This week marks the hundred-year anniversary of the end of the “Great War,” World War I, branded as the war to end all wars. Our annual commemoration of the armistice in the U.S. largely went by the wayside in 1954 when Congress changed the name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Instead of marking the end of a horrific war that literally consumed much of European resources and people for years in trenches that never moved, we now spend the day filling lectures with cliches of military service.
But the hundred year anniversary also means we can start remembering the aftermath of the war. The First World War set up the second. We largely think of the mistakes and half-efforts of the victorious powers but Quakers were part of more righteous storyline:
Even more food was sent by American Quakers under the leadership of Herbert Hoover, providing daily meals for 60,0000 starving Berliners for five years. The Germans labelled this massive effort, Quakerspeisungen: “Quaker Feedings.” It saved thousands of lives, including those of the family of Oscar Schindler who famously went on to help 700 Jews to escape the gas chambers at Auschwitz in the Second World War. Schindler’s sisters spent six months recuperating with the Hall family and one even attended Thirsk Grammar School for a term.
Friends Journal Bonuses: Quaker work in Germany in the 1920s and 30s was the subject ofQuakers in Germany during and after the World Wars from 2010. Relief efforts in Spain were part of a more recent story that tied it to present-day refugee assistance in Gota de Leche.
https://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/17207689.heroic-quakers-and-a-fascinating-link-between-oscar-schindler-and-thirsk/?ref=twtrec