Rat Fink

@MAD615

Joined September 2009

1.5K Following

207 Followers

4.8K Posts

Rat Fink @MAD615

about 14 hours ago

@CoffinMedia 🙏

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Morgan.

@morganamooo

3 days ago

eyes filled with tears over this

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5 days ago

@tyromper 🙏

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6 days ago

@4nottoday 🙏

Who to follow

Spartacus

@DaOthrJR

Living life, causin trouble, laughing my ass off at some people, you should know who you are, just some guy with sweet ass hobby stuff & a .50BMG US Army Vet

Jeff in Exile

@JeffHGreen

IT by Day, Musician by Night, Boston, NYC, Berlin 26.2🏃, #Bears🏈 #Cubs⚾ #B04⚽, 'There you go again' -Uncle Ronny, 'You're fired' -Uncle Donald

MAD615 retweeted

8 days ago

He was only eighteen years old. His weapon of choice was not a gun, but a tiny bottle of acid. Yet, this teenage boy managed to save fourteen thousand lives from certain death. In 1943, Paris was a dark place under Nazi occupation. Adolfo Kaminsky was just a young apprentice working in a textile dyeing shop. He spent his days learning how colors reacted with chemicals, which solvents could dissolve certain pigments, and how to alter tones at a molecular level. He had no idea that this highly specific knowledge about ink and fabric would soon become the thin line between life and death for thousands of innocent people. During the occupation, the Gestapo used paperwork as their primary weapon to hunt down Jewish people. Identity cards, travel permits, and food rations were all strictly monitored. On the documents of Jewish citizens, the authorities stamped one single word in blue ink: "JUIF". That one word was a direct ticket to a concentration camp. The French Resistance desperately needed a way to erase that word without ruining the paper. Standard forgery techniques failed because the official ink was designed to be permanent. Any attempt to scrape it off left obvious marks that would get someone killed. They brought the problem to Kaminsky. The boy analyzed the paper under a dim lamp and remembered a trick from his textile work. Lactic acid could dissolve that exact blue ink while leaving the paper fibers perfectly intact. It worked. But erasing the stamp was only the first step. He had to rewrite names, birthdays, and signatures perfectly. The Resistance set up a secret laboratory for him in a hidden attic on the Left Bank of Paris. The demands poured in constantly. He needed to make fifty birth certificates for children escaping to Switzerland, two hundred food cards for families hiding in cellars, and hundreds of passes to Spain. The conditions were brutal. Bleach and acid fumes filled the tiny room, burning his throat and making his eyes water constantly. His fingers were permanently stained with dark ink. Kaminsky realized that each document took him about two minutes to make. That meant he could save thirty people every single hour. This realization turned into an obsession that haunted him. He looked at the clock and thought, "If I sleep for an hour, thirty people will die." So, he stopped sleeping. One week, word came that a local orphanage with three hundred Jewish children was about to be raided by the Nazis. They needed fake papers immediately or they would be put on a train to Auschwitz. Kaminsky locked himself in the attic. He worked for two straight days and nights without a pause. His vision blurred and his hand cramped so badly he had to physically massage his fingers to keep writing. Eventually, his body gave out and he collapsed onto the desk. He slept for exactly one hour. When he woke up, panic gripped him. He cried out, "Thirty people are dead because I was lazy!" He refused to eat or rest until the remaining papers were finished. Thanks to his sacrifice, the children were moved to safety in time. Kaminsky spent years in that suffocating attic, constantly upgrading his skills as the Nazis upgraded their security measures. When Paris was finally liberated in 1944, the young genius had saved roughly fourteen thousand people. He never accepted a single penny for his work, believing that taking money to save a life was deeply wrong. After the war, Kaminsky became a photographer and lived a quiet, modest life. He never bragged. He did not tell his neighbors, his coworkers, or even his own children about his wartime heroism for decades. He simply faded into the crowd as an ordinary man. Adolfo Kaminsky passed away in 2023 at the age of ninety-seven. He did not want monuments or medals. His true legacy lives on today in the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the thousands of people who survived the darkness simply because a brave teenager chose to stay awake.

Mr_Husky1's tweet photo. He was only eighteen years old. His weapon of choice was not a gun, but a tiny bottle of acid. Yet, this teenage boy managed to save fourteen thousand lives from certain death.

In 1943, Paris was a dark place under Nazi occupation. Adolfo Kaminsky was just a young apprentice working in a textile dyeing shop. He spent his days learning how colors reacted with chemicals, which solvents could dissolve certain pigments, and how to alter tones at a molecular level.

He had no idea that this highly specific knowledge about ink and fabric would soon become the thin line between life and death for thousands of innocent people.

During the occupation, the Gestapo used paperwork as their primary weapon to hunt down Jewish people. Identity cards, travel permits, and food rations were all strictly monitored. On the documents of Jewish citizens, the authorities stamped one single word in blue ink: "JUIF".

That one word was a direct ticket to a concentration camp.

The French Resistance desperately needed a way to erase that word without ruining the paper. Standard forgery techniques failed because the official ink was designed to be permanent.

Any attempt to scrape it off left obvious marks that would get someone killed.

They brought the problem to Kaminsky.

The boy analyzed the paper under a dim lamp and remembered a trick from his textile work. Lactic acid could dissolve that exact blue ink while leaving the paper fibers perfectly intact.

It worked.

But erasing the stamp was only the first step. He had to rewrite names, birthdays, and signatures perfectly. The Resistance set up a secret laboratory for him in a hidden attic on the Left Bank of Paris. The demands poured in constantly.

He needed to make fifty birth certificates for children escaping to Switzerland, two hundred food cards for families hiding in cellars, and hundreds of passes to Spain.

The conditions were brutal. Bleach and acid fumes filled the tiny room, burning his throat and making his eyes water constantly. His fingers were permanently stained with dark ink. Kaminsky realized that each document took him about two minutes to make.

That meant he could save thirty people every single hour.

This realization turned into an obsession that haunted him. He looked at the clock and thought, "If I sleep for an hour, thirty people will die."

So, he stopped sleeping.

One week, word came that a local orphanage with three hundred Jewish children was about to be raided by the Nazis. They needed fake papers immediately or they would be put on a train to Auschwitz. Kaminsky locked himself in the attic.

He worked for two straight days and nights without a pause. His vision blurred and his hand cramped so badly he had to physically massage his fingers to keep writing.

Eventually, his body gave out and he collapsed onto the desk.

He slept for exactly one hour. When he woke up, panic gripped him. He cried out, "Thirty people are dead because I was lazy!"

He refused to eat or rest until the remaining papers were finished.

Thanks to his sacrifice, the children were moved to safety in time.

Kaminsky spent years in that suffocating attic, constantly upgrading his skills as the Nazis upgraded their security measures.

When Paris was finally liberated in 1944, the young genius had saved roughly fourteen thousand people.

He never accepted a single penny for his work, believing that taking money to save a life was deeply wrong.

After the war, Kaminsky became a photographer and lived a quiet, modest life. He never bragged.

He did not tell his neighbors, his coworkers, or even his own children about his wartime heroism for decades.

He simply faded into the crowd as an ordinary man.

Adolfo Kaminsky passed away in 2023 at the age of ninety-seven.

He did not want monuments or medals. His true legacy lives on today in the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the thousands of people who survived the darkness simply because a brave teenager chose to stay awake.

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8 days ago

@vbspurs Thank you

MAD615 retweeted

Dave Scarangella

@DaveScarangella

9 days ago

Tonight, as I do every year at this time, I’ll be raising a glass to a scared young man, who 82 years ago was preparing to go ashore on the beaches of Normandy as part of an event code-named Operation Overlord. D-Day. I can’t imagine what was going through his mind. I’d be scared to death and I’m sure he was too. But in that first wave was a 21-year-old Private First Class from Henry County, VA by the name of Allen Homer Sink. Fortunately, he would survive that initial wave, participate in battle until it ended in August, then come home to marry and raise a family of four, including two daughters after the war ended. He would also become my father-in-law until his death in 2006. His nickname for some reason was “Hank” and when I asked him how he got it, he said some guy in the Army said he “looked like a Hank.” From the time I first met him, he was a salt-of-the-earth man who was never afraid of anything. He was a carpenter by trade, and he’d stand up on the tallest roofs, grab bumblebees with his bare hands when they tried to persuade him to move elsewhere, and never be bothered by anything. His hands were tough and leathery, but he was a softie. He spoiled his children, complained when my mother-in-law would gripe about something involving one of his alleged misdeeds, and always thought he was fooling everybody when he snuck around the back of the house and lit a cigarette, a habit everyone opposed but he could never part himself from. He could talk your ear off for hours at a time, and I always suggested he become a greeter at Wal-Mart when he retired because then he could talk all day to strangers and none of them would – like his wife and daughters often did – tell him to be quiet for a few moments. Yet for all his love of talking, there was one subject he just wouldn’t discuss. June 6, 1944. Omaha Beach. In 1998, when he was 76 years old, the subject came up again. The movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out and the beginning was gruesome. Reviews said it was incredibly realistic to what really happened that day. I asked Hank if he wanted to go see it. “No,” he shook his head. “I don’t ever want to see any of that again.” He did offer that he remembered the night before when troops were loaded into the boats for the amphibious assault. He said it was raining and that once everyone was in place, they gave everybody ice cream and told them to try to get some sleep. Then the next thing he knew, they were waking everybody up telling them to stay low and head for the beach. No, that doesn’t sound like somebody drugged the ice cream. Not at all. That’s all he would say about the subject, and he never said another word about it until the final months of his life. Alzheimer’s would gradually rob him of his mind, and as his condition deteriorated, memories of the past would briefly spill out. One evening he thought I was his commanding officer and he was back at Normandy. It is the only time I ever saw him where he appeared to be scared. Ever. It reminds me every day of something I had unknowingly taken for granted. The greatest generation did fight in and win World War II, then did incredible things over the next 50 to 60 years after the war. But many carried unspeakable memories from the War, ones they would never talk about and carry inside them to their graves. Those veterans lost a piece of themselves in battle they would never, ever, get back. I mean, how can you at the tender age of 21 storm a beach, see friends die only a few feet from you, wonder each night if you will wake up alive the next morning and then return home a year later and try to pick up on the same normal life you had before you left? I told him once that after seeing “Saving Private Ryan”, I understood why he was never afraid of anything; after you’ve made it through something like that, everything else pales in comparison. So tonight, I raise a glass to Hank and the 150,000-plus men, who like my father-in-law, were very young, very scared, and still charged that beach, paying a price that even for the survivors would last the rest of their days. Rest In Peace...

DaveScarangella's tweet photo. Tonight, as I do every year at this time, I’ll be raising a glass to a scared young man, who 82 years ago was preparing to go ashore on the beaches of Normandy as part of an event code-named Operation Overlord.

D-Day.

I can’t imagine what was going through his mind. I’d be scared to death and I’m sure he was too. But in that first wave was a 21-year-old Private First Class from Henry County, VA by the name of Allen Homer Sink.

Fortunately, he would survive that initial wave, participate in battle until it ended in August, then come home to marry and raise a family of four, including two daughters after the war ended.

He would also become my father-in-law until his death in 2006.

His nickname for some reason was “Hank” and when I asked him how he got it, he said some guy in the Army said he “looked like a Hank.” From the time I first met him, he was a salt-of-the-earth man who was never afraid of anything. He was a carpenter by trade, and he’d stand up on the tallest roofs, grab bumblebees with his bare hands when they tried to persuade him to move elsewhere, and never be bothered by anything.

His hands were tough and leathery, but he was a softie. He spoiled his children, complained when my mother-in-law would gripe about something involving one of his alleged misdeeds, and always thought he was fooling everybody when he snuck around the back of the house and lit a cigarette, a habit everyone opposed but he could never part himself from.

He could talk your ear off for hours at a time, and I always suggested he become a greeter at Wal-Mart when he retired because then he could talk all day to strangers and none of them would – like his wife and daughters often did – tell him to be quiet for a few moments. Yet for all his love of talking, there was one subject he just wouldn’t discuss.

June 6, 1944. Omaha Beach.

In 1998, when he was 76 years old, the subject came up again. The movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out and the beginning was gruesome. Reviews said it was incredibly realistic to what really happened that day. I asked Hank if he wanted to go see it.

“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t ever want to see any of that again.”

He did offer that he remembered the night before when troops were loaded into the boats for the amphibious assault. He said it was raining and that once everyone was in place, they gave everybody ice cream and told them to try to get some sleep. Then the next thing he knew, they were waking everybody up telling them to stay low and head for the beach.

No, that doesn’t sound like somebody drugged the ice cream. Not at all.

That’s all he would say about the subject, and he never said another word about it until the final months of his life. Alzheimer’s would gradually rob him of his mind, and as his condition deteriorated, memories of the past would briefly spill out. One evening he thought I was his commanding officer and he was back at Normandy. It is the only time I ever saw him where he appeared to be scared. Ever.

It reminds me every day of something I had unknowingly taken for granted. The greatest generation did fight in and win World War II, then did incredible things over the next 50 to 60 years after the war. But many carried unspeakable memories from the War, ones they would never talk about and carry inside them to their graves. Those veterans lost a piece of themselves in battle they would never, ever, get back.

I mean, how can you at the tender age of 21 storm a beach, see friends die only a few feet from you, wonder each night if you will wake up alive the next morning and then return home a year later and try to pick up on the same normal life you had before you left? I told him once that after seeing “Saving Private Ryan”, I understood why he was never afraid of anything; after you’ve made it through something like that, everything else pales in comparison.

So tonight, I raise a glass to Hank and the 150,000-plus men, who like my father-in-law, were very young, very scared, and still charged that beach, paying a price that even for the survivors would last the rest of their days.

Rest In Peace...

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Mary Katharine Ham

@mkhammer

10 days ago

Rodney is a great, great American who has created one of the best, simplest, most beautiful multiplying acts of charity in the country. Been following him for years. Let’s get some Raising Men & Women Lawn Care kids on the WH lawn!

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Pub

@PubWanghaf

9 days ago

When my first little sister with Down syndrome was born I was 13. My dad had just lost a business he spent well over a decade building because of the crash in ‘08. We weren’t doing well financially and already had a big family. I remember going to the hospital to meet her with my other siblings and being so confused. My mom had a miscarriage the pregnancy before and I felt like God was just screwing with us. I remember telling my dad “first mom had a miscarriage and now this?” And then I got to the hospital and held my little sister for the first time and realized her life is no less precious and special than mine. She has different needs than I do. But I know for a fact in terms of being a “burden” that I’ve been more of that on my parents than she ever has. When my second sister with Down syndrome came into this world she had even more health complications than the first and they spent weeks up at the children’s hospital in our area. They had to patch a hole in her heart, which is not uncommon for babies with Down syndrome. I visited her up there and she reached out and grabbed my finger and looked me in my eyes and from that moment I knew I’d die for her. Meaning, she had intrinsic worth. This isn’t “Christian cope”. This isn’t some Libtard appeal to your emotions to get you to turn a blind eye to grown adults who want to leach onto our country to reap the benefits of what we worked for. I get it. Our empathy and compassion has been abused to the tune of trillions of dollars, thousands of lives taken, and the loss of our nation. That’s not who these people with disabilities represent. They are ours. And a healthy society has the bandwidth to care for the truly least of their people because they aren’t being ripped off to care for people who are here to take all they can while they can. A sick society sees people as cogs in a massive machine called “society”, which is exactly why we have the limitless immigration problems we have today that I’m so passionate about changing. They cover it in “compassion” when in reality it’s just about shipping in endless low wage laborers for big business bottom lines. And when your society is so busy participating in fake compassion, not only do you lose real compassion for real people, but compassion itself draws a visceral reaction from people who have had their compassion ruthlessly abused. PS: Yes, the Down syndrome brother thing is a bit. And I’m gonna keep doing it.