By Cara Sulieman

AN ICONIC building overlooking the famous St Andrews Old Course is up for sale after a major backer called in its debts.

The Bank of Scotland put money up for an American company, Wasserman Real Estate Capital, to turn Hamilton Hall into luxury time-share apartments.

But plans were shelved because of the recession and the bank is now understood to have “called up” the sale of the building.

It has now been handed over to Jones Lang LaSalle estate agents who are handling the sale.

Mothballed

David Wasserman bought the grand pile in 2004 for £20 million and borrowed a rumoured £80 million to fund the refurbishment.

But the collapse of the housing market delayed the project, before the plans were completely mothballed.

Under Scots law, a creditor of heritable property can call up a sale if the borrower breaches the conditions of lending – which is what the Bank of Scotland are thought to have done.

The only work that was done on the 114-year-old building was to gut it in preparation for the redevelopment work.

World of golf

But despite the state of disrepair, it is likely to sell quickly thanks to its prime position overlooking the first tee and the 18th hole of the famous course.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s national director Alan Creevy said: “It is hard to imagine a more iconic building which will be known by all in the world of golf as the backdrop to the many eventful Open finals which have taken place at St Andrews over the years.

“Properties such as Hamilton Hall almost never come on the open market and we are delighted to handle such a prestige instruction.

“The property has planning and listed building consent for 25 luxury apartments that were originally intended for fractional ownership.

“Significant interest”

“We remain in a market where credit is difficult to obtain, but developments such as this have potential, either as a boutique hotel which will attract visitors to St Andrews or as prestige apartments which would have a market for domestic and international purchasers.

“We have no doubt there will be very significant interest.”

The building is the most famous in St Andrews, having featured in Chariots of Fire and dominating the view of the first and 18th holes of the Old Course on golf tournaments

As well as the creation of luxury apartments – that were to be marketed towards American golfing enthusiasts – the plans involved restoring the building as closely as possible to its former glory.

Armed forces

They were due to restore a forgotten corner entrance and a rooftop cupola that was destroyed by fire in the 1970s.

It was to take the name St Andrews Grand – the name that the building had when it was a hotel from 1895 until the Second World War when it was requisitioned by the armed forces.

This marked the end of a successful run for the hotel when it took advantage of the beginning of the tourist boom in the late 1800s.

When the war ended, there were a number of plans set out for the future of the building.

Outrage

The most controversial was a proposal to sell it to the Roman Catholic Church as a residence and seminary.

But the traditional Presbyterian population were outraged at the idea and this idea was soon abandoned.

Instead, it was bought by the University of St Andrews who opened it as a hall of residence in 1949

It housed students until the Wasserman Real Estate Capital bought it as the result of an unsolicited bid in 2004.

Membership

The price of the apartments that were to be built reflected the location and grandeur of the building.

Based around the timeshare concept, 10-week ‘memberships’ would have been priced between $1.3 million and $3.3 million.

On top of this initial cost, a further $14,000 a year would have been splashed out.

For their cash, the 115 members would get butlers, housekeeping, chefs, spa treatments and courtesy cars.

Old Bialystok, bearing witness to its rich multicultural past, is more and more yielding room to rapid and slightly chaotic growth and modernization. It is a great pity that it is happening at the expense of old wooden and picturesque houses with twofold roofs, fabulous gardens, 19th century brick rent buildings and old, narrow and cobblestones streets. I do not mind growth and modernization. Bialystok (town in northeastern Poland) especially needs a modern arcihtecture, numerous innovative investments, new roads, airport, but municipality should thoroughly think over the vision of the town. Local officials ought to define the real identity of the town referring to its multicultural history. It is easy to build the town without the spirit, where there are no ideas uniting its inhabitants. In fact, no connection exists between Bialystok from the times before the World War II and contemporary Bialystok.

I heard a story about a Jewish woman who was born in Bialystok in 1920s or 1930s, who came here in the second half of 1990s and stated that she did not recognize her native town. In her opinion the old and present Bialystok were two different worlds.

Unfortunately many its inhabitants do not even know its rich history. Town without its history, inhabitants without consciousness of their native town’s history probably won’t be proud of living here. They won’t know that their town’s face was shaped by Poels, Jews, Germans, Russians, Belarussians. There is a deep necessitiy to refer to its roots.

Bialystok was significantly destroyed during the World War II. Presently we do not have many monuments witnessing its rich history. Those ones which survived do not appear to be especially spectacular and stunning, but they still retian spirit of the past and they are worth preserving.

I think that there is a possibility to save relics of the past and develop the modern architecture without destroying the old and apparently unspectacular buildings, streets or gardens of the town, where before the World War II several nations lived in relative peace. These places still hold the atmosphere of old times and are capable of arousing imagination.

Below there are presented pictures taken about one month ago, they depict old cosy houses, lush gardens which one day may just disappear…

Today I have emptied, refilled and put on the dishwasher.  I am on my second load of washing and have just emptied and refilled the tumble drier.  I know tumble driers are the environmental equivalent of crack cocaine, but I have three children, mountains of washing and I live in the Midlands.  It’s just about to piss it down and I haven’t got enough airers/radiators/deer antlers to cope. So there.  I have also stripped and remade my bed and Oscar’s bed, with help from a small child (this means it takes forty minutes instead of five.  It’s as bad as making a bed with the assistance of a cat for the benefit of those of you who don’t have offspring).  Oscar’s bed was fine until this morning when he gracefully took his nappy off, put it on his pillow and peed all over the duvet as a good morning gesture.

In amongst this I have built towers of bricks, played ‘boing a boing’ on our mattress, hidden a small child in a load of dirty washing and hilariously ‘found’ him at least twenty times.  I have watched Balamory (I’m convinced PC Plum is gay and is having an affair with Archie the inventor), played shops with my dry goods cupboard and a wheel barrow whilst trying not to wince at the fact that all my tins of chick peas now look like they’ve been used as ammunition in the Boer war, and conversed learnedly with the decking men about the ramifications of gaps in the fencing and small childrens’ heads.  We have also done ‘cooking’, me and Oscar, not me and the decking men, which this morning involves beating one of my metal bowls to death with a wooden spoon and shouting ‘get, set, go!’  Apparently this is the way that Gordon Ramsay always makes mashed potato.  I am expecting my Michelin star through the post.  I don’t like ceremonies and fuss.

I have also made four breakfasts, chivvied two small children to school, including dealing with a hideous, ‘I can’t find my summer dress mama!’ and many tears, countered with: ‘Tallulah, you have six summer dresses, you can’t have lost them all! Stop snivelling and get a move on!’  I have remembered to pay the office for hot lunches this week, checked homework and frisked a story sack.  I have chatted about the fact that it is not true that: ‘Babies are so small that their heads can’t hold two feelings at once, isn’t that right mama?’  I have caused a riot by refusing to let Tallulah take her jewellery collection to school.  I have discussed terrorism with Matilda, who is still convinced we are going to be invaded any time now.  Apparently my answers to the question: ‘What shall we do about it?’ have been singularly unsatisfactory up to now, and I must try harder.  Remind me never to let her watch, ‘When The Wind Blows’.

Yesterday evening’s meal was punctuated by discussions about the Second World War when Tilly asked me if I had been alive during the war and what was it like.  When I pointed out that even granny hadn’t been alive during the second world war, and Tallulah said: ‘So what? You still could have been.’ we also had to have a Stephen Hawking type commentary on the nature of time being perceived as linear, even though it probably wasn’t and was much more like one of those Mille Feuille cakes really (why? Why do I get into these things?)  Luckily the pull of the war was stronger for Tilly, who is still obsessed by bloodshed, so I managed to wangle my way out of discussing all things quantum for now.  She wanted to know why we went to war, which involved me having to explain about the nature of:

• Empire
• The arms race
• Arch Duke Ferdinand and Sarajevo
• World War One
• Reparations and the League of Nations
• German economic collapse, Christopher Isherwood and wheelbarrows full of money
• The rise of National Socialism
• The Nazis (in full colour, naturally)
• The Fascists
• Judaism
• Kristalnacht
• The holocaust

Tallulah now keeps wandering up to me and saying: ‘I don’t think it was very fair on the Jews do you mama?’ to which I can only concur that it was indeed very unfair on the Jews.  She tuts, shrugs her shoulders and wanders off to think about it some more and then comes back to say: ‘I don’t understand why they want to kill lots of little babies really.  That’s not very nice is it?’ to which I am again forced to concur.  Now she wants to know if the Germans are sorry, and if they have apologised.  I said that they probably were and that they most certainly had, and she said with great emphasis: ‘I should think so. That’s just rude!’  My feelings are that if Tallulah had been prime minister instead of that lily livered Neville Chamberlain, things would have been much more satisfactorily resolved about a week into the whole thing.

So, talking about how babies heads fit all their feelings in at once seemed like small beer this morning, and I was quite relieved.  It’s been a hard hitting week on the discussions front, what with sex education, terrorism, politics and warfare on the table.  Saturday night I was hoping to relax and chill out but ended up having to explain the concept of addiction and rehab to Matilda who had just watched Amy Winehouse protesting that she wasn’t going to go to ‘rehab’ and wondering what it was and the fact that Ms. Winehouse didn’t seem very well at all, and maybe she would be better off getting some help.  Very astute for a nine year old living with the conviction that she’s about to be called up any moment.  At this rate by the time they’re in their teens we’ll have run out of topical things to talk about and be discussing pension funds and false teeth.  It’s exhausting.

Getting back to this morning. I have conversed pleasantly with mothers and their small offspring, thankfully not about alcoholism or the correct use of bayonets in hand to hand combat.  I have stopped Oscar from eating all the beads at the counting table, and from being kissed to death by a bevy of five year old girls who think that a small, bullet headed child laden with snot is ‘cute’.  I have dragged him screaming from Early Years, where he has decided he is now old enough to stay, and have scraped shreddies off the kitchen floor. 

I have rescued the one dummy that we have in the entire house from the middle of the road where he threw it shouting: ‘Dunny! Go!’  We had about twenty of the bloody things last week and since the weekend we’ve got one.  I have no idea where they all go.  I expect he’s inhaling them in his sleep and if you were to take an x-ray of his lungs they would be choc a bloc with dummies.  I lost the only one we had left on Saturday night and spent an hour on my hands and knees turning the whole house upside down.  I even rang Jason thinking that if he had one in the car I would have to make him drive back from scamping just to bring me a dummy.  I know he needs weaning off them, but not now, not right at this moment, please God.  In the end I found one in the bottom of the toy box in the kitchen, in a jar of cotton reels.  I cried, I got down on my knees and thanked god.  I did a little dance.  I didn’t make a little love, but I did get down tonight.

It is now half past ten in the morning.  I just caught myself sitting down with a cold cup of coffee thinking: ‘Hmm! Haven’t done much this morning.’  Then I realised how ridiculous that actually was and smacked myself sharply round the side of the head with a bit of spare decking the men have left lying around.  I know it’s only stuff that most mother’s do of a morning, but when you write it down you realise quite why you feel so bloody tired all the time.  I bet Richard Branson hasn’t done all that this morning.  I bet he’s spent his morning stroking his beard, sharpening a few pencils and counting his moolah.  Tallulah would approve.

Yesterday Irena Sendler died in Warsaw. She was a real hero, exceptional person, who appears rarely in all societies or nations. During the World War II she together with her friends and many other unknown people saved about 2.500 Jewish children from Warsaw ghetto.

Irena Sendler worked at that time as a social worker in a municipal office in Warsaw and also as a nurse. Many times as a nurse she visited Warsaw ghetto and “smuggled” little Jewish children hidden in packs, cartons, bags to the Aryan side of the city. Later on those children were taken and looked after by Polish families and nuns in convents. Members of Polish Resistance forged documents for those small survivers to hide their Jewish descent; according to those false documents they were Polish children.

All those people who were involved in helping Jews during the World War II in Poland were exposed to capital punishment. It was not necessary to save or hide Jews to be killed by German Nazis, it was enough to give food, slice of bread, a mug of water, clothing for fugitive from ghetto or from train going to the extermination camp, or for hiding Jews.

In October 1942 Irena Sendler was apprehended by Gestapo and sentenced to death, but her friends bribed a German warder, and even though she was in the list of executed people, she stayed alive.

For many years she was an unknown person, especially in communist Poland. As she was a member of anticommunist Polish Resistance, it was forbidden to talk about such persons in communist country, even if they were real heros.

Only in 1965 Irena Sendler was given the honourable title – the Righteous Among the Nations – title granted by Yad Vashem for people who helped and saved Jews during the horrific period of the war. Israel Institute as a first appreciated greatness, bravery and heroism of that fragile, modest and humble woman.

Irena Sendler was compared to Oskar Schindler, but it was not right. Schindler was a German entrepreneur and as a German he was not exposed to death penalty for his activities on behalf of the Jews, he did not risk his life helping Jews as Irena Sendler did.

She is an excellent example of a quiet, peacful hero, who does not search for a fame and publicity. She has been always smiled, modest, humble and good to all people, who were in need, who were poor and weak.

Irena Sendler was born and raised in Polish intelligentsia family. Her parents taught her that people deserve help regardless of their descent, nationality, material or social status, sex, race, religion. Her father was a doctor in a small town near Warsaw – in Otwock – were he treated mainly the Jewish poor and died when he caught typhus from his patients. It was her first lesson of the sacrifice on behalf of the other and she grasped that lesson very well.

“If the present tries to sit in judgment on the past, it will lose the future.”

-Winston Churchill
From The Second World War, Book II, page 10

When Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister of England and Churchill took his place, there was quite a purge of administrators deemed culpable for the poor war preparation during the 30’s. But, after this purge many people were still out for blood. With the German army advancing and a new government in the midst of being formed, Churchill quelled the calls for mass resignation in order to continue forward. This is exactly what Senator Obama was speaking about in his speech on race, in response to the Rev. Wright controversy.

Together with my friends I resolved to immortalize places, buildings, gardens, streets which were witnesses of the most tragic and cruel events in history of our native town. We are Polish inhabitants of Bialystok – town of many cultures, religions, languages in the north – eastern Poland. This is the place where the East meets the West; towers of Catholic and Orthodox churches soar above the town, Protestant churches, muslim mosque enrich Bialystok’s face.

Poles, Belarussians, Tatars, Russians, descendants of Germans are still hosts of our town, but Jews who before the II World War made up 50% of Bialystok’s population are absent. Majority of Jewish inhabitants was exterminated by German Nazis in 1941 – 1944. Only a few hundreds of Jews were able to save their lives. Presently there are no open and functioning synagogues or houses of prayer, no lively Jewish community in Bialystok.

This post is dedicated to places which during the II World War found itself in the borders of the ghetto area, where German Nazis gathered about 50.000 Jews.

Evening in Czysta street. View from Czysta street, on the left – house in ghetto were Samuel Pisar lived.

House in the courtyard in Czysta street no 5

Old buildings in Czestochowska street, near Czysta and Warynskiego street.

Warynskiego street, near Cytron Synagogue, in front of – yellow and brown building was a school for Jewish girls before the Second World War

“It is easier to give directions than advice, and more agreeable to have the right to act, even in a limited sphere, than the privilege to talk at large.”

-Winston Churchill
From The Second World War, Book I, page 409

On September 1 1939, German forces invaded Poland. Prime Minister Chamberlain decided to form a War Cabinet and invited Churchill to be a member, and also appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill was very happy to have a position that actually allowed for decisions to be made, rather than to only offer guidance to others. He went on to say

“Had the Prime Minister in the first instance given me the choice between the War Cabinet and the Admiralty, I should, of course, have chosen the Admiralty. Now I was to have both.”

Although, considering during World War I he held the same position in the Admiralty before being ousted, he probably had sentimental reasons as well for his feelings displayed in the second quote.

Markowa – big villaege near Lancut, presently southern Poland. Befere the Second World War happy and loving Ulm familiy lives in this picteresque place, almost paradise – hilly landscape, idyllic countryside.

Jozef was born in 1900, his beautiful wife – Wiktoria – in 1912, they have six children. Jozef is passionate about photography, gardening, breeding bees; he is also catholic social activist, obatins many rewards for his inventions in the field of agriculture.

In 1931 Markowa has 4.442 inhabitants, among them 120 Jews.

The Second World War begins. Paradise and idyll are gone. German occupational government starts “Endlossung” (“Final Solution”), in other words – the extermination of Jews. Jozef and Wiktoria Ulm give shelter to two Jewish families. Shall family from Lancut, 5 men who manged to escape from their native town and reach Ulm’s house in Markowa. And Ulm’s neighbours – Golda and Layka Goldman with her little daughter.

21th March 1944, war is coming to the end; quiet day, evening, four carts with officials of German Gandarmerie approach the Ulm’s house. They burst into it, in the attic the kill the three Jews, the Ulm family and other Jews take outside. First they shoot two Jewish sisters and daughter one of them, after a while kill Jozef and Wiktoria, their children start crying and screaming, the policemen think what to do with small children. The German officer – Eilert Dieken – resolves to shoot them too. Stasia, Basia, Wladziu, Franus, Antos, Marysia share their parents’ fate. Later on it turns out that Wiktoria Ulm was pregnant, unborn child was also killed together with her.

Beyond a reasonable doubt someone must have denounced them to German Gandarmerie.

During one eveining and night German policemen killed 17 persons.

Poland was the only country in Europe during the Second World War where giving the shelter or any help to Jews was punished wiht death penalty. In spite of such severe punishment many Poles dared to help Jews who were sentenced to death by the German Nazis. The medals the Righteous Among the Nations awarded by Yad Vashem obtained 19 706 persons, among them 5 733 were Poles.

In the war, my father’s father and his brothers were in the Home Army (Polish “resistance”), their mother’s brother was a Soviet general in the “wojsko sanitarne” – the medical corps?, and it appears that some other kind of uncle, somewhere on their father’s side, won an Iron Cross as an officer (can’t find the list now to say what rank) in the Luftwaffe. We couldn’t lose. 

An incredible interview with Land Girl, Hilda Gibson. The government has announced a badge to be awarded to all surviving members of the Women’s Land Army and the Women’s Timber Corps in recognition of their services during the War. The Land Girls worked on the land during the war in order to replace the labour of the men who had gone off to fight and to reduce as far as possible Britain’s dependency on food brought by Atlantic convoy. The Radio 4 PM programme interviewed Hilda this afternoon to get her reaction to the new award. Its a bit gory at the beginning but don’t switch off, it is goes through the full emotional range before the end.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Canadians are asked to pause and remember the thousands of men and women who sacrificed their lives fighting for freedom and democracy during the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Afghanistan conflict and during peacekeeping missions.

More photos here

A Canadian female once said to me that the atomic bombing of Japan by the U.S. in 1945 was an act of terrorism, what’s your opinion on that?

There’s a famous story that goes like this: After WW II a young woman killed her father. The woman had had several children from the relationship with her father and when she became an adult and met someone she loved, her father did not allow her to marry that man; and that is the reason why she killed her father. According to Japanese criminal law, which was created before WW II, to kill one’s parent is punishable by the death penalty or life imprisonment but to kill one’s own child receives a sentence of at least 3 years imprisonment, life imprisonment or the death penalty. In 1973 the Supreme Court judged that this criminal law in particular, Article 200 (the criminal homicide of one’s parents, grandparents or noble ancestors) is against the Japanese constitution (drafted under U.S. occupation). The woman’s crime was specifically against Article 14, and so this Japanese woman was sentences to less than life in jail and as a result, Article 200 was overturned in 1995.

Do you think that Japan could have created a democratic constitution without losing the war against the U.S.? Do you know how different Japanese constitutions were before and after WW II?

Here is a link to the Japanese constitution created under the U.S. occupation:

http://www.sangiin.go.jp/eng/law/index.htm

And here is a link to the Japanese constitution as it was created before WW II:

http://history.hanover.edu/texts/1889con.html

My point is not admiration of the U.S. (I can’t stand that so many things depend on and revolve around money in the U.S.), but at least the U.S. did something good to Japan even if it was not their intention. That said, when Europeans or Australians in Japan criticize the U.S., a question comes to mind, “What did you do for Japan?”