Who Do You Think You Are?

You're right, I did watch it, and it was a cracker as well. So I suppose I'll have to change it to two out of three subjects have used that expression!

The Clarkson programme in the last series was first class as well, although not as good as his "special" on Victoria Cross winners which was superb. Clarkson's late father-in-law won the VC at Arnhem. One of my customers used to know the Cain family when they lived in Oxted.
 
Arders: I take my cue from you on things moderational, old bean. When you retire, you must move down this way - the coastal town of West Wittering will suit you to a tee!
 
Originally posted by krizon@Jan 26 2006, 09:52 PM
the coastal town of West Wittering will suit you to a tee!
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A splendid part of the world Krizon - sandwiched in between Hayling Island and Bracklesham, two places where I spent many a wet weekend as a nipper.
 
Tonights show is a fascinating insight into Julian Clary's family. It's a real eye opener into the poverty that some families suffered in London during the late Victoran era. A brilliant series. I hope they do more.
 
Originally posted by Diminuendo@Jan 25 2006, 11:44 PM
Back to the subject...anyone on here done their family tree? I started mine a few days ago and with the help of the internet I have worked my way back to the 1820's. I am currently researching my Grand Fathers family. It is fascinating and addictive.
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Someone I know on another forum has been researching her family tree and she says she's been able to do it all online so far. I'm feeling inspired and might give it a go. She assures me that the fact that most of my family are dead or not speaking to each other shouldn't hinder me at all. Don't know how easy it'll be considering once I get past my grandparents, most of them aren't English. Mr GG takes the piss out of me for having hardly any British blood :rolleyes: As far as I'm aware I'm mostly Irish, Austrian and Italian. A delightful blend :lol:
 
That's interesting - cheers Diminuendo. I'd like to find out more about my family, in particular my father's side; it's been difficult to research my nana's side as Dad's grandparents on his mother's side came from the Black Forest in Germany. As they came to the UK at the turn of last century when Nazism was rife the family were forbidden to talk about Germany, or speak in German. In fact, none of the family knew that Nana's parents were German until she died and papers were found - she was so ashamed of it (havnig been brought up that way) that not only did she not know a word of German, or ever talk of the country, but she had told her children she was only half German.

Apparently my uncle is now researching the family tree in a big way now he is retired and he has discovered some previously unknown relatives on my Grandpa's side. He was from Sherbourne, Dorset, where a lot of our family are apparently - none of which we know! Dad told me a few days ago that my uncle had discovered my great, great grandpa, Israel & some family of his via genes reunited, I think.

The funny bit was that I looked on genes reunited a year or two ago & entered myself, my brother, my parent & grandparents - this confused my Dad when he looked on the site & saw our names! Considering that my name, and our surname, are both hardly common, he was surprised (& confused!!) to see his name down as being married to my mum, Pauline, with two children, Dominique & James, both with our dates of birth, not to mention his & Mum's parents' names & DOBs exactly right too!! :lol:
 
sl,

i think that you may have moved history back by around 19 years.

1919 Hitler joined the GWP but it did not take off.

He and his cohorts then placed an add in a anti semetic rag and booked a Beer Keller that would seat 100.They did not expect to fill it,but just over 100 hundred turned up,so it was a success.

He gave his version of a Muhammed Ali rant and the rest is history.
 
Yes, the anti-German feeling had nothing to do with the Nazi party, which, as rumours points out, did not exist. Neither was it around at the turn of the century but started in 1914 with the outbreak of war with Germany. Up until then many Germans lived happily in England.
 
I'm well aware of when Hitler came to power, thank you. I am also well aware that my great grandparents moved to England at the turn of the century to escape the growing Nazism, or maybe more correctly the socialism ideal, at the turn of the last century. I promise you, that is why my forbears fled Germany circa 1900.
 
The turn of the last century was 2000, Shadz - may I infuriate you to the point of total apoplexy by mentioning that? :lol:
 
Thankyou aunty......:angy: :lol:

Actually, I put that as the reasoning was that the turn of the century was 2000, but the turn of last century was 1900....that was the idea at least!
 
Nazism may not have been around at the turn of the century but anti semitism most certainly was .

My German ancestors left just before then and we think arrived and converted to Christianity - we don't know why .

We do know that as two of my great uncles were fighting on the Western Front for Britain their parents were interned as German aliens
 
Anti-semitism appears to have 'been around' for considerably longer than that timeframe. The last instalment tonight of 'Secrets of the Inquisition' showed that brutal pogroms specifically aimed against the Jews lasted right from the start of the Spanish Inquisition, through to the Holy Roman Inquisitors, to 1870, when the reforming Italian Army finally broke through the walls of Rome and ended the last vestiges of the Papal Rule and its Roman Inquisition.

Ardross, you may be interested to know that one of the presenters, author David Kertzer, has written a book called 'The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara'. This case was detailed in the programme tonight. Along with forcing Jews to live in ghettoes, wear yellow bonnets (think the yellow Star of David later), denying them property rights, the right to attend universities, to worship as Jews, to travel freely and especially to mix with Christians, the Pope's Papal Police were also charged with the duty of abducting young Jewish boys and girls, who were forcibly baptised in the secretive and excluding 'Catacombs'. They were made to attend all Church functions and to foreswear their parents, who could not visit them ever again or see them unless they, too, renounced Judaism and converted to Catholicism.

Edgardo Mortara was wrested from his family's home one day by the Papal Police and thus treated. His father created such a furore over his abduction, that newspapers like the New York Times took up the story, and James de Rothschild, Jewish Banker to the Pope (ha! doncha love the irony there?) pleaded with Pius 9th to release the child back to his family. Considering that the rich Rothschild family was bankrolling the Pope to maintain his Papal States, it was then a bit rich that he stubbornly refused. He claimed that the child was (as) his own son. But the case came at the time of the Risorgimento, when people like Garibaldi were fighting for a unified Italy. The Austrian Army quit the Papal States under such pressure and by 1861 the Pope was left with merely Rome as his 'state' - his Papal States were taken from him. The Pope's Inquisitor was arrested for ordering the kidnapping of Edgardo, but rather wisely, and accurately, pleaded that he was only following the Pope's orders.

By 1870, Edgardo was free to rejoin his family, but after 12 years in essentially religious captivity, he departed for Bologna, and at 21 was a fully-fledged Catholic priest, ending his days in a Belgian abbey.

So concluded the end of Papal Rule and its Inquisition... almost. After some 1000 years of controlling the population, assisted by an Inquisition to keep it in power, the Catholic Church finally renamed this function 'The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith' - but only in 1908.

In 2005, the head of The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith became... the current Pope Benedict.

Funny old world, ain't it? :brows:

What the programmes have answered for me is the question as to why the Catholic Church (and especially the Papacy) sat on its collective backside, playing with its rosaries, while the Jews were exterminated by the Nazis.

I'm sure now that it was entirely unconcerned to see thousands of Jews being transported - they'd sent thousands into uncertain, impoverished exile themselves, so why should they care? Their work was annoyingly incomplete, in that thousands were still yet unconverted when the Reformation (first, primarily through Napoleon's efforts to exterminate the Inquisitions) examined the records of torture, imprisonment, exile, and execution in the name of Christ and, aghast, began a swift dismantlement of their power base. The priests probably figured it served the Jews right for not converting earlier, and being saved from the predations of the Third Reich.

For the Jews, they must have wondered when, if ever, one vast body of power after another would stop slaughtering them, simply because they were Jewish.
 
Originally posted by Ardross@Feb 3 2006, 01:09 AM
We do know that as two of my great uncles were fighting on the Western Front for Britain their parents were interned as German aliens
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As was my great grandfather (and GG grandfather in the WWI) - in both World Wars.
 
Here's a question - how many lives might have been saved if the Pope had condemned persecution and threatened to excommunicate any German catholics involved ?
 
Is there a prize? :brows:

I don't know, Arders, but it's to the Church's undying shame (or it should be, if it isn't) that this didn't happen. But, as I said, given its appalling history of persecuting Jews, I now think I understand why it didn't happen.

When the Church was busily exiling them centuries ago, it also seized all of their gold, their jewellery, their furniture, their household goods. Everything. When I heard that (in this excellent programme), I was horribly reminded of the Jewish slaves put to work in the death camps, extracting the dead Jews' gold teeth, while back in their home towns, their homes were ransacked of all goods, and the houses themselves awarded to good, 'clean', Aryan stock. I assume the Nazis took a leaf from the Catholic book, and figured they were on safe ground assuming similar practices. And they were right.
 
I'm still amazed that Hitler pursued the idea of a perfect blonde haired, blue-eyed Aryan race when he was the complete opposite himself.....


....I would have survived though!! :lol:
 
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