The Netherlands After the Holocaust

Anna (also known as) Ans van Dijk, was a collaborator of Jewish descent. The Germans arrested Van Dijk while he was in hiding on April 25, 1943. After she agreed to work for the SD, Van Dijk was released. It is estimated that approximately seven hundred people had been arrested—because of her actions. Van Dijk is the last Dutch woman sentenced to death and whose death sentence was [actually] carried out. The execution took place on January 14, 1948.

I am not judging Ans because none of us have been in that situation, and no one can say with certainty what they would have done had they been in that situation. The reason why I brought up the execution of Ans is to indicate that this was not the last bit of Holocaust history in the Netherlands. Some Jews, after the war, were still being persecuted.

Jewish Amsterdamers, who returned from the death camps after the Second World War, were followed by the security services for years. The Domestic Security Service (BVD), the predecessor of the AIVD, saw the Jews as extremists and a potential danger to democracy.

In Vienna in 1954, the International Auschwitz Committee was founded. This committee encouraged survivors in European countries to establish chapters in their own countries. Following the Auschwitz Commemoration Committee in 1956, they founded the Dutch Auschwitz Committee [NAC]. The initiators of this foundation were Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt, Eva and Jacques Furth, Rody and Louis Corper, David and Elly Geens, Manus and Saar Neter, and J. Alvares Vega. The NAC organized annual commemorations on January 27th.

Some of these survivors were spied on until 1980 by the Dutch security services. During the Cold War, the main concern for the Dutch government and all other Western nations was communism. Some Dutch Auschwitz committees were members of or had links to, the CPN-Communist Party Netherlands.

The Dutch newspaper ‘Het Parool’ discovered this story and published it in December 2023. The AIVD*, Dutch Secret Service, issued the following statement in relation to the article:

“Het Parool today published an article about the activities of the BVD in the investigation into members of the National Auschwitz Committee. The BVD did not view Holocaust survivors as extremists or a danger to democracy.

The BVD conducted research into communism during the Cold War. That was the biggest threat to national security at the time. Possible research into persons associated with the National Auschwitz Committee can be seen in that light.

It has already been reported in various sources that the NAC is a shell organization of the CPN. This also emerged in a 1999 NIOD report EHRI—Dutch Auschwitz Committee, and a BVD piece previously revealed on the Argus Foundation site. This showed that there was a suspicion that the National Auschwitz Committee was a front organization of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN). Lou de Jong also warned about this in 1968, as evidenced by an article in the Historisch Nieuwsblad of May 2, 2023.”

According to the Parool investigation, the security service spied on board members of the Auschwitz Committee and followed the committee everywhere, including on commemorative trips to concentration camps. In addition, an informant on the committee—reported everything that happened within the organization to the security service.

It emerged that the members of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee were under surveillance in 1952—four years before the committee existed. Below is the translated text of a part of a report sent on July 24, 1952, to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs.

“I hereby, have the honor to report the following to Your Excellency
The Auschwitz commemoration, which was announced with much fuss, took place on June 15, 1952, after being postponed several times. It took peaceful course. About 2,500 people paraded past an urn, which was in an auditorium laid out, the 5th secretary of the Committee” entombed the Auschwitz Urn , approximately 2,500 marched past the urn before a hundred thousand guests, including the Polish envoy and the leaders of the C.P.N., gave a speech in which he described the commemoration as
“…an admonition against the unscrupulous forces, those who have survived from that dark chapter of world history and those who could threaten to do this again. Man up against those unscrupulous forces who remain from that dark chapter of world history, and who could threaten us again with this evil. stand up against the perpetrators and—what cannot be concealed when we want to remain serious, also against the guilty ones.”

Buried in a grave donated by the municipality of Amsterdam at the Nieuwe Oosterbegraafplaats. Apparently the G.P.H at the last minute withdrew the slogan to turn the commemoration into a demonstration against fascism.*
It may be recalled that the statements made in this regard by the general secretary of the C.P.N. during his May 1 speech in Amsterdam.

To His Excellency
the Deputy Prime Minister
Minister without Portfolio
Ministry of Internal Affairs
In copy to;
His Excellency
the prime minister
Square 1813 no. 4
in The Hague

Sources

Click to access 141958.pdf

https://nos.nl/artikel/2502616-aivd-bvd-zag-niet-holocaust-overlevenden-maar-communisten-als-gevaar

https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/leden-van-het-nederlands-auschwitz-comite-jarenlang-gevolgd-door-de-veiligheidsdienst-niemand-heeft-dit-ooit-geweten~b3695d69/

https://worldhistory.columbia.edu/content/jewish-collaborator-trial-1948-dutch-execution-anna-van-dijk-courtroom-and-press

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Ans-van-Dijk/03/0004

https://portal.ehri-project.eu/units/nl-002896-mf1235804

https://www.aivd.nl/documenten/publicaties/2023/12/23/naar-aanleiding-van-artikel-parool-over-nederlands-auschwitz-comite

Samen herdenken was onmogelijk

https://www.euronews.com/2023/12/27/danger-to-democracy-netherlands-accused-of-spying-on-jews-after-world-war-ii

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NATO

On this day in 1949 the idea of NATO was conceived . North Atlantic Treaty Organization or in French ,OTAN, Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique nord.

The foundations were laid down on 4 April 1949 with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, more popularly known as the Washington Treaty.

On 4 April 1949, the foreign ministers from 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty (also known as the Washington Treaty) at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington, D.C.: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Within the five months following the signing ceremony, the Treaty was ratified by the parliaments of the interested countries, sealing their membership.

The 12 signatories

Some of the foreign ministers who signed the Treaty were heavily involved in NATO’s work at a later stage in their careers:

Belgium: M. Paul-Henri Spaak (NATO Secretary General, 1957-1961);
Canada: Mr Lester B. Pearson (negotiated the Treaty and was one of the “Three Wise Men”, who drafted the report on non-military cooperation in NATO, published in 1956 in the wake of the Suez Crisis);
Denmark: Mr Gustav Rasmussen;
France: M. Robert Schuman (architect of the European institutions, who also initiated the idea of a European Defence Community);
Iceland: Mr Bjarni Benediktsson;
Italy: Count Carlo Sforza;
Luxembourg: M. Joseph Bech;
the Netherlands: Dr D.U. Stikker (NATO Secretary General, 1961-1964);
Norway: Mr Halvard M. Lange (one of the “Three Wise Men”, who drafted the report on non-military cooperation in NATO);
Portugal: Dr José Caeiro da Matta;
United Kingdom: Mr Ernest Bevin (a main driver behind the creation of NATO and as Foreign Secretary from 1945 to 1951, he attended the first formative meetings of the North Atlantic Council);
United States: Mr Dean Acheson (as US Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953, he attended and chaired meetings of the North Atlantic Council).

The North Atlantic Alliance was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its purpose was to secure peace in Europe, to promote cooperation among its members and to guard their freedom – all of this in the context of countering the threat posed at the time by the Soviet Union. The Alliance’s founding treaty was signed in Washington in 1949 by a dozen European and North American countries. It commits the Allies to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law, as well as to peaceful resolution of disputes. Importantly, the treaty sets out the idea of collective defence, meaning that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization – or NATO – ensures that the security of its European member countries is inseparably linked to that of its North American member countries. The Organization also provides a unique forum for dialogue and cooperation across the Atlantic.

The heart of NATO is expressed in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, in which the signatory members agree that:

“an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. After the destruction of the Second World War, the nations of Europe struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security.

Dominated by the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was established in May 1955 as a balance of power or counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Joining the originaL NATO signatories were Greece and Turkey (1952); West Germany (1955; from 1990 as Germany).

West Germany joined NATO in 1955, which led to the formation of the rival Warsaw Pact during the Cold War

Spain (1982); the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); and North Macedonia (2020). France withdrew from the integrated military command of NATO in 1966 but remained a member of the organization; it resumed its position in NATO’s military command in 2009. Finland and Sweden, two long-neutral countries, were formally invited to join NATO in 2022.

Finland will join NATO today, on the 74th anniversary of NATO

SOURCES

https://www.nato.int/nato-welcome/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65173043

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/nato

Gail Halvorsen-The candy bomber.

Shortly after a war it would be quite unnerving to see a bomber flying over your city.

However in West Berlin in 1948, this was a welcome sight. It probably was the equivalent of Santa delivering presents early. After World War 2, when Soviet Union leader Josef Stalin occupied West Berlin in 1948, Halvorsen participated in the Berlin Airlift, a joint military effort between America and the United Kingdom to deliver food and aid to the German city.

Lieutenant Halvorsen’s role in the Berlin Airlift was to fly one of many C-54 cargo planes used to ferry supplies into the starving city. During his flights he would first fly to Berlin, then deeper into Soviet-controlled areas. Halvorsen had an interest in photography and on his days off often went sightseeing in Berlin and shot film on his personal handheld movie camera. One day in July, he was filming planes taking off and landing at Tempelhof, the main landing site for the airlift. While there, he saw about thirty children lined up behind one of the barbed-wire fences. He went to meet them and noticed that the children had nothing. Halvorsen remembers: “I met about thirty children at the barbed wire fence that protected Tempelhof’s huge area. They were excited and told me that ‘when the weather gets so bad that you can’t land, don’t worry about us. We can get by on a little food, but if we lose our freedom, we may never get it back.'”Touched, Halvorsen reached into his pocket and took out two sticks of gum to give to the children. The kids broke them into little pieces and shared them; the ones who did not get any sniffed the wrappers.

Watching the children, so many of whom had absolutely nothing, Halvorsen regretted not having more to give them. Halvorsen recorded that he wanted to do more for the children, and so told them that the following day he would have enough gum for all of them, and he would drop it out of his plane. According to Halvorsen, one child asked “How will we know it is your plane?” to which Halvorsen responded that he would wiggle his wings, something he had done for his parents when he first got his pilot’s license in 1941.

That night, Halvorsen, his copilot, and his engineer pooled their candy rations for the next day’s drop. The accumulated candy was heavy, so in order to ensure that no children were hurt by the falling package, Halvorsen made three parachutes out of handkerchiefs and tied them to the rations.In the morning when Halvorsen and his crew made regular supply drops, they also dropped three boxes of candy attached to handkerchiefs. They made these drops once a week for three weeks. Each week, the group of children waiting at the Tempelhof airport fence grew significantly.

When word reached the airlift commander, Lieutenant General William H. Tunner, he ordered it expanded into Operation “Little Vittles”, named as a play on the airlift’s name of Operation Vittles. Operation Little Vittles began officially on September 22, 1948. Support for this effort to provide the children of Berlin with chocolate and gum grew quickly, first among Halvorsen’s friends, then to the whole squadron. As news of Operation Little Vittles reached the United States, children and candymakers from all over the US began contributing candy. By November 1948, Halvorsen could no longer keep up with the amount of candy and handkerchiefs being sent from across America. College student Mary C. Connors of Chicopee, Massachusetts offered to take charge of the now national project and worked with the National Confectioner’s Association to prepare the candy and tie the handkerchiefs. With the groundswell of support, Little Vittles pilots, of which Halvorsen was now one of many, were dropping candy every other day. Children all over Berlin had sweets, and more and more artwork was getting sent back with kind letters attached to them.The American candy bombers became known as the Rosinenbomber (Raisin Bombers), while Halvorsen himself became known by many nicknames to the children of Berlin, including his original moniker of “Uncle Wiggly Wings”, as well as “The Chocolate Uncle”, “The Gum Drop Kid” and “The Chocolate Flier”.

Operation “Little Vittles” was in effect from September 22, 1948, to May 13, 1949. Although Lieutenant Halvorsen returned home in January 1949, he passed on leadership of the operation to one of his friends, Captain Lawrence Caskey. Upon his return home, Halvorsen met with several individuals who were key in making Operation “Little Vittles” a success. Halvorsen personally thanked his biggest supporter Dorothy Groeger, a homebound woman who nonetheless enlisted the help of all of her friends and acquaintances to sew handkerchiefs and donate funds. He also met the schoolchildren and “Little Vittles” committee of Chicopee, Massachusetts who were responsible for preparing over 18 tons of candy and gum from across the country and shipping it to Germany. In total, it is estimated that Operation “Little Vittles” was responsible for dropping over 23 tons of candy from over 250,000 parachutes.

Halvorsen tells HistoryNet’s David Lauterborn that an encounter with a group of young German children watching Allied soldiers arrive at the Templehof air base helped put things into perspective. Through a barbed-wire perimeter fence, they spoke to him.

“These kids were giving me a lecture, telling me, “Don’t give up on us. If we lose our freedom, we’ll never get it back,” Halvorsen tells HistoryNet. “I just flipped. Got so interested, I forgot what time it was.”

The pilot then handed the children two sticks of gum and told them to come back the next day, when he planned to airdrop more sweets. He would wiggle the wings of his aircraft so they would know it was him, reports the Boston Globe.

Halvorsen lived up to his promise, asking other pilots to donate their candy rations and having his flight engineer rock the airplane during the drop. Things grew from there, as more and more children showed up to catch his airdrops and letters began to arrive “requesting special airdrops at other points in the city,” writes the Air Force. The peculiar wing maneuver was how Halvorsen earned his other nickname: ‘Uncle Wiggly Wings.’

During the airlift, Allied planes carrying supplies landed every 45 seconds at Templehoff Airport in Berlin. From June 1948, the pilots delivered 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other necessities on 278,000 flights up until the end of the Soviet blockade in May 1949, according to the AP.

Halvorsen remained in the military after the war, retiring as a colonel in 1974 from the Air Force, reports Richard Goldstein for the New York Times. He moved back to Utah and became assistant dean of student life at Brigham Young University in Provo.

That same year, Halvorsen received the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his efforts as the “Candy Bomber,” per the Boston Globe.

Gail Seymour “The Candy Bomber” Halvorsen was born on October 10, 1920 and lived a very long life, He died aged 101 on February 16, 2022.

Halvorsen died from respiratory failure in Provo on February 16, 2022, at the age of 101.After funeral services conducted for him with full military honors, which included a flyover by a KC-135R of the Utah Air National Guard’s 151st Air Refueling Wing and a 21-gun salute by honor guard members from the Air Force ROTC units from BYU and Utah Valley University, he was buried at the Provo City Cemetery.

Happy Birthday dear Sir.

sources

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/candy-bomber-who-airdropped-sweets-to-german-children-in-1948-dies-at-101-180979610/

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/airlift-chocolate-pilot/

https://www.chicopeepubliclibrary.org/archives/exhibits/show/scrapbook-of-the-operation-lit/little_vittles_scrapbook#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=0%2C-208%2C2999%2C3302

ROCKTOBER- Child in Time

As you can see I renamed October to ROCKTOBER- Throughout the month I shall be posting classic Rock songs and the stories behind them. Starting with Deep Purple’s “Child in Time”

It is the 3rd track on the a side of Deep Purple’s classic 1970 album “Deep Purple in Rock”

Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan has said that “Child in Time” is based on It’s a Beautiful Day’s psychedelic song “Bombay Calling”.

It’s a Beautiful Day in return borrowed Purple’s “Wring That Neck” and turned it into “Don and Dewey” on their second album Marrying Maiden (1970). The song started with organist Jon Lord playing “Bombay Calling”, which the band then re-arranged and changed the structure. Gillan had never heard the original song, and created lyrics about the Cold War to fit the music, later saying it “reflected the mood of the moment”. The band then worked out instrumental lines to accompany this.

With themes of war and inhumanity, the song is regarded as a heavy metal anthem and an example of art rock.

A staple of the Deep Purple live concerts in 1970–73 and later after their initial reunion tours of 1985 and 1987–88, the song was not featured regularly at concerts after 1995. It was re-added to the setlist for the band’s 2002 European tour, with its final appearance in Deep Purple’s live set was at Kharkiv’s Opera Theatre’s scene in March of that year.

A live version later appeared on the 1972 live album Made in Japan.

Ian Gillan said in an interview in 2002: “There are two sides to that song – the musical side and the lyrical side. On the musical side, there used to be this song ‘Bombay Calling’ by a band called It’s A Beautiful Day. It was fresh and original, when Jon was one day playing it on his keyboard. It sounded good, and we thought we’d play around with it, change it a bit and do something new keeping that as a base. But then, I had never heard the original ‘Bombay Calling.’ So we created this song using the Cold War as the theme, and wrote the lines ‘Sweet child in time, you’ll see the line.’ That’s how the lyrical side came in. Then, Jon had the keyboard parts ready and Ritchie had the guitar parts ready. The song basically reflected the mood of the moment, and that’s why it became so popular.”

Lars Ulrich of Metallica cites this as one of his favorite songs of all time. He says that when he was 9 years old, his father took him to a Deep Purple show, and it changed his life. “This is their most iconic moment,” he told Rolling Stone regarding the song. “I’ve heard it 92,000 times, and it never sounds anything less than great.”

I have to agree with Lars on this one.

sources

https://www.thehighwaystar.com/news/2021/01/12/child-in-time-the-story-behind-the-song/

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/deep-purple/child-in-time

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Moody Blues-Prague in White Satin

You’re an immensely popular Rock-Blues band and you have been invited to one of the Warsaw pact countries,Czechoslovakia to be precise.

They just got a new leader a man with a vision,a prelude to glasnost as such. Alexander Dubček opened it up his country for new cultural experiences, so when the Moody Blues got a chance to play a gig behind the iron curtain of course they took it with both hands, After all what could go wrong? They had the blessing of the supreme leader.

Well it was August 20,1968 the day that the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact nations decided they did not like these new liberties introduced by Mr Dubček and decided to end this party nick named the Prague spring and took control of this unruly situation.

The band did get a chance to shoot a promo for a French TV show the video  was shot in the afternoon . As The Moody Blues played their hit song, Warsaw Pact troops were already preparing for an invasion. By the evening, it had begun, and the British Embassy took no chances and quickly withdrew the band members from the city. Justin Hayward recalled in an interview: “We were in Czechoslovakia when the Russians rolled in. The British Air Force very kindly got us out, and it wasn’t until we got back to England that we realized what was going on.”

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The chances of anything coming from earth, are a million to one, they say.

We all know the story “War of the Worlds” be it either the book, movies or the musical version. A tag line of the story is “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, they say.”

Turns out that we beat the Martians to it. On July 1976. only 7 years after the first man to set foot on the Moon, the first man made object landed on Mars, the Viking 1″

Viking 1’s  successful landing ,gave  a window into the climatic conditions of the red planet. From the crafts position  on Chryse Planitia, the Viking 1 spent six years transmitting pictures, information and occasionally life experiments back to Earth. Which are still being debated today.

The lander was launched using a Titan/Centaur launch vehicle. The launch happened on August 20 1975, 11 months before the landing.

Viking 1 carried a biology experiment whose purpose was to look for evidence of life. Thus far no life has been found(or has there?)

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A destructive beauty.

On July 16,1945,at 5:29 a.m the world witnessed a beautiful yet devastating event. When I say world I really mean only a select few. What they witnessed was the first ever nuclear test, designated the ‘Trinity Test’ it was part of the Manhattan Project.

The bomb that was detonated was ‘the gadget’.

Although we all know how devastating a nuclear device can be, there is something beautiful about it. Don’t get me wrong I don’t like nukes but the direct aftermath of the explosion does display a beautiful fireball and cloud.

The expanding fireball and shockwave of the Trinity test explosion, seen .025 seconds after detonation on July 16, 1945. It nearly looks like a perfect sphere.

The evolution of the Trinity fireball over the first 9 seconds, with the Empire State Building for scale. Image by Alex Wellerstein.

The evolution of the Trinity fireball over the first 9 seconds, with the Empire State Building for scale. Image by Alex Wellerstein.

The fireball of the conventional explosion was visible from Alamogordo Army Air Field 60 miles (97 km) away, but there was little shock at the base camp 10 miles (16 km) away.

A few weeks after the Trinity test the US Army Airforce would drop 2 nuclear bombs on Japan,, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

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Source

Rare historical Photos

 

The forgotten Live Aid acts.

On July 13 1985, one of the biggest ever music concerts took place. Live Aid. The aim of the concerts was to raise  funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine.

The concerts are often referred to as a dual-venue benefit concert, which is actually not true. Yes the main concerts took place in London and Philadelphia but there were other concerts held in tandem in Australia,Asia and other European countries.

Another thing that happened was the relaxing on restrictions to Rock music in the Soviet Union

The Soviet Unions’s  Contribution for Live Aid was the Band ‘Autograph’

Their performance was broadcast via Satellite from Moscow to Wembley,London.They were introduced by Introduction by Vladimir Posner .They played 2 songs Golovokruzhenie ( ” Vertigo “) and Nam nuzhen nir ( ” We need peace “).

Yugoslavia contributed with their equivalent to Band Aid and USA For Africa with a song called “For a Million Years” the song was introduced by Mladen Popovic , who also gave some background information to the song.

BB King was performing at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Hague,Netherlands that night and joined also via satellite link and played 4 songs.

“When It All Comes Down”
“Why I Sing the Blues”
“Don’t Answer the Door”
“Rock Me Baby”

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The last man on the Moon

 

Mention Neil Armstrong and every one will know who he is and even what he said when he set foot as the first man on the Moon.

However the name Eugene Cernan will mean very little to most people. Although he was just as important to the Apollo missions. Eugene Ceman was the last man on the Moon, but he was also part of the Apollo 10 mission.

Apollo 10 was  the second manned mission(Apollo 8,had been the first) to orbit the Moon. Launched on May 18, 1969, it was the F mission: (the ‘dress rehearsal’ for the first Moon landing) testing all of the components and procedures, without actually landing on the surface.

It was also the mission which set the  highest speed attained by a manned vehicle.24,791 mph on its return to earth on May 26 1969.

Eugene Cernan Cernan flew two other space missions: Gemini 9A, where he struggled during NASA’s second spacewalk ever. Cernan was originally selected with Thomas Stafford as backup pilot for Gemini 9. When the prime crew was killed in the crash of NASA T-38A “901” (USAF serial 63-8181) at Lambert Field on February 28, 1966, the backup crew became the prime crew—the first time this happened.

Cernan was surprised, as were others, that he was selected as the commander for the Apollo 17 mission. Shortly before the selection of the crew, Cernan had crashed his helicopter. After the crash he said  “if he couldn’t fly a helicopter without incident, how could he command a journey to the moon?”  Richard F. Gordon Jr. would have been a more likely candidate as commander for the mission, partially because he had been a member as the back up crew of the cancelled Apollo 15 mission together with Harrison H. Schmitt.

Schmitt was a geologist, making him the first scientist-astronaut to land on moon.He was assigned as Lunar Module Pilot for the Apollo 17 mission.

Scientific objectives of the Apollo 17 mission included, geological surveying and sampling of materials and surface features in a pre-selected area of the Taurus-Littrow region; deploying and activating surface experiments.

Cernan’s role as commander of Apollo 17 closed out the Apollo program’s lunar exploration mission with a number of record-setting achievements. During the three days of Apollo 17’s surface activity (Dec. 11-14, 1972), Cernan and Schmitt performed three EVAs (Extravehicular Activities)or Spacewalk and moonwalk in this case, of  a total of about 22 hours of exploration of the Taurus–Littrow valley. Their first EVA alone was more than three times the length astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent outside the Lunar Module.

As Cernan was getting ready  to climb the ladder for the final time, he spoke these words; which are the last spoken by a human standing on the Moon’s surface to date:

“Bob, this is Gene, and I’m on the surface; and, as I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I’d like to just (say) what I believe history will record: that America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

Sadly Eugene Cernan died on January 16, 2017 but what a legacy he left behind, they just don’t make them like that anymore. A true hero.

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Sources

NASA

Space.com

First human in Space

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarinwas a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.

During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes. Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187 miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control system. The only statement attributed to Gagarin during his one hour and 48 minutes in space was, “Flight is proceeding normally; I am well.”

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