Bubbee Loc: Aventura, Florida

Oh, the adorable kids! Did the one with the Canon take YOUR picture?

MosheR Loc: New York City

He could not care less about me. He'd now be in his twenties.

MosheR Loc: New York City

Those seem to be the favorites of lots of people, Mark, including me. I guess it's the colorful "framing."

MosheR Loc: New York City

I have lots of photos of Buddhist Swastikas. They go in both directions. Hitler simply "appropriated" the symbol from the several ancient religions that have used it for centuries.

MosheR Loc: New York City

Although I really love India, I have to say this. We drove from India directly to Bhutan and stayed right at the border, which was represented by a big archway. When we stood on the Bhutan side of the arch, everything was sparkling clean. On the India side, to be generous to that country I adore, not so much.

Horseart Loc: Alabama

Awwww, that's too bad. It's hard to figure but I think maybe some people are so appreciative of what they have and the beauty around them that they take good care of it, and often wonder if some people are just so depressed for so long, they just don't care. That may not fit those two places...just a thought, but makes one wonder.

MosheR Loc: New York City

Also, India has a huge highly concentrated population which is very poor, so public sanitation is difficult for them to manage. As individuals, they try to be as clean as they can. I've actually seen whole families, of perhaps nine or ten souls, bathe one at a time in a wash basin with no change of water.

topcat Loc: Alameda, CA

Nice captures.

swastika, equilateral cross with arms bent at right angles, all in the same rotary direction, usually clockwise. The swastika as a symbol of prosperity and good fortune is widely distributed throughout the ancient and modern world. The word is derived from the Sanskrit svastika, meaning “conducive to well-being.”

I know that it is an ancient symbol, probably the first abstract symbol, but it is now shrouded in darkness. I also cannot look at them and not feel the horror of the modern symbolism.

MosheR Loc: New York City

You and me both. There's a cute little town in Lithuania called Kaunas. In the center of the town is a beautiful little square, and in that square was a little shop that sold Nazi memorabilia ... this, in the current (21st) century. When I confronted the owner, he said, as you just described and I already knew, that the swastika was an ancient good luck symbol. I answered that that explanation would work in India or Burma, but not here in Lithuania.

That night, as I was doing some incidental reading, by an amazing coincidence I came upon the fact that Kaunas used to be called Kovno, which was the town's name before Lithuania got it's independence. So I didn't know that Kaunas was Kovno, but I did know that Kovno was the site of a great massacre back in 1941, just a year before I was born. The locals, not the Germans, gleefully rounded up a large group of Jewish men and casually beat them to death with iron pipes right in that same town square. They took many photographs in which you can see the joyful expressions of the local town bystanders while these men were being painfully slaughtered.

So the next day, instead of leaving the town as we originally were planning on doing, I went back to that shop and spoke with the owner again, this time telling him what I had just learned. I also told him that I was reporting his store to whatever the proper government agency would be ... which I had to wait to do until we got home. I also told him that I would contact various news agencies to report him ... which I also did.

About a year later I got letter from the town's mayor apologizing to me and telling me that that store had been shut down. A rare happy ending.

topcat Loc: Alameda, CA

I am glad that to did what you did. Too many people would just forget it and go about their business. You did make a difference.

MosheR Loc: New York City

In this case I did. I'm Jewish, and all my relatives were here since long before Hitler, so the holocaust didn't touch me directly. But we have many friends whose parents were survivors and we knew them well. So it effected me indirectly.

Bubbee Loc: Aventura, Florida

Hurrah for you!

MosheR Loc: New York City

Yeaah, Bubbee. Once in a while things go right. Here's a link if you want to see what I was referring to:

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=562262235&q=Kovno+Massacre&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjAid7Qq42BAxVkjIkEHWuXBe4Q0pQJegQIChAB&biw=1640&bih=1094&dpr=0.8#imgrc=M1uoneV7lCrrlM

Mike D. Loc: Crowley County, CO.

My father was a 5th generation German who came very close to being excluded from the U.S. military because of his heritage. I thought that this was a tad bizarre but after getting older, I realized that this was not the first time that our government had done something like this.

Hitler was a monster of the highest magnitude and one only has to visit the Holocaust Museum in D.C. to fully grasp this. I will never, as long as I live, forget the glass wall that runs down the length of the first floor. At least I think it was the first floor. Anyway, there is writing on this wall, floor to ceiling, that one might reasonably assume are people's names. Upon closer inspection, it became abundantly clear that these were not individual names but entire cities, towns, and villages that were wiped out by this megalomaniac.

So Mel, I do understand how one can be affected indirectly by things like this, that you had nothing whatsoever to do with. The very thought of that wall saddens me...

MosheR Loc: New York City

I appreciate your emotions Mike, and the fact that the wall enabled your sense of empathy. But both you and I cannot truly understand what these people went through. On two different occasions about thirty years apart, I had surgery via spinal shots. I was paralyzed completely from the waist down. Could move nothing. Could feel nothing. This gave me some physical concept of how a truly paralyzed person must feel, but certainly not the emotional one. I knew the shot would wear off and that, in a few hours I would be back to normal again. They know they would never be.