Peter Yarrow Dies at 86

Day Is Done: As you have almost certainly heard - Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary - has died, at the age of 86. The Associated Press reports:

Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk-music trio whose impassioned harmonies transfixed millions as they lifted their voices in favor of civil rights and against war, has died. He was 86.

Yarrow, who also co-wrote the group’s most enduring song, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died Tuesday in New York, publicist Ken Sunshine said. Yarrow had bladder cancer for the past four years.

“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest,” his daughter Bethany said in a statement.

Abq Jew will leave it to the many, many others who knew Peter Yarrow - or met him, or heard him perform - to provide a proper eulogy. There's plenty of them, and they're all over the Internet.

Instead, here is Abq Jew's tribute - Day Is Done, written by Peter Yarrow in 1968. One of Abq Jew's favorite PP&M classics, which he used to sing to his son - when both of them were a lot younger.

Wikipedia tells us -

The song was written as an anti-war song during the Vietnam War era. According to Yarrow, it was written from the perspective of his younger brother who faced the possibility of getting drafted into the army.

Yarrow performed it as the opening song at a concert during the anti-war march he helped organized in Washington in November 1969. It became one of the best-known protest songs of the era. 

Yarrow said that the message of the song is that 

"Children will lead us to a better world".

First - a version with Peter, Paul and Mary; the Smothers Brothers; Donovan; and Jennifer Warnes.

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Day Is Done

Peter Yarrow

Tell me why youre crying, my son

I know youre frightened, like everyone

Is it the thunder in the distance you fear?

Will it help if I stay very near? I am here

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

Day is done, day is done, day is done, day is done

Do you ask why Im sighing, my son?

You shall inherit what mankind has done

In a world filled with sorrow and woe

If you ask me why this is so, I really dont know

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

Day is done, day is done, day is done, day is done

Tell me why youre smiling my son

Is there a secret you can tell everyone?

Do you know more than men that are wise?

Can you see what we all must disguise through your loving eyes?

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

Day is done, day is done, day is done, day is done

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

And if you take my hand my son

All will be well when the day is done

And here - the classic version with Peter, Paul and Mommy. And with the incomparable Paul Prestopino, of blessed memory, on banjo.

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The Dutch Collaborators

More Than We Knew: As Abq Jew has often mentioned (see January 2024's Escape From Amsterdam; June 2023's Amsterdam: Occupied City; and April 2023's Hiding During the Holocaust), he has become fixated on the travails of Dutch Jews during World War II. 

But then we New MexiJews celebrated Hanukkah and New Year's and other joyous events (see Welcome, Alana Lee!). No one was paying attention to the news shmews. And then Abq Jew caught this story on NBC News. 

The story almost slipped under the radar. In fairness, it was (lightly) covered by other news media, including Jewish news media. But Abq Jew caught David Hodari's more complete exposition on NBC News.

Half a million suspected Nazi collaborators are named as the Netherlands reckons with WWII past

Eight decades after the Holocaust, the list was made public in the country of Anne Frank as a law prohibiting its release expired on New Year’s Day.

By David Hodari

Dutch patriots guard townspeople accused of collaborating with the Nazis in Nijmegen,
Netherlands, after American airborne troops liberated the town in 1945.  Bettmann Archive

It has long been a source of shame as much as curiosity.

Now, some 80 years later, the names of those suspected of collaborating with the Nazis have been made public in the Netherlands as the country goes to new lengths to document the extent of its complicity in the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich.

In the country where teenage diarist Anne Frank is the most famous victim of the Holocaust, a historical research group funded by the Dutch government has for the first time published a list of nearly half a million people suspected of collaboration during World War II, after a law prohibiting its release expired on New Year’s Day.

Part of Abq Jew's fixation on the Dutch story is due to his family connection: the stories not told by Abq Jew's mechutan (his son's father-in-law), but told by other members of the family and by straightforward historical sources.

But a major part of Abq Jew's fixation is due to the overwhelming tragedy, which Nina Siegal shared in her recent book The Diary Keepers:

• Of the estimated 140,000 Dutch Jews, only about 35,000 survived World War II. Some 102,000, along with hundreds of Roma and Sinti people, died in the Holocaust. 
• That means that about 75 percent of the Dutch Jewish population was murdered in five years. 
• In a single generation, the Nazis had managed to wipe out four centuries of Jewish tradition and culture in Amsterdam and the Netherlands
• In France, 25 percent of Jews were killed during the Holocaust; about 40 percent of Jews from Belgium were murdered. 
• The Netherlands holds the dubious distinction of having the lowest survival rate of all the Western European countries.

Celebrate on Liberation Day in 1945. Universal History Archive /
Universal Images Group via Getty Images file

David Hodari's article continues:

The Huygens Institute’s “War in Court” project, which received an $18.5 million (18 million euros) grant from the three Dutch ministries that govern education, health and justice, has made public a digital archive that includes a list of 425,000 mostly Dutch people who were investigated for collaborating with the Netherlands’ Nazi occupiers.

The archive is “an extraordinary resource, and one that is very timely in terms of the Dutch debates about World War II and levels of collaboration,” said Dan Stone, a professor of modern history at Royal Holloway, University of London.

“At the very least, it shows that huge numbers of people were accused of collaborating with the Nazi occupier,” Stone told NBC News by email. “And the fact that relatively few were imprisoned probably tells us as much about postwar Dutch society as it does about the wartime facts.”

Of those in the database, only a fifth ever appeared in court, with most cases concerning more minor offenses such as membership in the Nazi party, Reuters reported. According to the Dutch central statistics bureau, in 1939 — the year World War II broke out — the country’s population was 8.7 million. 

That would make just under 5% of the country suspected collaborators.

Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940 and occupied the country until the allied liberation in 1945.

During that period, more than 100,000 Dutch Jews — around three-quarters of those in the country — were killed in the Holocaust, with approximately 6 million Jews murdered overall alongside the Nazis’ political opponents and members of other groups declared to be inferior, such as Roma and LGBTQ people.

Why is this important now?

 A 2023 survey carried out by the Claims Conference — a U.S.-based nonprofit that represents Jews in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs — found that despite efforts by the Dutch government that include a new memorial in 2021 and a new museum opened last year, the efficacy of Holocaust education in the Netherlands is waning.

The survey found that 23% of Dutch millennials and Gen Zers believe the Holocaust is a myth or the number of Jews killed during WWII has been greatly exaggerated.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day
is Monday, January 27, 2025.

Welcome, Alana Lee!

Live! From Rhode Island! Mr & Mrs Abq Jew are thrilled beyond measure to announce the arrival, back in December 2024, of our newest granddaughter, Alana Lee, born to their wonderful daughter Alex and her equally wonderful husband Jake.

Mr & Mrs Abq Jew waited 3,815 days (10 years, 5 months, and 9 days) (see July 2014's Welcome, Violet Olivia) for a third grandkid celebration.

But they remember waiting forever for their first grandchild (see August 2012's Welcome, Lena Rose).

And thus, Mr & Mrs Abq Jew joyfully send love and happiness to their machetonim, who have waited forever for Alana Lee!

To celebrate the arrival of Alana Lee, here is Harry Belafonte singing Malvina Reynolds' Turn Around. To which Alex and Abq Jew danced at Alex & Jake's wedding (see November 2023's At the End of the Rainbow).

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