ARCHIVES, FRENCH RESISTANCE 1943 – 1944

Perhaps it is necessary for us to look in the old trunk where we hide history, condemned to do it all again because we forgot.

The German occupation of France from May, 1940, left the south of the country neutral – until September-November of 1942.  Then they descended, with the French milice (police working with the Gestapo), on the French cities, towns and villages. It was then the Resistance broke from hiding.  Perhaps this part of France suffered less.  One thinks of the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane, near Limoges, where SS troops shot 642 people on the 10^th June, 1944, four days after the Allies had landed at Normandie – to mention but one incident.  But, as the poet says, the death of any man diminishes me.

From the Archives of Antibes, where I find myself, we have a few entries

1943

1^st February.  “Fascist businesses” receive threatening letters from the Resistance [“Fascist” might well refer to the Italian troops under the command of Mussolini who controlled parts of Provence until 1942.]

27^th February.  Attacks against businesses of collaborators (collabos) with the Germans

4^th May.  Arrest of Dr Levy by the Germans

29^th July.  Torture and murder of Luigi Rosso, a member of the Resistance.

 

1944

30^th January.  Execution of collaborator

17^th March.  Execution of the German “consul” in Antibes

22^nd March.  Arrest of two members of the Resistance, Pierre Appolin and Joseph Groffino.

30^th April.  Sabotage of the Antibes railway line by the Resistance

22^nd May.  Execution of collaborator

{6^th June.  Landing of the Allies at Normandie}

10^th June.  Execution of two members of the Resistance

15^th August.  Landing of Allies at St Tropez and St Raphael

24th August.  Execution of two members of the Resistance. Germans retreat from the Antibes town hall in the medieval quarter.  The liberation of Antibes.

{26^th August.  Paris is liberated}

28th August.  Toulon and Nice are liberated.

23^rd September.  Execution of ten collaborators at Fort Carré, Antibes

These fragments help me realise the depth of the French tragedy in the Second World War.  I wonder too, about human beings.  The German philosopher Hegel has it that the only lesson history teaches, is that human beings don’t learn the lesson history teaches.

“The death of any man diminishes me”

© Will van der Walt

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

May, 2017

 

Sources

La Résistance Azuréenne. Jean-Louis Panicacci (ed.) (Nice Editions Serre, 1994)

Grandes dates de l’Histoire de France. Aedis.  1912.

France. People, History and Culture. Cecil Jenkins (Running Press, Philadelphia. 2012)

Occupation The Ordeal of France 1940-1944. Ian Ousby. Pimlico, London. 1997)  

John Donne: “The death of any man diminishes me”

Images

My drawings.

 

  

 

 

 

THREE DAYS AT A TEMPLE – a visit to Yuongpyeongsa

 [The first in a series of three postings]

I have days that I’d put on  a pedestal.  Years on they shine in my head.  Among such days I have the three that I spent at the temple of Yuongpyongsa in South Korea.

The arrangement is called “Temple-Stay” which takes places throughout South Korea.  You don’t have to be Buddhist to do it.  In fact, they are surprised if you are.

                               Far from all things

                                    The temple

Yuongpyeongsa (yes, say it: yoo-ong-pee-ong sah where “sa” indicates temple) is even further from anything than is the Magoksa temple and for the same reason:  the Confucian authorities persecuted Buddhists in the Middle Ages.  The inheritance is the silence in the verdant green hills, so characteristic of Korea.

                            In a post-chant state

On arrival I received a monk’s robe which I wore for three days.  There were six of us, amongst whom a mother and her teenage daughter, Catholic and living in Minnesota, stayed at a temple once a year to honour their ancestors.

                            The cell

The cell where I slept was more of a passage, though the futon I slept on was remarkably comfortable.

At four o’clock in the morning I was called and we made our way through darkness in the warm glow of lamps to the main temple.  Here I experienced two hours of chanting, an unusual experience.  Language-wise, I couldn’t participate and my initial reaction was resistance.  Gradually the resistance eroded until I couldn’t hear the chanting anymore;  I became it.

Glass sphere reflecting the temple

As the sun came over the hills it was time for purifying exercises – stand; down on the knee; forehead on the ground; sit back on knee; stand.  Do this one hundred and eight times.  I cracked at  thirty.

Then I limped to breakfast.

 

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

May, 2017

 

My photographs  

 

 

 

 

 

THREE DAYS AT A TEMPLE – a visit to Yuongpyeongsa

 [The second in a series of three postings]

To get used to Korean cuisine is to risk addiction.  It is the subtle herbal taste that they achieve with the traditional use of fermentation pots.  This is especially true for ghimchi, cabbage, which may be prepared in literally hundreds of ways.  As cabbage was my least favourite vegetable this was a small revolution in my dietary history.  Pork is popular but in the monastery where I was, the food was vegetarian, and not less tasty.  Years later when I ate Korean food in Cape Town again, I was catapulted into the aromas and the tastes of that remarkable food.

Canteen verandah

Fermentation pots

In the course of the day we met a nun, a sinewy woman with a natural radiance.  She took us for a walk in the forests, pointing out the small wild flowers by the path.  These, she told us, are not indigenous to the Korean peninsula.  They were sown by the hands of American soldiers during the civil war of the early 1950s.  Would that that had been all they left behind.

I took the opportunity to photograph the extensive paintings on the walls of the temple.  I was especially charmed by the series portraying Buddha and the cow.  There was one of a dragon which, I discovered to my surprise, is much loved in the East as a symbol of just kingship.

Temple art

Temple art: the dragon as just king

Buddha and the cow

The Buddhism of South Korea is mainly Zen and this would take much to explain.  The ideal, as I understand it, is to diminish resistance within oneself and to contemplate the Great Nothing.  I can’t expect a non-Buddhist to grasp this.  On the wall was the Zen symbol.

The Great Nothingness

On Sunday morning we were invited to the head monk for tea, far more than a social event.  He spoke to us through a translator about the ritual of tea drinking, which I found fascinating, but, I confess, that for me the green tea they drink is tasteless.  In turn, they hate Western tea.  He also spoke about the lotus flower, also a revelation for me.  The lotus is a symbol throughout Asia, for Hindus, Buddhists and some Muslims.

L O T U S

He himself, a thick-set man, winked at us:  on scattered occasions he takes a slice of pork and even a tot of whisky.  On a shelf in his study there was a figure of the Emaciated Buddha before the revelation he had under the Bo-Tree:  there needs to be balance between flesh and soul; you are not more spiritual if you disregard the body.  Yet, the Emaciated Buddha, he said, has a message for humankind.  Something to ponder.

Emaciated Buddha under the Bo-Tree

 

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

May, 2017

 

My photographs

 

 

 

 

THREE DAYS AT A TEMPLE – a visit to Yuongpyeongsa

[The third in a series of three postings]

The last morning I photographed the gardens, the temple, the main figure of the Buddha.

Buddha in leaves

The nun came to chat again and pointed out an old monk engrossed in a meditation on the periphery of the temple grounds.  He’s over ninety, she said.  I watched him and felt the centuries of Buddhism in the course of his meditation, a history from 300 a.d. when Buddhism was initially brought from India.

Meditation course for an old monk

Walking centuries

I came upon a Tao rock which belongs to a spiritual belief far older than Buddhism or Confucianism.  This kind of rock is a symbol of Chaos Becoming and is central to Taoism practised in China, probably from prehistoric times.

Chaos Becomes

My visit to Yuongpyeongsa was a kind of farewell to my stay and teaching in South Korea.  This visit was in May when spring is rising and nature is at its most beautiful.  For Buddhists, nature is at the heart of their spirituality, the reconciliation of Earth and Spirit, of soul and body.  They see the world in a grain of sand and the universe in a drop of dew.  For this reason everything is sacred and part of the spirit, of healing and growth.

These days burgeon in me.  Years later.

The universe in a drop of dew

 

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

May, 2017

 

My photographs