JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Looking at these pictures, the first thought about what silent bells sound like is pathetic nothingness, and that apart from any secular importance or significance. But when the Russians pulled out of Poland they took the bells of the churches with them, keeping them from the advancing German army, keeping them so that the Germans didn't melt them down to use in munitions. The bells disappeared too from many Russian cities, pulled back deeper inside Mother Russia, far from the advancing army.
[Source, above and next three images, from the Illustrated London News, 4 October 1915.]
And this, the bottom half of the full-page article:
And a detail of inscriptions on some of the bells:
[Source: the National Library of Australia, The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954), Saturday 4 September 1915, page 1, from The Trove a Digitalized Library of Newspapers, here. ]
This was no doubt an both older and newer practice, valuable materials stolen by advancing armies and utilized for their armaments value. For example, a newer absconder of church bells--the German army--are shown n this photo transporting the material via canal in Amsterdam in 1943.
[Source: Annefrank.org]
Many of the bells made a return to Poland, beginning about 1925: a story in teh (Florida!) St. Petersburg Independent (reprinting an AP story) reported that 3000 of the bells made their way home in joyous celebration. 15,000 more of the bells were still kept there, though, many never to return.
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