First posted January 23, 2012 Irena Sendler (1910-2008) was a Polish Catholic social worker who served in the Polish Underground and the Żegota resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II. Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, providing them… Read More Remember this lady. In memory of Irena Sendler
First posted December 22, 2015 Patrick Kingsley On Tuesday, the number of asylum seekers to reach Europe this year passed 1 million. Nearly half of them did so via the beaches of this Greek island As an institution, the Greek Orthodox church is often considered a bastion of nationalism and conservatism. Some of its priests have… Read More Lesbos is swept by wave of compassion as refugees continue to arrive by sea / ‘Love has no religion’ – priests and pastors reach out to refugees
First posted November 10, 2019 Belle Puri A pot of fresh borscht simmers on the stove. The aroma fills Karolina Rybka’s two-bedroom apartment in Kelowna, B.C. The walls are adorned with frames full of colourful needlepoint the great-grandmother did herself. Everywhere there’s something to see — arrangements of dried flowers, knick-knacks and endless family photographs. Karolina Kucharski Rybka lived in Balachadi, a… Read More ‘He saved our lives’: Canadian woman among a thousand Polish children adopted by Indian maharaja during World War 2
First posted August 09, 2015 One compelling image has come to represent all the Greek people who treated desperate migrants like fellow human beings http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/25/migrant-boat-crisis-the-sergeant-who-did-his-duty-towards-people-struggling-for-their-lives Scenes from a tragedy Europe is in the grip of an emergency as tens of thousands of migrants and refugees from Syria, the Middle East and Africa attempt to cross… Read More Migrant boat crisis: the Greek hero on the beach / Scenes from another week in Europe’s migrant crisis in pictures / 60 million human beings displaced due to war and persecution
First posted December 15, 2019 His appeal to the protesters not to cause discomfort to ordinary people or harm public or private properties has been circulating on social media since Sunday morning. NB: This gentleman deserves our respect, gratitude and admiration. I would like to salute him and ask that we all learn from him. His… Read More Bengal Imam who lost son to communal clashes calls for peace / Students Across India Rise Up To Protest Citizenship Act And Police Brutality
First posted September 06, 2020 NB: This is an example of how the micro-history of ordinary people can subvert all our stereotypes about animus based on race, ideology, religion and identity. Worth reading. DS. A love story between a 23 year-old black Army nurse and a 19 year-old white German POW during World War II? You… Read More Enemies in Love
NB: Here’s my post on the same theme some months ago. DS Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, whose critical remarks on ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie at a film festival have raised a storm, has stood by them and said “someone has to speak up”. Mr Lapid, the head of the international jury at the International Film… Read More ‘The Kashmir Files’ Has Fascist Features: Israeli Filmmaker doubles down. ‘Someone has to speak up’
William Yang “The Communist Party, step down. Xi Jinping, step down!” Those were the slogans chanted by hundreds of protesters in China’s commercial capital, Shanghai, on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, as they gathered to demand the Chinese government end the strict pandemic control measures that have been imposed on several cities across the world’s second-largest economy. The protest… Read More Protests spread across China amid zero-COVID anger
Muzaffar Raina A public interaction between BJP leaders and Kashmiri Pandit and Dalit employees from Jammu who have left the Valley following a spate in targeted killings turned into an embarrassment for the party, with the participants’ accounts shredding its all-is-well line in Kashmir. Speaker after speaker at Thursday’s live-streamed meeting in Jammu described how the… Read More Accounts by J&K Pandits rip BJP’s Valley veneer
Gandhi’s Last Fast: January 13-18, 1948 First posted March 30, 2012 This article is based on a lecture I prepared for university students, named Mahatma Gandhi’s Legacy. It includes the text of the Delhi Declaration on communal harmony, January 18, 1948. Citations are from Gandhi’s Collected Works Gandhi’s Last Fast: January 13-18, 1948 From September 1947,… Read More Another time, another mosque
After the truth-shower 