Saturday morning I rose at 4-am to watch television! A live broadcast from my old country in Apeldoorn, no less. There the Canadian Liberators of the Second World War took part in the Liberation Parade. It is held every five years since 1985 and I was there in person with family and friend in the year 2000.
Oh, here comes the Burlington High school band.
I phoned my sister, who lives in Apeldoorn, at around 5am here and as we chatted I said “Oh, here comes the Burlington High school band.” To which she replied: “Oh no, I can see it here also on my TV!” So, that was a hit for both of us, recalling how we stood there along the parade route, fifteen years ago with loved ones passed on or having left our lives.
Most of these liberators were in their twenties in 1944/5 with about one hundred of them now in that parade, which may very well be the last one since it is held every five years. My sister and I agreed that this parade was much smaller than the one we watched in person, fifteen years ago.
I was close to ten years old at the time of liberation from the Nazi-German occupation. It was the ‘Tommies’ that liberated us where we lived in Zeist, near Utrecht. They rolled in without much fighting, that was left to the Canadians who fought to drive the enemy out of the Dutch eastern provinces that border Germany.
I often think about the fact that we, all through Europe and North America, still commemorate this liberation event seventy years ago now. To put this into perspective, I at times imagine going back into history for seventy years from 1945, arriving at 1875.
That year in turn was about seventy years after the battle of Waterloo and Quattre Brasses where Napoleon was defeated. That was a period of equally great upheaval across Europe, which was rooted in the French revolution. In retrospect, it looks as if there is a connection between the after affects of the French revolution and the defeat of Hitler’s maligned dictatorship.
Keeping this in mind we should be patient when we see such processes of change taking place before our eyes today and alotte a few centuries of time for their gestation; too far too fast is too destructive!
Can we ask: Did the second world war result in a unified Europe actually the end product of a process that has its starter roots in the French revolution? The question never occurred to me before, but I have learned through my life that social change processes are slow to come to fruition.
If they were faster, they would be too destructive to come to any beneficial fruition. Keeping this in mind we should be patient when we see such processes of change taking place before our eyes today and alotte a few centuries of time for their gestation; too far too fast is too destructive!
<9:48am~