My first reaction to the first video was to be reminded of the Imperial March from Star Wars. It's harsh and heavy and hostile.
And it gave me a idea for the series of stories I'm currently writing.
You're welcome
I don't think that would go over well in countries that observe Remembrance Day and include World War I even though there are no WWI vets still alive (in Canada, at least). There are still quite a few WWII vets still alive and their experiences have percolated down and had an effect on their families two or three generations along. My own great-grandmother died of Spanish flu after soldiers returning to Alberta spread it among the people.
Lest We Forget.
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When I grew up as little kid in Amsterdam it was not that long after WW2. The scars of 5 years occupation still there.
From the first three books that I got as (too little) kid, all from my grandfather, 2 were about the resistance: one on NL, one on the Jewish ghetto uprising in Warsaw. My elder brother the same with two other books. Books were expensive.
My mother was a teenager courier in the war in Groningen. Groningen was liberated by the Canadians. She wanted to emigrate to Canada, but met my father, though she did keep up for decades the correspondence (with the wifes of those soldiers). My father is a much deeper story as member of the Dutch resistance, as most of his family. Not for here.
My mother was also the one the wifes of my uncles from my father's side contacted when one uncle would again not sleep well.
Lest We Forget
Yes, they told enough stories for that, dosed but still a lot. Yes, I was at many Remembrance Day meetings as little kid already. And as adult on top many times in Februari at the monument of the Dokwerker (Heaver) in Amsterdam, as remembrance of the big spontaneous and massive strike when the first deportations of Jews started by the Nazi's.
My mother, now 93, has light dementia. And dementia can cause paranoia-like anxiety. The old fears of her resistance time are coming back when she is in a more weak mood.
I think it is about HOW not to forget.
At Remembrance Day, the usual ritual is some poem from wartime or a survivor victim, a speech by someone more important like the Mayor, and often kids/teenagers involved in adding some poems or text in their kids language. The future is for our kids. No military or vets in uniform except at the official one with the King.
The message here is about the generic abuse and oppression, mostly expanded to the evil of discrimination of all sorts, to the good of of social peace among us all.
Not so much war, not so much Nazi's or Nazi symbols.
The link to the occupation summarised in a line of a resistance member on our main Amsterdam Remembrance monument (not the Amsterdam National monument):
"A people that succumbs to tyrants... will lose more than life and properties... it quenches the light"
Not wanting to succumb to tyrants is not necessarily about foreign tyrants, or only Nazi's.. it is as much domestic tyrants... or multinational tyrants.
No symbols really attached to that remembrance angle. Those symbols change all the time anyway, increasingly faster.
When the last victims and vets have died, and perhaps another generation on top... I think we should free ourselves from the stigma's of those symbols.
).
