Weekend self-care open thread: The music of World War II

Eighty-one years ago this past Friday, the Second World War in Europe ended. 

Tens of millions were slaughtered in a genocidal war begun by a nation which had been the pinnacle of European civilization. It's easy to say that Germany succumbed to madness; but truly, the war was the logical conclusion of European history since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Centuries of war on the Continent eventually had to blossom into one great conflagration. 

The Shoah was also an inevitability. Jews had been "the Other" for as many centuries, hated and made scapegoats for any setback, any tragedy. The Zionist movement didn't begin in the 1930s, but in the 19th century, when religious antisemitism turned into racial antisemitism; no longer could Jews convert to Christianity and have the stain of Jewishness washed away. Jews were always Jews, no matter if they hadn't adhered to the religion for generations.

It was a cataclysm which informs us to this moment. The wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine descend from those years, from still-unresolved issues which the exigencies of the Cold War papered over.

But, finally, the war came to a close. Millions dead and murdered. Cities laid waste. European empires fading away.

This weekend we commemorate that time with the music which got people through the darkness. Because humans always seek to make the best of whatever awful situations in which they find themselves. And music is always a balm to the soul.

As we see the old darkness arising, we must remember that we've faced it before untold times, and come out of those times both surviving and thriving. And we will again.

As always, dear friends, be ever kind, gentle, and joyful with yourselves and those around you.