Postcard From Paris: Remembrances

Two things, and then Seattlest will STFUA about spending the weekend in Paris and let you get back to the Hawks.

The first is that they celebrate Obama here, too. Democrats Abroad raised beaucoup bucks and votes. John Morris, age 91, spearheaded the whole thing. He used to be picture editor for Life magazine and the New York Times, and tells great war stories. Must have been 200 people at his apartment in the Marais this afternoon. (Paris is nine hours ahead of Seattle, so we can be smug about it.)

The other thing is a new exhibit, running for the next four months, at the Holocaust Museum in Paris, the Mémorial de la Shoah, that remembers Kristallnacht. That was the "Night of Broken Glass," 70 years ago tonight, that launched the Holocaust. Nazi thugs across Germany went on a rampage. Synagogues and businesses owned by Jews were trashed, 30,000 arrested and deported, dozens killed in the streets. No one in the international community said or did anything, so Hitler continued with impunity.

What's the link here? Well, if it's astonishing how far the nation has come since MLK's March on Washington 45 years ago, it's even more amazing when you realize where the world was in 1938.