麻豆约拍

Good Morning
On this day in 1812 Napoleon led his Grande Armee across the Niemen and invaded Russia. Maimed by the Czar鈥檚 Army at Borodin, his forces limped to a torched and abandoned Moscow, before the bitter winter reduced them to frost-eaten remnants and Napoleon to an ignominious fugitive.
129 years later, on almost the same date, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. It was one of the most vicious invasion forces in history. Civilian populations were destroyed, prisoners in their millions starved to death. Behind the lines came the Einsatzgruppen, killing units, tasked with the mass execution of Jews, whom they murdered by the hundreds of thousands.
Their fortunes in Russia led the Nazis to expedite their genocidal plans elsewhere, building the death camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor. I have holiday pictures of the members of my father鈥檚 family who perished there; Arnold, a little boy, sweet in his Navy suit.
Hitler should have remembered what happened to Napoleon, my grandmother used to say. But few of us learn from our own mistakes, let alone those of others.
Today populism and racism are once again on the rise. We desperately need to learn from history.
We need leaders who shun violence and contempt, refuse to court popularity by fanning the hatred of others, and understand how to unite people instead of driving them apart.
Never before have we so urgently needed to combine the wisdom and resources of all peoples and faiths to protect the future of the very planet, on which we all depend.
God, give us the wisdom to learn from history.