Latest news with #Jerries
Otago Daily Times
06-05-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Ordinary lives and extraordinary events
On the eve of the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Philip Temple looks back at childhoods on both sides of the conflict. I ran into the back yard as the roaring grew louder and louder. Bombers! They seemed to be just above the chimney tops of Castleford coal town and one flew right over us. ''I saw the man at the back!'' I shouted. Grandad was not sure about that but, ''I did, I did! 'E waved.'' I was a 5-year-old jumping with excitement. ''Where they going?'' Grandad thought about it for a minute and said, ''They've gone to bomb the Jerries. The army's just invaded France.'' ''Does that mean the war's over?' He smiled. ''Nay lad but it won't be long now.'' It was D Day, June 6, 1944. Four years later I got to know my stepfather, John. He did not want to talk about it at first but I knew he had been in the RAF and every small boy wanted to fly Spitfires. It was a bit disappointing when I found he had not been a fighter pilot, only a rear gunner, one of those at the back, in a Halifax bomber, which wasn't a patch on the Lancaster either. But he had been shot down over a place called Mannheim on Christmas Eve 1944 and parachuted out and then was a prisoner of war. It took me years to get the full story out of him. To exit the Halifax's rear turret, he had to rotate it by hand until his back was facing out, then put on his parachute, then tumble backwards into space, at 15,000 feet with the plane on fire, his pilot trying to keep it stable while the crew escaped. He did not make it. John had to count for at least 10 seconds after falling, to be sure of being clear of the burning bomber, before pulling the ripcord. He landed safely in a ploughed field, glad that he had managed to avoid a nearby pine plantation, but as he gathered in the parachute he heard shots being fired. Local vigilantes were shooting at the Terrorflieger, terror flyers, as they parachuted down. A farmer ran towards John holding a pitchfork and he raised his hands but the farmer came on and pulled him into a ditch, hiding him from the shooters. When the firing was over, he handed John over to the local authorities and a lone corporal escorted him and other prisoners on a tram to holding barracks in Mannheim. The other passengers were not amused. John spent the last five months of the war as a prisoner, shunted by train to a camp in Poland and then back to Germany. On one journey, a young guard asked if any of the prisoners could sing and when some put their hands up, he led them in a succession of Christmas carols. He had been a choirmaster before the war. In 2016, my wife Diane and I travelled to Heidelberg to take part in the autumn festival of this companion Unesco City of Literature. It was one of the few German cities to avoid destruction by bombing, not by negligence but because the US High Command made an early decision to turn this historic hill town on the Neckar River into a pleasantly intact postwar base. We visited the castle and walked the Philosophers Way, which was frequented less by university students than by youngsters in the latest craze of Pokemon. One afternoon, our host Marion took us to the home of artist Pieter Sohl in the forested hills above the city. It was an event to launch her biography of the artist and, from the garden decorated with his sculptures, there was a view over Heidelberg to the Upper Rhine plains and Mannheim where Pieter had been born. I told Marion that I had published a novel about the suffering, and deaths, of a group of Berlin artists under the Nazis and bombing of World War 2. After the speeches, she said Pieter would like to talk about this and we sat beside a window looking on to the garden and exchanged histories. During the war Pieter had lived with his grandparents on a farm near Mannheim. At age 11, six years older than me, he would go out daily in the vicious winter of 1944-45 to collect what firewood he could find in nearby plantations. One day he heard noises above him and saw a Terrorflieger hanging by his parachute from high branches. Pieter was agile enough to climb up and help the Canadian airman down and take him home, where his grandparents fed him before handing him over to the authorities. I told him about my stepfather and wondered if he and the Canadian had journeyed together to the same camp for British and Commonwealth airmen. We nodded and smiled and remembered them in our serendipitous encounter, looking out to those killing fields of 70 years before. ★★★ In May 1945 the war was over. They set a line of trestle tables in the lane between the rows of terrace houses in Lock Lane, Castleford, and there was a victory party for all the kids, and some of the grownups, too. I had never eaten, or even seen, so many sweet puddings and jellies and I stuffed so much down so fast I was violently sick. ''Serve you right, you greedy little bugger,'' my grandad said. A year later I was in London, after joining my mother, and she took me down to the Thames Embankment, close to Parliament, to see the big fireworks event marking the anniversary of VE Day. But I couldn't see because of all the men and women in front of me and, when he saw my predicament, an American GI picked me up and perched me on his shoulders. There had never been such a fireworks display. Everyone was laughing and smiling in the exhilaration of triumph and wonder. We had won and here was the glorious proof. In the mid-1980s, I met Gunter Bennung near where I lived on Banks Peninsula. He travelled around schools, performing as Shiven the Clown, delighting kids up and down the South Island. We were the same age and one winter we sat beside a roaring fire and talked about our families and our childhood. He was born in Potsdam just before the war and could not remember much about his father, who was soon involved in the fighting and had been killed in Yugoslavia during an RAF bombing raid. The salient, distressing thing that Gunter knew about his father was that he had been in an officer in an SS regiment. Had he or had he not been involved in war criminal actions? Later I was to see a family album in which photos of his father had the insignia scratched from his uniform. Not long before I was vomiting jelly at the Castleford street party, Gunter was with his mother, a nurse at a hospital on the island of Rugen, off Germany's Baltic coast. The Soviet army arrived and began to take over. Gunter told me that his mother heard the words gulag and Siber in discussions about what to do with the staff. With the excuse of taking Gunter to the toilet, she escaped with him across country. When they reached the only bridge connecting the island to the town of Stralsund, it was on fire. Gunter remembered somehow getting across, balancing on single girders as his mother urged him on. With the war coming to an end, tens of thousands of refugees headed west, away from the oncoming Soviet army. Gunter and his mother somehow made it on a train to Berlin and then on the S-Bahn towards their home in Potsdam. Amid the surging crowds at Wannsee station, he panicked as he was carried away from his mother, but was able to find her later on the banks of the lake. Reaching home was not the haven they expected. The house was taken over by Soviet troops, some of whom treated the bath as a lavatory. They were relegated to the garage from which Gunter's mother was treated as the household's servant. More may have been expected of her. Gunter was not, at least, among the hordes of homeless children roaming the bombed-out streets of Berlin. Gunter's story and mine revealed that there are always two sides to the coin when nations go to war. As a boy, I felt secure and proud that my country had won the war and that the other side, the Germans, were evil and deserved to be beaten. My stepfather and others of his generation were all heroes. Gunter had only experienced terror and defeat, amid national humiliation and blame. It was an arduous journey towards the light with the burden of his father's role. No wonder he became a clown to bring joy to children, and preached a philosophy of peace and love. His story stirred the idea of my novel that would look at the lives of those ordinary Germans, on the other side of the coin, who had suffered during that horrific war. It also led to my conviction that there should be no coins with sides based on demonisation of the other, creating only the damaging currencies of conflict that continue to savage our world. • Philip Temple is a Dunedin author who has been publishing fiction and non-fiction for over 60 years.
CairoScene
05-02-2025
- General
- CairoScene
Retracing Cairo's Cat Culture
Cairo is truly a city of paradoxes: ancient, modern, sacred, secular, bustling, and serene. One stands out among its many unique features: the city's undeniable - and sometimes strained - bond with cats. These graceful creatures have wandered Cairo's streets for centuries. They are revered and booted equally, and they remain a long-standing witness to this city's ever-changing landscape. In many ways, the stray cats of Cairo mirror Egypt's rapidly growing human population; resilient, adaptable, and constantly maneuvering through an ever-expanding metropolis. Just like their human counterparts, Cairo's cats carve out their own niches in crowded alleyways, bustling markets and historic landmarks, weaving themselves into the very fabric of the city. Much like how humans in Cairo hustle for limited resources, be it space, jobs, or affordable housing, cats stake their claim on doorsteps, café chairs, and the occasional rooftop, establishing their own urban territories. Whether it's a human struggling to navigate a traffic-choked street or a cat expertly slinking between cars, the same rules of survival apply: agility, street smarts and a bit of luck. And as Cairo expands both in infrastructure and population, so too do its feline inhabitants, multiplying at an outstanding pace. Cairo's relationship with its felines has been forged through centuries of history. Legend tells that in times immemorial, the Egyptian sun god Ra - in the shape of an enormous cat known as Mau - fought against and overcame darkness manifesting itself as a powerful serpent, Apep. It's an ongoing cosmic battle between chaos and order, where the serpent of chaos eternally threatens to overthrow both humanity and the gods. The goddess Bastet, often depicted as a lioness or a woman with the head of a cat, was where the feline's place in Egyptian culture was first solidified. She is home, fertility, and protection; her temples were places of worship and reverence for humans and their feline companions. Killing a cat in ancient Egypt, even accidentally, was a crime punishable by death. In the streets of ancient Egypt, cats were celebrated as symbols of protection and good fortune. The Book of the Dead equated the cat with the sun, reflecting its divine nature. Golden Nubian cats were seen as manifestations of Ra's power and celestial grace. The domestication of cats likely began in Nubia, where they were regarded as bearers of luck and protectors of vital resources such as grain. As efficient hunters of mice, cats became indispensable to Egyptian households and granaries, and their role as guardians inspired countless tales, including the earliest stories of the war between the Toms and Jerries of the world. Cats were cared for with exceptional devotion. They were groomed, bathed and anointed with fragrant oils. Food was apportioned to cats even during famines, as their lives were considered as important as human lives. Upon a cat's death, grieving owners in ancient Egypt went to extraordinary lengths to honour their pets. Cats were embalmed and wrapped in fine linen perfumed with cedar oil. In the city of Bubastis, solemn funerals were held, with mourners shaving their eyebrows in grief. Objects, such as toys and milk bowls, were placed in cat tombs to ensure their comfort in the afterlife. Lorraine Chittock, in her book 'Cats of Cairo: Egypt's Enduring Legacy', talks about how this reverence evolved through centuries. One of the most notable stories is the "cats' garden" endowed by Sultan Al-Zahir Baybars during the 13th century. This space provided food and care for Cairo's stray cats, and the tradition endured for centuries. British orientalist E.W. Lane, writing in the 1830s, described his amazement at the daily gathering of cats in the High Court garden, where baskets of food were brought by the qadi (judge) to honour the sultan's legacy. Despite the garden's physical transformations over time, the endowment's intent remained timeless. Up to E. W. Lane's days, the caravans of pilgrims going to the sacred precincts of Makkah from Egypt took a number of cats with them, though we do not know whether this was a reminiscence of the Prophet Muhammed's (PBUH) love of cats, or the feeling that the gentle creatures might bring good luck. According to folk tradition, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) cut off his coat sleeve because he had to get up for prayer and was loath to disturb his cat Muizza, peacefully sleeping on the sleeve; or how a cat gave birth to her kittens on the Prophet Muhammed's (PBUH) coat, and he took care of the offspring. Paradoxically, in Egyptian folklore nowadays, black cats are often seen as mystical creatures and sometimes haunted beings, one popular myth involves black cats and their association with Satan. In this tale, a black cat is said to transform into Satan himself at night, especially when walking through desolate streets. This association of black cats with bad luck is not rooted in Egyptian tradition but rather in European superstitions. In medieval Europe, black cats were linked to witchcraft and considered omens of misfortune. These beliefs were propagated by the Catholic Church, which, in the 13th century, declared black cats as incarnations of Satan. Such superstitions spread over time, leading to widespread persecution of black cats. Today, many of Cairo's mosques are known for their cat-friendly atmospheres. Al-Azhar Mosque, for instance, often sees cats sprawled across its sunlit courtyards. Some worshippers bring scraps of food for these creatures, viewing their care as an act of kindness (Sadaka). Cats' presence in mosques is often welcomed, as they are seen as clean animals in Islamic tradition. In the labyrinthine streets of Cairo, cafés often serve as unofficial cat shelters. Regulars at ahwas may recognise certain cats as part of the local scene, fed by patrons and staff alike. It's not an untraditional view to see a cat perched on a café chair, surrounded by Cairenes engrossed in conversation. In marketplaces like Khan al-Khalili and Attaba, shop cats are ubiquitous. These felines often reside in stores, sleeping on merchandise or greeting customers. Shop owners care for them, viewing them as good luck and valuable partners in deterring pests. Similarly, in neighbourhoods like Zamalek and Bab al-Louk, cats thrive along bustling streets, in local cafés, and even on the banks of the Nile, where they add charm to the scenic surroundings. Despite their enduring and often welcomed presence, life for a street cat in Cairo is inundated with challenges. Hunger, disease and cruelty are everyday realities for many. Yet, amidst these struggles, a growing network of individuals and organisations is working tirelessly to improve the welfare of the city's cats. Cairo's ongoing urbanisation has significantly altered the dynamics of human-cat interaction, as part of broader societal shifts tied to class and culture. In affluent areas, modern residential complexes, gated communities and high-rise apartments often restrict stray cats' access, distancing residents from the animals that once thrived in proximity. These spaces prioritise order and exclusivity, discouraging the informal care that stray cats traditionally received. Among the urban middle class, the perception of cats has shifted from communal creatures to status symbols, with pedigree breeds purchased as pets reflecting prestige. Stray cats, by contrast, are frequently overlooked or viewed as nuisances. A critical figure in Cairo's cat rescue scene is Nancy Essam, the founder of Cairo's Cat Rescue and TNR Initiative. What began as a small effort in her apartment to house a few street cats has grown into a full project sheltering over hundreds of felines and dogs, with a particular focus on severe injury cases and accident victims. However, her biggest challenge is debt. Running such an initiative independently, without governmental backing, requires significant financial resources. Veterinary bills, food costs and medical treatments quickly add up, yet she continues her work despite the financial strain. Essam also highlights a grim reality; governmental veterinary services often take the easy way out when dealing with Cairo's overgrowing cat population. Local authorities sometimes resort to poisoning cats or even having them shot by the municipality. 'This approach is both cruel and ineffective, as eliminating cats in one area only results in another population surge elsewhere due to territorial shifts,' Essam tells CairoScene. To counteract this, initiatives like hers focus on Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs. They capture street cats, have them spayed or neutered at their own expense, and then tag them before returning them to the streets. The government does not implement neutralisation programs due to high costs, leaving independent rescuers to take on the burden themselves. Once a cat has been neutered and returned, Essam and her team work on educating the local community. 'We tell the neighbours that these cats are good, that they won't cause problems, they are now neutered and vaccinated and that they should be treated with kindness,' Essam says. Through a culture of understanding, her initiative hopes to reduce hostility toward Cairo's cats and create a more sustainable coexistence between humans and felines.
