The events of 9/11 are now fading. Steadily, the date is being normalized, slowly becoming just another day.
It was always going to happen.
As I suspected, this year it passed unnoticed, totally without remark as far as I can see. But we should not forget the events that make the ninth of November memorable. We should give them passing recognition at least.
Surely.
The ninth of November was, memorably, the day on which Saddam Hussein declared “holy war” against Iran. The Iran/Iraq conflict, one that some claim is the longest conventional war of the last century, has been little documented or studied and is only now becoming the subject of serious analysis.
Still, no one has been able to accurately pinpoint the toll, but the military and civilian dead number in the hundreds of thousands.
9/11 is also the day, or night, the Nazis launched their campaign against Europe’s Jews, a campaign that would account for more than 6 million lives between Kristallnacht 1938 and the eventual Nazi defeat in 1945.
Sophie Yaari was 13 at the time. The Germans came shouting that her, her family and her Jewish neighbours were to be sent to Palestine. Sophie was taken with the others to the local gymnasium where a roll was called. It was all remarkably well organized, she says.
The women and children were sent home, for now, and the men kept. But when Sophie and her family arrived, they weren’t allowed in. They were told their house was theirs no more.
Sophie’s father was released, temporarily, with the help of Christian friends. The rest of the men were sent to Sachsenhausen or Oranienburg. Sophie and her sister escaped to Holland. Her mother took her to the border but wasn’t allowed to cross. She never saw either her mother or her father again.
In 1940 the Germans invaded the Netherlands. Sophie went underground and managed to hide in a series of safe-houses until the end of the war.
Tragedy can’t be measured by a body count, of course, but in the context of the Iran/Iraq and the Holocaust the death of 3,000 seems almost insignificant. But for the little fishing village of Santa Cruz del Sur, on the Gulf of Guacanayabo in Cuba, the 9/11 1932 tidal wave that washed away that many is remembered.
It is still Cuba’s worst natural disaster.
Europe’s Jews were victims on this day more than once. In 624, for instance, the Spanish king Egica accused Jews of helping the Moslems and sentenced them to slavery. On the ninth of November in 1526, the Jews were expelled from Pressburg in Hungary.
It was also the day, in 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant of the union army issued an order forbidding Jews from serving under him in the Civil War.
In 1915 it was the day 272 died aboard the Italian liner Ancona, sunk by German torpedoes. Japan received a triple dose of tragedy on 9/11; in 1973 fire at the Taiyo department store in Kumamoto claimed 101 lives, while in 1963 a train crash accounted for 160 and a mine explosion killed a further 450.
Like any other day, 9/11 was alo a day of joy and triumph. It is day when the human spirit soared, literally. In 1904 the first powered flight of more than five minutes duration was achieved. Women, too, took a big step forward in 1924 when Miriam Ferguson became the first female elected state governor, in liberal Texas.
On this day in 1989 freedom came to East Germany as the Berlin Wall was opened to allow unfettered travel between East and West. Then, in 1976 the UN condemned apartheid in South Africa.
Of course, the ninth of November has had its lighter moments: The Giant Panda was discovered on that day in 1927; and in 1973 former Beatle Ringo Starr released his solo album “Ringo”.
In sport big-hearted Evander Holyfield became the second man to win the World Heavyweight Championship three times, memorably out-scrapping Iron Mike Tyson in 11 rounds in 1996. New Zealand were all out for 70 against Pakistan in 1955, however, Richard Hadlee made good with a memorable 9 for 52 against Australia at the Gabba thirty years to the day later.
Tragedy, triumph and trivia: that is 9/11. Don’t forget it.