North-central Nebraska is comprised of seemingly endless miles of low-rolling grass-covered sand hills (not dunes - they are known as the Nebraska Sand Hills, get that right) interrupted by valleys and canyons and a large variety of wetlands which include small lakes, streams and marshes. Those wetlands are there due to the Ogallala aquifer, one of the world's largest freshwater aquifers*.
There is also a fairly long river flowing from eastern Wyoming / western Nebraska east to the Missouri river at the junction of Nebraska and South Dakota. This is the Niobrara river, and most of the water in that river also springs (yeah, that was intentional) from the Ogallala aquifer.
While the river is considered low-flow, and there are places where it's barely a shallow stream, it does need to be spanned by bridges in several areas. One of those areas is just south of Valentine, Nebraska, along U.S route 20 (considered state highway 20 in Nebraska)*.
In the early 1930's a pin-connected steel truss cantilever arch bridge* was built over the Niobrara river in an area now known as the Niobrara National Scenic River*. The bridge was designed by Josef Sorkin of the State of Nebraska's Division of Bridge Design, who (when interviewed by the National Register of Historic Places representative) stated that he chose that specific design for that specific spot because it was aesthetically pleasing, blended in well with the surroundings, and was economically sound for the building site (not his exact words, but, you know, paraphrasing).
The bridge was selected by the American Institute of Steel Construction as the Most Beautiful Steel Bridge in Class C (Class C means the bridge cost less than $250,000 to build) for the year 1932.
It is indeed a beautiful bridge IMHO, and served the community well as the primary span over the Niobrara river in that location along route 20 for 65 years, until it was replaced by a less attractive bridge along a rerouted section of route 20 approximately 2,000 feet to the north in June of 1997.
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People single out specific periods of time when they wax nostalgic primarily because those times were good - not everyone though, some people seem to like dwelling on the bad ol' days for whatever reasons.
Me, I'm one of those who enjoy recalling the best of times, as I'd rather smile than frown while reminiscing.
That right there is what keeps me going to events I find exciting and visiting places of interest. It's what keeps me developing relationships with people and undertaking new and intriguing endeavors.
Because I do not want to become an 85 year-old broken-down curmudgeon who sits around and cannot recall anything but a past of dull days that repeat each other ad infinitum.
A couple of months ago I was once again in Omaha, Nebraska. This trip was more for pleasure than business, and it being such I was able to visit a few of the museums in the city.
The one I visited that made the biggest impression on me more than any since my first visit to the Louvre was the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, located at 2289 South 67th street in the very heart of Omaha.
Samuel Bak's art is striking for far more than his skill and ability as a painter, or even his incredible capacity to project mood and sentiment on a two dimensional canvas. The sum of his physical, emotional and mental capabilities far exceed the whole, and there is a readily understandable reason for that.
His life's experiences, what he has had to endure, survive, and finally thrive in spite of. It's flat out beyond the ken.
Samuel Bak is a 93-year old survivor of the Holocaust. He was born in 1933 in what was then known as the city of Wilno, Poland, but had been known previous to WWI as the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, and by 1939 was again known as Vilnius, Lithuania.
In 1941, when the Nazi army rolled into Vilnius, he and his family were evicted from their home and ordered to live in the Vilna Ghetto, a small area in the old Jewish quarter of Vilnius.
Samuel had been known for his talent as an artist since early childhood, and at the age of nine while living in the Vilna Ghetto, the first exhibition of his work was produced.
The Nazi's had quartered a reported 12,000 people into the Vilna Ghetto, an area that had formerly housed 4,000 people, with the expectation that the overcrowding would result in unsanitary living conditions that would result in easily spread diseases and illnesses that would eventually decimate the population.
They were half right. Illness and disease did indeed kill upwards of half the inhabitants of the Vilna Ghetto, but that did not satisfy the Nazi régime. When it was determined by the Nazi leadership that only the most skilled workers would be spared to be used as slave laborers, the extermination of the remaining Jews began in earnest with a reported 3,000 Jews killed on November 5th of 1941 alone.
By 1943, when it was becoming apparent that the Nazis were beginning to lose the war, the last of the dwindling Jewish population in the Vilna Ghetto sensed that the end for everyone was near. Young Samuel Bak was chosen by two Jewish elders to become the guardian of the Pinkas (the official record of the Jewish community) with the hope that Young Samuel and the record would somehow survive the war.
Samuel Bak and his mother found refuge in a Benedictine convent with the assistance of Maria Mikulska, a Catholic nun. Despite her courageous efforts however, Samuel and his mother were both soon deported to a forced labor camp, from which they eventually were able to escape and again find shelter at the Benedictine convent, where they were able to stay until the liberation of Vilnius by the Red Army in July of 1944.
The Jewish population of Vilnius before the Holocaust has been estimated at 60,000 to 80,000. The number that survived the war, including Samuel Bak and his mother, is placed at 250. Even today, in a city that numbers over 600,000 inhabitants, the Jewish population is less than 1,000.
The Jerusalem of Lithuania has truly never recovered.
That Samuel Bak and his mother survived the Holocaust is incredible. The following years, when they went from resettlement in Poland to the American-occupied zone of Germany then to Israel, is another extraordinary tale. Suffice to state that Samuel Bak learned how to survive in the very belly of the beast.
Eventually, after art studies at both the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and the École Nationale Superieure Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then residing for various lengths of time in Italy, France, Switzerland and Israel, Samuel Bak and his wife moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1993 and have become naturalized U.S. citizens.
He continues to paint and educate to this day. Here are a few pictures of his works that are on display at the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center.
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