A memorial decades late

Late last week it was announced that a permanent monument is to be built to commemorate the thousands of Bomber Command aircrew who died during WWII.

Westminster Council gave permission for the open style pavilion at the Piccadilly entrance to Green Park. The memorial, which should be built by 2012, will commemorate the 55,573 crew of Bomber Command, with an average age of 22, who were killed in World War II.

The roof of the pavilion, made from Portland Stone, will be open to the sky and the open entrance will be made from melted down aluminium sections of a Halifax bomber shot down during the war and in which all seven of the crew were killed. It will also house a sculpture of the seven aircrew by the sculptor Philip Jackson.

The memorial will contain inscriptions, carvings, and a dedication. There will also be inscriptions from Winston Churchill, who said in a speech to Parliament in 1940: "The gratitude of every home in our island ... and indeed throughout the world except in the abodes of the guilty goes out to the British airmen who undaunted by odds, un-weakened by their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and their devotion."

It is high time that a memorial was raised to these brave men, nearly half of whom gave their lives during WWII., My father, a Bomber Command veteran himself (although by flying his first op at 16 he helped bring the average crew age down!) is glad that recognition comes at long last but, lie a lot of aircrew, he is not too pleased at the idea of Churchill quotes. Many veterans feel that Churchill sold Bomber Command down the river after the end of the war.

Further details about the memorial can be found at They Gave Everything

A new Kindertransport memorial in Vienna

Fur Das Kind - Liverpool Street

Note: This post has beenchanged following an email from the artist Flor Kent. The Fur Das Kind in Vienna is not the one that used to be at Liverpool Street station.

Like so many other suburbanites I commute to work in central London. Living in Romford the rail terminus I use is Liverpool street station in the City. Rather than get directly on the underground I usually cut across the City to Mansion House.

This takes me through Hope Square just outside the station’s main entrance. In 2003 Sir Nicholas Winton unveiled a memorial there called “Fur das Kind” to commemorate the Kinder transport – a rescue mission that saved around 10,000 mainly Jewish children from Nazi occupied areas just before the outbreak of WWII. At the time the, memorial consisted of a statue of a small girl beside a transparent suitcase filled with memorabilia brought by the children, including books, toys and, poignantly, photographs of family members who almost certainly perished during the Holocaust. Sadly the case did not turn out to be an ideal environment for the memorabilia so it was removed leaving just the base and the statue of the child. The whole memorial was replaced by a different statue in late 2006. Sadly Fur das kind statue is currently homeless.

I received this press release a few days ago. I am delighted to hear that another Fur Das Kind is to go on display again in Austria.

AUSTRIAN COMMEMORATIVE SCULPTURE TO HONOUR BRITAIN

A Commemorative Sculpture in honour of the British People is to be unveiled on Friday 14^th of March at the Westbahnhof railway station in Vienna. Under the patronage of the Ministry of Transport of the Republic of Austria, the sculpture Für Das Kind-Vienna by artist Flor Kent, celebrates the British role in rescuing thousands of Austrian children, mostly Jewish, through operation Kindertransport from 1938 to 1939. The tribute is to be unveiled by Minister of Transport Mr. Werner Faymann. Most of the rescued left for Great Britain from Westbahnhof Station.

The ceremony will take place to coincide with the 70^th anniversary of the “Anschluss” – the Annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. Hitler announced the legislation of the Anschluss on the 13^th March 1939. Opponents of the new regime as well as the Jewish people, who were expropriated and deprived of civil rights, were arrested and deported to concentration camps. By a change in British Parliament’s legislation, thousands of vulnerable children were saved from a desperate future under Nazi terror at the onset of World War II. The rescue movement was unique in that Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together to rescue the children.

An international group of “children”, saved by different rescuers including Dr Rabbi Solomon Schonfield, the Quakers, the Christadelphians and many others, now in their seventies and eighties and living in different parts of the world, will be attending the event along with other official guests.

I originally thought that this was the Fur das kind that statue that had graced Liverpool Street station I hope it gets a new home. I do miss it: it was more attractive than its replacement. I am delighted, though, that the kindertansport is being commemorated in Austria. It may have been overshadowed by the terrible events that followed but it shows the very best of humanity in action.

Click Here , here, here, here and here for my previous Kindertransport related posts.

Memorial

This memorial stone is by the car park entrance to a church in South Weald, near where I live. It's not the memorial but the occupation of her father, the Bengal Opium Department. This is a piece of colonial history I need to find out more about

Wordless Wednesday - Memorial

This week's Wordless Wednesday entry is the Fleet Air Arm memorial (the Royal Navy's aviation arm) near the Houses of Parliament in London. It is one of the most unusual war memorials It is at the same time striking and eerie.

Wordless Wednesday - Lady Henry Somerset's Memorial

Memorial to Lady Henry Somerset, Victoria Embankment, London - a Victorian philantrophist and temperance campaigner.

Cross posted on Plant porn and pussycats

This week's entry for Wordless Wednesday

Details of the Battle of Britain Memorial, Victoria Embankment

A Wordless Wednesday

11-M comemorated

Today is the third anniversary of the Madrid train bombings.

King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and senior government officials are to unveil a monument outside the Atocha rail station, one of four targets in an terrorist attack that ripped apart morning rush-hour commuter trains on March 11, 2004, laving 191 people dead and more than 1,800 people wounded.

The monument is an irregularly shaped, 11-meter-tall (35-foot-tall) glass cylinder with a transparent inner membrane bearing messages of condolence that Spaniards left at Atocha station after the attacks.

FAA memorial

Images of the James Butler's Fleet Air Arm memorial on the Embankment, not far from Parliament. One of London's more eerie monuments in my view, but still I like it.