Obit of the Day
Looking at the unique lives that have shuffled off this mortal coil. OOTD is the most popular obituary blog on Tumblr.
Also featured on Tumblr's History Spotlight
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Every Friday we get our newly appointed “Obituarian” Josh Eisenberg on the phone with us to inform us on which important figures have passed on and left unforgettable legacies. This week we commemorate two men who passed this week: documentary photographer Wayne Miller, a Chicago South Side native whose photo of the delivery of his newborn son performed by his father, landed on the Voyager Golden Record. Also Josh educated us on the legacy of Boruch Spiegel, one of the few remaining survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising during the 1943 Nazi revolt.
Here are the original obits: Wayne Miller and Boruch Spiegel.
For more fascinating people check out the Obit of the Day home page and Archive.
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Enjoy your weekend!
Obit of the Week: Josh Eisenberg shares some historical passings this week, from the last of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising fighters to a Chicago photographer who has an image of his on the Voyager Golden Record.
Acoustic Donuts: The Ephelon Trio joins us in studio to share some fo their interpretations of J Dilla’s classic album, which they’ll play live in its entirety tomorrow night at Ultra Lounge in Logan Square.
Film: Reggie Ponder the Reel Critic reviews the box office, revisits Star Trek, and new movies opening in theaters.
Tune in this morning at about 8:20 am CDT. You can listen to the live stream at www.vocalo.org (or the Vocalo app) or www.tunein.com (search “Vocalo”) and the TuneIn app.
And it’s also pledge week at Vocalo.org so if you’ve enjoyed listening to Obit of the Week maybe you can donate $5 to the station…
Obit of the Day: Photographer Wayne F. Miller
Wayne MIller was going to be a banker. But as with so many of his generation, World War II intervened. Mr. Miller was recruited by fashion photographer Edward Steichen to be part of an elite naval photography unit. During the war, Mr. Miller would document all facets of military life. He was also one of the first photographers on the ground after the bombing at Hiroshima (bottom center).
Mr. Miller returned home to Chicago at the end of the war. Having documented death and destruction for four years, Mr. Miller had decided to try and use his camera to heal. He spent three years on Chicago’s predominately black South Side documenting day-to-day life. His hope was to bring whites and blacks together. It became his seminal work, Chicago’s South Side.
The rest of Mr. Miller’s career covered broad areas. Whether it was as a member of the famed Magnum Photo cooperative or curating “The Family of Man” (which featured the photo, above, of Mr. Miller’s father delivering his grandson, David), Mr. Miller was attempting to capture ”’universal truths,’ and it was his hope that if he could use his camera to reveal those truths, we might achieve a greater understanding of ourselves and each other.”
Wayne Miller died on May 22, 2013 at the age of 94.
Sources: Chicago Sun-Times and MagnumPhotos.com
Images:
Top left: Younger Siblings of Detroit Gang Members, Detroit, Michigan, 1947 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesy of www.liquidnight.tumblr.com
Top right: Undated photo from World War II. Copyright Wayne Miller and courtesy of www.faciepopuli.com (a tumblr)
Top center: Birth of Wayne Miller’s son David, delivered by David’s grandfather. Copyright Wayne Miller and courtesy of smithsonianmag.com Note: Carl Sagan included a copy of this photo on the “golden record” that was placed on Voyager I and II as a message for other cultures. The spacecraft were launched in 1977 and left the solar system in the 2010s.
Bottom center: Chicago South Side, 1947 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesy of thenewyorker.com. Note: When Langston Hughes was writing a newspaper column he would refer to a character he called “Simple.” When he saw this photo taken by Mr. Miller he said “That’s Simple.” Source
Bottom left: Chicago’s South Side, 1946-1948 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesy fo www.higherpictures.com
Bottom right: Hiroshima, Japan (Japanese soldier and Atomic bomb destruction), 1945 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesyof www.hartmanfineart.net
For more incredible images check out Obit of the Day’s Photography page
Obit of the Day: Started the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising officially began on April 19, 1943 but the foundation for the first urban rebellion against the Nazis was laid months earlier.
Having already deported or killed 300,000 Jews in the summer of 1942, the Jewish residents of the segregated ghetto would not sit idly by and allow the Nazis to simply ship more men, women, and children to death camps. Several resistance group came together to create the Jewish Combat Organization (or Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa in Polish).
Boruch Spiegel, just 23 at the time, joined the fight.
On January 18, 1943 as the Nazis came to round up another group of residents for deportation, members of the ZOB, armed with pistols, secretly joined the Jews who were rounded up. As they neared the gates of the ghetto, the armed fighters attacked the German soldiers. This allowed the deportees to to scatter. Although approximately 6,000 Jews were still taken from the ghetto, the resistance forced the Germans to halt all deportations beginning on January 21.
They would return.
On April 19, the day before Passover, the Germans marched to the ghetto with plans to liquidate it. But the resistance had learned of the Nazi plans and were ready. As the Germans approached the ghetto Mr. Spiegel was on guard duty and gave the signal to attack.
Armed with some guns taken from soldiers in January, some 750 members of ZOB hid in attics and bunkers and attacked the Germans. The army was forced, again, to retreat.
The Germans’ new plan was to simply burn the ghetto down, building by building. The organized resistance collapsed within days. But it would take until May 16, 1943 for the Germans to completely take control of the ghetto. The Jews of Warsaw had held the German army at bay for 28 days. (For perspective, Poland fell to the Nazis after 26 days in September 1939.)
The Jewish fighters did not win, though. Seven thousand were killed during the Uprising. Seven thousand more were captured and sent to Treblinka where they were immediately gassed. The remaining 42,000 residents of the ghetto were rounded up and deported to various concentration camps. The ghetto was razed and Warsaw’s Jews were gone.
Mr. Spiegel, and 60 other fighters, managed to escape Warsaw through sewage tunnels and joined the Polish resistance. Spiegel, who would see his father die of malnutrition in the ghetto and also lose his mother, two sisters, and a brother, would fight the Germans until the end of the war in 1945. This included another uprising throughout the entire city of Warsaw in 1944.
Mr. Spiegel, who married fellow ZOB fighter Chaike Belchatowska, was one of three resistance members remaining at the time of his death of May 7, 2013 at the age of 93. According to his son-in-law, Eugene Orenstein, a retired professor of Jewish history, there are only two members of the Ghetto Uprising still living: Mr. Simka Rotem and Mrs. Pnina Greenspan, both of whom live in Israel.
Sources: NY Times, Denver Post, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(Image of Boruch Spiegel, taken prior to the September 1939 invasion of Poland when he was 19 years old, is courtesy of the LA Times)
Obit of the Day has also created a new Holocaust page. Take some time to check it out.
