlin was the capital.

**** I don't recall everything on this, but "supposedly" there were no Jews living in the town where Hitler's grandmother resided at that time, thus "supposedly" debunking the rumor. Of course, there were no DNA tests back then, and so "evidence" had to be circumstantial, just as genealogists have done to this day, unless, more recently, DNA samples are available and the person/people are willing to pay for such testing. If all of the recent tests prove to be true about Hitler himself, it makes me wonder how many other Nazi leaders may have had Jewish ancestry or other ancestry so incompatible with Nazi "nonsense"...I mean, ideology; then again, I believe I'll stand by my original word.

WORD HISTORY:
Blood-This word seems to go back to the Indo European root "bhel" (with the concept of "bloom, come forth") and the derived form "bhlo," which meant "gush, spurt, burst out" (again, the base notion of "come forth" is present). The Old Germanic offshoot was "blodam," which then gave Old English/Anglo-Saxon "blod," which seems to have had a long "o" sound before later softening and the eventual "oo" was used in spelling. It is very common in the other Germanic languages: German has "Blut," Low Saxon German has "bloot," Letzeburgisch (a German dialect spoken primarily in Luxembourg) has "blutt," Kölsch (the dialect of Cologne) has "bloohdt," Dutch and Frisian have "bloed," Danish, Swedish and Norwegian all have "blod," and Icelandic has "blóð."