Thursday, June 12, 2014

SIR NICHOLAS WINTON GAVE SO MANY THEIR MOMENT IN TIME




SO, WHO IS SIR NICHOLAS WINTON?


Every now and then a story about a particular person just takes your breath away.. today, I felt that way, through tears, as I read of the story of this amazing man. 

 You may have heard of him, but I had somehow missed that... This remarkable man put his own life at risk by helping 669 children to escape Nazi Germany. Their 'crime' was to be born Jewish. Nicholas Winton, then a young stockbroker, who was of both German and Jewish origin, was already living in England with his family, when he read the signs, of what was about to become, in a troubled Europe. In 1938 he returned to Prague and began contacting parents of Jewish children and offering them safe passage for the children to the only country that would accept them at that time...England. Word soon spread and so many parents begged that he take their children to safety. He kept complete files and photographs of all, amounting to 669 children in all who were accepted into English homes. 

 Sadly, there could have been another 250 but the last train was to leave on September 1, 1938... the day that war was declared by Germany when they invaded Poland. Those children never made it. 

Nicholas Winton, now Sir Nicholas, kept his deeds to himself, though he did keep tabs on many of the children. Not even his wife knew what he had done till she was cleaning out their attic one day and came across a suitcase full of lists, photos, letters from parents and other documents... and then the secret was out...

I will leave you to discover the rest of the story for yourselves as you browse through the following...








This is more on his story as told by his daughter...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/10844569/My-father-the-British-Schindler.html


I am happy to say that this remarkable man has this year celebrated his 105th birthday...

There are so many articles available... these will take you to just a few...


http://tinyurl.com/lew7zqc

http://tinyurl.com/nwd3p3t

http://tinyurl.com/nzl7v2q



God Bless you, Sir Nicholas Winton.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

HAUNTED POVEGLIA ISLAND IN ITALY





A NIGHT ON THE HAUNTED POVEGLIA ISLAND IN ITALY


Remains of the past ... the laundry in mental asylum with old washing machines on Povegli

Remains of the past ... the laundry in mental asylum with old washing machines on Poveglia Island. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

IT wasn't so much what Giovanni said but how he said it.

A stout, balding, no nonsense sort of fellow, the local cold meats delivery man gave no hint of drama or exaggeration in a Venice bar where word had spread two Australian journalists planned to spend the night on the infamous Poveglia Island.
Walking over to our table, the big man nods upwards in our direction as he takes a seat, lights up a cigarette and draws deeply through gritted yellow-stained teeth.
"Watch out for Paolo, he is the bad one, he was a doctor there, he will cause you troubles," he starts, exhaling a billow of Lucky Strike smoke above our heads, as if picking up on a continuing conversation.
"I know them all Paolo, Marco, Giorgio. Giorgio is okay friendly fantasma …. My father would take me fishing there as a boy and when I was older I stayed there myself for 15 nights. When I came back I told everyone what happened to me, the ghosts what they did, Paolo's ghost mostly, pushing me — whoosh, whoosh — always pushing, and things moving.
"They all say 'Nane', they call me nickname, 'you are crazy'. Now everyone says the same thing about the island.
"And you want to go there, so you tell me who is the crazy one?"
As quickly as he advanced on our table, Giovanni now retreats back to the bar, apparently content his duty is done. At a table next to ours another man turns slightly.
"He is right," he says, over one shoulder before he turns back around to slug his distinctive orange Aperol Spritz aperitif.
It's not clear what Giovanni was right about — Dr Paolo being a bad spirit, he himself being mad or us. Seems wrong to ask. One or all should probably have been obvious.
Now as our boat splutters rhythmically across the Venetian lagoon towards the island as the blazing Italian early summer sun loses its edge, it's clear the question should have been asked.
Poveglia has for some time been the tale that Venetian parents tell wide-eyed children who plead for a fright they know they will later regret.
Scary and spooky ... an aerial view of the haunted Poveglia Island.

Scary and spooky ... an aerial view of the haunted Poveglia Island. Source: Twitter

It's death and ghosts and doctors wearing Medico Della Peste masks; those distinctive scary white masks with the long hook beaks you see in carnivals now but which were used as a misguided form of protection by physicians in the 17th century to deal with plague victims. The masks are intrinsically linked to this area as the plague's toll was so huge on the local populace it spelled the downfall of the Republic of Venice.
Poveglia has been inhabited intermittently since the 9th century, abandoned for several centuries with its fortunes rising and falling like a Venetian tide.
Empty corridors ... on Poveglia Island, Venice. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

Empty corridors ... on Poveglia Island, Venice. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

In 1776 it was taken over by the Magistrato ally Sanita (Public Health Office) as a quarantine station for goods moving from the Adriatic Sea into the Venice Lagoon.
When in 1793 two ships entering the area were found to have been carrying plague sufferers, the island became a confinement station. Other plague sufferers were forced to the island to die, shipped over in some instances with the bodies of tens of thousands who had already succumb to the inevitable and were now to be burnt and buried on the island in pits. Its grounds are said to hide the remains of more than 100,000 bodies, overgrown blackberry bushes now hiding mounds that were once humans.
Overgrown bushes and eerie ... a bathtub left outside one of the buildings on Poveglia Is

Overgrown bushes and eerie ... a bathtub left outside one of the buildings on Poveglia Island Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

In 1922 the 18-acre site became an asylum for the mentally ill and it was during this period experiments including lobotomies were said to have been performed. The hospital was shut in 1968 and the island was abandoned and has been sealed off to the public by government authorities to this day. Not that any locals or tourists would go there anyway. Even fishermen stay away although some use an outer seawall to dry their cray and crab pots and nets. Stories persist however, as have the sightings of spectres and hauntings and hearings of moaning from a time past that has now earned its reputation as one of the world's most haunted islands.
At sunset ... the canal around the island at sunset on Poveglia. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

At sunset ... the canal around the island at sunset on Poveglia. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

The last warmth from the island disappears fast in the evening, as the sun's finger-like rays pull away across the shimmering waters of the lagoon to the fist of the Dolomite Mountains.
For much of the day it brings so much life to Poveglia, illuminating the large ramshackle rooms of the island's clutch of buildings and ruins that throughout history have been marked by death and suffering. A bell tower, long bricked up, stands imposingly over the site including the former hospital, asylum, prison and small chapels.
Darkness fill the crevices of the buildings, and our minds as we are left to wander alone along overgrown pathways and cluttered corridors of the hospital. There are no street lights just a sliver of moon and an old pocket torch.
Left to rot ... remains of the quarantine station for goods, a confinement station for pl

Left to rot ... remains of the quarantine station for goods, a confinement station for plague sufferers, a mental asylum on Poveglia Island. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

There's little to do now but wait, although for what we are not sure.
The island is littered with remnants of human occupation from many generations. Old wooden shutters fall off ancient hinges as ivy with stems or trunks the size of a man's forearm snake their way into rooms. Terracotta roofs of buildings have collapsed, in part bringing old reed and mud style plaster ceilings crashing to the tiled and stone slab floors.
No ghosts seen yet ... the rooms in the mental asylum dormitory. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

No ghosts seen yet ... the rooms in the mental asylum dormitory. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

In some rooms cast iron lion claw feet baths sit rusting where they have sat from decades before as do hundreds of hospital beds, gurneys, steel bedside tables and surgical instrument benches, too much for anyone to bother to have cleared out.
The bell tower ... where a mad doctor conducted tortures on patients inside. Picture: Ell

The bell tower ... where a mad doctor conducted tortures on patients inside. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

A ceiling fresco in apparently what was a chapel peels away and only two or three pews remain, which no doubt were once full of Catholics praying for better times. Greying shower and partition curtains sway in the breeze to the sound of cooing from pigeons who have adopted the tops of the white-tiled cubicles. Scaffolding was erected after the hospital closed to preserve the imposing structures but that is now having the opposite effect after years of clinging to the sides of soft red brick walls and falling masonry.
Inside the station ... stairs in the kitchen area on Poveglia Island. Picture: Ella Pelle

Inside the station ... stairs in the kitchen area on Poveglia Island. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

Now in the dark, with only the torch and mobile phone to illuminate a ring of light around me
I check my shadow. It is distorted by the torch beam bouncing off other things in the room that was an asylum, including old beds and pungent mattresses.
Hairs are now up on the back of my neck and in an instant I decide to move. Walk more, clear the mind. A heavy dew is now descending so best to keep moving anyway.
There is no sight in the all enveloping darkness, so now our ears burn to tune hard into surrounding sounds.
Silence is deafening ... the mental asylum at night on Poveglia Island. Picture: Ella Pel

Silence is deafening ... the mental asylum at night on Poveglia Island. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

Rustlings are more pronounced and I point the torch here and there into the far reaches of the rooms and corridors. There are plagues of rabbits including albino ones running about the place, I saw them earlier scurrying about in what had been an orchard and is now a wild canopy of barbed blackberry spines and honeysuckle. Lizards and millipedes also abound and the rustling surely could be them.
Vacant ... the laundry in the mental asylum with old washing machines. Picture: Ella Pell

Vacant ... the laundry in the mental asylum with old washing machines. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

We had earlier seen the remains of three large gulls torn apart and in various states of rot so perhaps a wild dog or some such is on Poveglia. Perhaps we are not alone after all.
There's also the wind blowing through the dilapidated buildings blowing leaves and refuse about; a whistle here a low hum there. Across the way I can hear bells toll from the Santa Maria dell Assunzione on nearby Lido island. There are, apping waves and further still the faint sounds that are the din of a distant tourist-boat in Venice.
The chapel ... inside the mental asylum at night. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

The chapel ... inside the mental asylum at night. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

Earlier I had literally stumbled on a chiselled stone block covered in bramble and read its message: "Ne Fodias Vita Functi Contagio Requiescunt MDCCXCIII".
Mobile phone reception on the island is intermittent but after a while the annoying turning wheel that tells me the phone is thinking about helping stops, and Google tells me the message roughly warns "do not dig there are contagious bodies here".
Stuck in time ... the kitchen still covered in asbestos on the haunted Poveglia Island. P

Stuck in time ... the kitchen still covered in asbestos on the haunted Poveglia Island. Picture: Ella Pellegrini Source: Supplied

The pungency of the site, buried and or burnt bodies or not, is overbearing and makes breathing difficult. Dank rooms are covered in mould and mildew or now even trees that have decided to assume residency. The entire island is in an advanced state of decay, man's achievements and or his failures being allowed to be consumed by nature in all its forms.


For the complete story please go to


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poveglia