Like most readers of LRC I am well aware of the potential economic hurricane threatening the world (see, for example, Gerald Celente, Doug Casey, ). And more, there are also the real fears of growing social unrest including terrorism that I perceive first hand living in France (see, for example, Ron Paul). And the continuing failures of modern fascist medicine (see for example Dr. Brownstein, Dr. Mercola). It is important to contemplate, how bad can it get?
Consider the history of my wife’s maternal grandmother. She was born in 1907 and lived until 73, with 6 children (including my mother-in-law) and 16 grandchildren (including my wife). She was born into a middle-class family (the father worked in an office in a local factory) with two brothers and a sister. Her father (born in 1866) died of pneumonia in 1913 when she was a young child. Her older sister (born 1904) died of tuberculosis* in 1921. Her mother suffered from ill health, especially after the death of her daughter and an operation in 1924; she died in 1927 at that point being completely blind. A younger brother (born 1909) was sent under force to Austria to work during the occupation of WWII. His history is not clear; he died, probably in 1944, due to complications of an infection.
So my wife’s grandmother, at 21, was an orphan with one sister also gone. Her father and sister the victims of diseases that are readily treated today. By 38 she lost a brother to apparently another medical lapse, but also implicated are the forces of war and political terrorism. She had lived through the eyes of the storms of 2 world wars and the great depression. But the worst was yet to come.
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The youngest brother, Gabriel Gay, was born 17 July, 1911, and deserves a more detailed account. In 1922 the troubled family moved in with the mother’s brother who was a priest. With this influence and already having a devout character Gabriel began his education for the priesthood and was ordained in 1935. By the start of WWII he was a parish priest in Nantua, a town in eastern France situated in the mountains of Jura near the Swiss border. This was a center of resistance to the point that the Germans raided the town on December 14th, 1943. They surrounded Nantua with 500 troops and then proceeded door-to-door arresting 150 men ages 18-40. A collaborationist newspaper called the deportees the “terroristes nantuatiens.” Gabriel Gay was arrested this day. According to a witness, he took the decision to join the deportees at the train station to be with his “flock.” He was sent to various camps including Buchenwald before arriving in April 1944 with several of the Nantuatiens at the concentration camp Hradischko (a sub camp of Flossenburg located today in the Czech Republic). His particular passage is shown here. Throughout he showed great courage and gave comfort to all, especially his fellow Nantuatiens. Every evening after work he would pass through the camp, especially the infirmary, to give hope through his own spiritual tranquility. He held secret masses, prayer vigils, and even was able to get consecrated hosts smuggled into the camp. While in some ways he was treated like the rest of the prisoners, for example the same 12 hour work day, the force of his spiritual courage was recognized by the Germans, even the notoriously cruel kapos. But he was maltreated in particular for being a Catholic priest. In April 1945, there began a series of killings by spraying machine gun fire into the column of inmates as they proceeded to work. The attacks seemed indiscriminate but there was word in the camp that they would especially target the French, and most of all Gabriel Gay. On the morning of April 11, 1945 this is exactly what occurred. All of the 7 remaining Nantuatiens were either killed or wounded. Gabriel Gay and some other wounded were forced into the adjacent wood where he received a bullet to his head. Of the 150 originally taken only a handful survived the war, including just one from Hradischko. After this incident the murders were halted by the camp commandant. Within a couple of weeks the camp was closed and by the first week of May the survivors were freed while in transit by Czech partisans. A monument to the deportees was erected at Nantua in 1949. There is a movement to have Gabriel Gay beatified.
Gabriel Gay (left) with his brother Jean.
Gabriell Gay the young priest.
With his students from this Czech site.
Nantua is located at the pointer near Geneva. From Google Maps
The book (“A witness of the Christ among the Deportees”) was written by two priests soon after the war based on extended interviews of those who knew Gabriel Gay. Much of the book is summarized at the parish website of the church Saint Michel in Nantua (only in French).
From the monument website.
To put these events in context, today many people I know are scared to be in public places in France as over 200 people have been killed over the last 2 years in terrorist attacks, including a friend at the Bataclan theater. My 85-year-old mother-in-law explained to me she was living in Lyon during WWII where she witnessed the bombing of the train station by allied planes. According to Wikipedia “civilian casualties [during the occupation] amounted to around 150,000 (60,000 by aerial bombing, 60,000 in the resistance, and 30,000 murdered by German occupation forces). Prisoners of war and deportee totals were around 1.9 million. Of this, around 240,000 died in captivity. An estimated 40,000 were prisoners of war, 100,000 racial deportees, 60,000 political prisoners and 40,000 died as slave laborers.”
I consider the fears of economic disaster, war, social unrest, and the police state, perhaps more so than terrorism itself, legitimate. But when I do consider the question posed: how bad can it get? I believe not as bad as what occurred here in France still within living memory. That I take as a weird form of optimism.
*In the book on Gabriel Gay it is written that the sister died from the “Spanish flu” in quotes with no explanation for the quotes. In my mother-in-law’s edition that I read Spanish flu was lined out and tuberculosis was penciled in. Perhaps the substitution was made because there was shame associated with tuberculosis at that time.
