April 19th is just around the corner. Are you ready? The nineteenth day of April has very special meanings for all Americans, and all Jews. April 19th is a crossroads in history where suffering and sacrifice, patriotism and tyranny, liberty and slavery, religious persecution and bigotry all intersect, again, and again. For citizens of Massachusetts, April 19th marks Patriot's Day and for all Americans, the date of the "Shot heard 'round the world", when colonial militias defied orders to surrender their guns and routed King George's redcoats. For Jews, April 19th is the day Nazi storm troops surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto, sparking a revolt led by a few young Jews who refused to be enslaved or incinerated. For modern American patriots, April 19th marks the day 76 members of a religious minority died in an assault by federal paramilitary forces, aided and advised by regular military units. For the people of Oklahoma City, April 19th marks the day that 168 people died in an explosion at the Murrah Federal Building.
April 19, 1775 - The shot heard 'round the world: The Battles at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge. Warned by Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, the Massachusetts militia mobilized to block a larger, better trained British force coming to seize militia weapons at Concord. At Lexington, Major John Pitcairn leading a detachment of Royal Marines told the colonists there: "Disperse, you rebels! Damn you, through down your arms, and disperse!" Nobody knows who fired the first shot at Lexington Green, but the colonial militia refused confiscation of their guns and the British drove them back in the initial encounter. After regrouping the colonial militia did better, turning back the British at Concord Bridge and forcing a disorderly British flight back to Boston. The road back became a deadly gauntlet as farmers from "every Middlesex village and farm" sniped from behind stone walls, trees, barns, houses, all the way back to Charlestown peninsula. By nightfall the British survivors were safe under the protection of the Royal Navy and British army at Boston, having lost 273 men that day, while the Americans lost 95. The following year, the colonial Americans declared independence, a date now marked as July 4th, a national holiday. Months after participating in the actions at Lexington and Concord, a former slave, a black African named Salem Prince was introduced to General George Washington as the sharpshooter who killed Major Pitcairn at Bunker Hill (June 1775). April 19th is celebrated as a holiday only in Massachusetts.
April 19, 1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt - When Nazi SS units tried to remove the remaining occupants of the Ghetto for extermination and slave labor, Jewish resistance to tyranny, slavery and religious persecution was reborn and set the spark that created the modern state of Israel. A reading of the events surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt in 1943 comes from a Jewish synagogue: "Congregation: We remember the Warsaw ghetto on the dawn of the first day of Passover, April 19, 1943. The Nazis were coming to complete the deportation of the remaining Jews to the death camps. A shot rang out on Nalevki Street, signaling the beginning of the revolt. A few hundred Jews with a few guns and hand grenades had decided to resist the tremendous power of the German army and the Gestapo. The courageous men and women of the Jewish Fighting Organization held out for forty-two days." From the Warsaw Ghetto on April 23, 1943 Mordecai Anielewicz observed "The Germans ran twice from the Ghetto....The dream of my life has risen to become a fact....Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men of battle." A majority voting bloc of American Jews now presents a puzzling moral and political paradox, they support victim disarmament by registration of guns and gun owners. The unregistered guns used by the Warsaw Jews did not have trigger locks.
April 19, 1993 - Massacre of Branch Davidian religious minority at Waco, Texas. Clinton appointee Attorney General Janet Reno accepted "responsibility" for the disaster, but the principle of accountability was ignored. On February 28, federal paramilitary forces laid siege to the Branch Davidian's home and 6 Davidians and 4 ATF agents died in the initial raid. The final assault on April resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including two unborn children. Steven Barry, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier and others protested military involvement, but involvement of the elite Delta Force was covered up along with many other blunders by the Clinton Administration. Sergeant First Class Barry continued his protest by founding the Special Forces Underground and publishing a political warfare journal called The RESISTER and was eventually hounded into retirement. Nine Branch Davidians remain imprisoned. Nobody from the Clinton White House, Reno's Department of Justice, the FBI, the BATF or the Department of Defense has been tried, convicted or jailed. News services carried stories of a few federal demotions and promotions of those involved.
April 19, 1995 - Oklahoma City - Murrah Federal Building bombed. Timothy McVeigh was among many Americans expressing frustration at the lack of accountability for the Waco Incident. But McVeigh was convicted of bombing the federal building and sentenced to death. But could the motive for the bombing have been removed if Clinton, Reno, the FBI, the BATF and military had been truly held accountable "with justice for all"? A newspaper clipping found in Timothy McVeigh's car was titled "Waco Shootout Evokes Memory of Warsaw '43'", comparing the Branch Davidian tragedy with the Nazi assault on the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, was a letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal. Federal prosecutors claimed the Waco siege so angered McVeigh that he masterminded and carried out the bombing in Oklahoma City.
April 19, 2000 - Miami - the Elian Gonzalez standoff - As the case of 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez hurtles to a confrontation between Janet Reno and the boy's Miami relatives, news reports speculate that Reno will not send U.S. Marshals to remove Elian tomorrow (April 19). The dark legacy of the Waco Incident hangs heavily over the Clinton Administration and Janet Reno's Department of Justice. Members of the Cuban-American community in Miami have vowed to resist any attempt to physically remove Elian from his Miami relatives. Marshals ready if needed for Elian (UPI April 17, 2000)
Thanks for posting. I was going to post something similar. April 19 has been a busy day.