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On occasion just for fun and personal enrichment I like to do 'today or this year in history' searches. For instance what was going on in China 1000 years ago this year, or this day if such information is available?
Zhou Dunyi, neo-Confusion philosopher was born in the year 1017. It turns out that he was the "originator" of the first Taijuti diagram, what we know more familiarly as the Yin Yang symbol.
Excerpt:
"Though he never had much influence during his lifetime, he was remembered as warm, humane, and kin with the natural world. Many Confucians believed that he embodied the virtue of "authenticity". He had great insight into the Way of Heaven. The first major popularization of the taijuti symbol is also credited to Zhou Dunyi; this symbol (in an altered form) is now known worldwide as the commonly accepted symbol for the Chinese concepts of yin and yang."
Then on a more grim note, today in 1941 on October 12th there was an event that occurred in the Stanisławów Ghetto of Poland (a Jewish WWII ghetto est. 1941). As I was reading the below excerpt on the massacre that occurred there on the said date, it made me realize, or rather, reflect more deeply on how it was that the gas chambers and the ovens eventually came to be resorted to. Of course all this is well known, the Nazis were looking for easier more efficient ways to exterminate Jews while not leaving behind the footprints of extermination. But as I was reading this it just really drove it home even more, how logistically difficult it is to exterminate millions of people in an efficient, low-cost, no-mess way.
The Wannsee Conference (where the final solution was drawn up) occurred in January 1942 in the beautiful villa overlooking the Wannsee lake just outside of Berlin. And the Stanislawow massacre occurred just four months earlier, and when you read of episodes like the Stanislawow Massacre, it just makes you realize why the Wannsee Conference became so necessary to the Nazi enterprise.
Excerpt from wiki article ( Stanisławów Ghetto )
"The shooters started firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those of them who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire; separate for Germans and Ukrainians. They tried to continue after dark with floodlights but finally gave up; and the remaining captives were released.
Here is the larger excerpt:
On 12 October 1941 on the orders of Hans Krueger thousands of Jews gathered at the Ringplatz market square for a selection.[23] The Nazi forces (augmented by the Orpo Reserve Police Battalion 133 brought in from Lemberg, and the Ukrainian police)[3][23] escorted them to the Jewish cemetery, where the mass graves had already been prepared. On the way, the Ukrainian and German guards beat and tortured the prisoners.[1] At the cemetery the Jews were forced to give away their valuables, and show their papers. Some were released. The shooters ordered the Jews gathered in groups to strip naked and then proceed to the graves. The men of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) were the first to open fire,[1] augmented by members of the Nürnberg Order Police,[24] and the Bahnschutz railroad police. The victims either fell into the graves or were ordered to jump in before being killed. Between 10,000 and 12,000 Jews were murdered:[25] men, women and children.[20] The shooters started firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those of them who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire; separate for Germans and Ukrainians.[26] They tried to continue after dark with floodlights but finally gave up; and the remaining captives were released. The Aktion, unprecedented in terms of scale in Holocaust history until that date in occupied Poland,[3] was known as the Blutsonntag (de), or the Bloody Sunday.[20] There was a victory celebration held that night at the headquarters.[23][27]
The Bloody Sunday massacre of 12 October 1941 was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews perpetrated by the uniformed police in the General Government prior to genocidal Aktion Reinhardt of 1942. It was preceded by the Red Friday massacre of 5,000 Jews in the Białystok Ghetto on 27–28 June 1941 by the Reserve Police Battalion 309,[28] but surpassed only by the Battalion 45 massacre of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine outside Kiev on 29–30 September 1941; and the final Aktion Erntefestmassacre of more than 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek concentration camp and its subcamps on 3 November 1943 perpetrated by the Trawniki men from Ukraine along with the Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police from Hamburg.
Zhou Dunyi, neo-Confusion philosopher was born in the year 1017. It turns out that he was the "originator" of the first Taijuti diagram, what we know more familiarly as the Yin Yang symbol.
Excerpt:
"Though he never had much influence during his lifetime, he was remembered as warm, humane, and kin with the natural world. Many Confucians believed that he embodied the virtue of "authenticity". He had great insight into the Way of Heaven. The first major popularization of the taijuti symbol is also credited to Zhou Dunyi; this symbol (in an altered form) is now known worldwide as the commonly accepted symbol for the Chinese concepts of yin and yang."
Then on a more grim note, today in 1941 on October 12th there was an event that occurred in the Stanisławów Ghetto of Poland (a Jewish WWII ghetto est. 1941). As I was reading the below excerpt on the massacre that occurred there on the said date, it made me realize, or rather, reflect more deeply on how it was that the gas chambers and the ovens eventually came to be resorted to. Of course all this is well known, the Nazis were looking for easier more efficient ways to exterminate Jews while not leaving behind the footprints of extermination. But as I was reading this it just really drove it home even more, how logistically difficult it is to exterminate millions of people in an efficient, low-cost, no-mess way.
The Wannsee Conference (where the final solution was drawn up) occurred in January 1942 in the beautiful villa overlooking the Wannsee lake just outside of Berlin. And the Stanislawow massacre occurred just four months earlier, and when you read of episodes like the Stanislawow Massacre, it just makes you realize why the Wannsee Conference became so necessary to the Nazi enterprise.
Excerpt from wiki article ( Stanisławów Ghetto )
"The shooters started firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those of them who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire; separate for Germans and Ukrainians. They tried to continue after dark with floodlights but finally gave up; and the remaining captives were released.
Here is the larger excerpt:
On 12 October 1941 on the orders of Hans Krueger thousands of Jews gathered at the Ringplatz market square for a selection.[23] The Nazi forces (augmented by the Orpo Reserve Police Battalion 133 brought in from Lemberg, and the Ukrainian police)[3][23] escorted them to the Jewish cemetery, where the mass graves had already been prepared. On the way, the Ukrainian and German guards beat and tortured the prisoners.[1] At the cemetery the Jews were forced to give away their valuables, and show their papers. Some were released. The shooters ordered the Jews gathered in groups to strip naked and then proceed to the graves. The men of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) were the first to open fire,[1] augmented by members of the Nürnberg Order Police,[24] and the Bahnschutz railroad police. The victims either fell into the graves or were ordered to jump in before being killed. Between 10,000 and 12,000 Jews were murdered:[25] men, women and children.[20] The shooters started firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those of them who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire; separate for Germans and Ukrainians.[26] They tried to continue after dark with floodlights but finally gave up; and the remaining captives were released. The Aktion, unprecedented in terms of scale in Holocaust history until that date in occupied Poland,[3] was known as the Blutsonntag (de), or the Bloody Sunday.[20] There was a victory celebration held that night at the headquarters.[23][27]
The Bloody Sunday massacre of 12 October 1941 was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews perpetrated by the uniformed police in the General Government prior to genocidal Aktion Reinhardt of 1942. It was preceded by the Red Friday massacre of 5,000 Jews in the Białystok Ghetto on 27–28 June 1941 by the Reserve Police Battalion 309,[28] but surpassed only by the Battalion 45 massacre of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine outside Kiev on 29–30 September 1941; and the final Aktion Erntefestmassacre of more than 43,000 Jews at the Majdanek concentration camp and its subcamps on 3 November 1943 perpetrated by the Trawniki men from Ukraine along with the Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police from Hamburg.
