Houston, Texas police have arrested an armed man at the Houston Valley of the Scottish Rite after it was reported he was holding two hostages inside.
Police hostage negotiators and SWAT team rushed to the Rite in the southwest part of Houston just after 10:00AM local time. One of the hostages was a 91-year old man.
In a live statement from the scene following the arrest, officer L. J. Satterwhite said that the suspect "appeared to be of middle-eastern descent" and "in his 30s," but added that has not been confirmed.
According to the police statement, the suspect had attempted to enter the Scottish Rite building "to talk to them about their belief systems." Witnesses told police that he was "behaving erratically." When he was denied entrance, he circled the building and broke a window to get inside. It was originally reported to police that a female inside reported she heard four gunshots, but it was determined that the sound was that of the breaking window. He was not armed with a firearm, but used a screwdriver to threaten the hostages and a tire tool to break the window.
The only known injury was the elderly hostage who was hurt in the hand during a physical confrontation with the suspect.
H/T Roberto Sanchez
Freemasons have always been targets in difficult times. We lost 80,000 to 200,000 brothers in the Holocaust. The sword officers are there to remind you that ours can be a serious and dangerous business, being good men. Let's be careful out there.
ReplyDeleteNo, we did not loose 80-200k in the holocaust, these figures lack any empirical ground (even though they are around for a long time).
DeleteBut yes freemasons have been victoms of many, usually completely irrational supicions.
I believe you’re right. The Nazis kept incredible records of what they did and there are lists of who they did it to, thankfully and ironically those records were used against them in the prosecution of the Nazis involved in the atrocities. If there are lists of Freemasons having been taken to camps and or killed, I’m pretty sure that we would know by now of them and their numbers.
DeleteHello, Anonymous
DeleteWe have known about them for decades. I encourage you to visit the online archives of the American Holocaust Museum if you would like to learn more, but I will post one link below to make it easy and to get you started:
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn500500
Guard the west seriously
ReplyDelete"Guarding the West Gate" is an expression that admonishes us to take care whom we admit to the Fraternity as a member (i.e. to protect our reputation & harmony within Masonry). Not really a relevant point here.
Deleteאני מאחל לכם הצלחה ובריאות.
ReplyDeleteממני ומלשכת הר ציון 2 ירושלים.ישראל.
Even though, the number of 80-200k masonic victims of the Holocaust is around for a long time, it lacks any empirical proof.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt that freemasonry was prohbited by the Nazis (like other independend associations) and freemasons were bullied for there lodge membership in private and professional life but this is something different from the Holocaust.
in fact, Hjalmar Schacht, the mastermind of German rearmement, who economically made Hitler able to start what turned out to be WW II was a freemason (and Hitler and the Nazi government knew this of course).
Ironically, I obtained the figure of 80,000 to 200,000 murdered Freemasons from the book, "Freemasons for Dummies." So that I can learn here, please tell me where you found your numbers and that it was bullying rather than murder. Thanks.
Delete
DeleteI must freely admit something here concerning those numbers. I am personally responsible for specifically pairing the "80,000-200,000" estimates in the first edition of Freemasons For Dummies in 2005. I do not believe those figures ever appeared in print anywhere prior to my use. Since that time, it has shown up all over the world (including museum displays and websites, Holocaust-related literature, and countless research papers).
Since the original edition of my book, I have been questioned by countless Masons from around the world demanding to know just where I found them. First, please note that books in the For Dummies series are NOT permitted to use footnotes or extensively cite other books. That's a corporate decision, not an author's. So I no longer have a simple way today to re-create what and how I uncovered in 2004 when I began the project. I CAN say that I specifically wanted to find out the true scope of Masons who were imprisoned or murdered in Germany, as well as in ALL of the combined territories the Nazis invaded. No single source was able to specifically cite those cumulative numbers.
My methodology was to assemble all the information I could from as many sources possible, including estimates found in many Masonic publications between 1939 and the ten years after the end of the war. They were being reported in the U.S. throughout the war whenever a grand lodge was able to assemble the information, or when reporters at the time could uncover them. Finding these resources in 2004-5 occupied an enormous amount of time in order to to write one single sentence in a very general book about the fraternity, but I admit it became something of an obsession after a while. In the end, I added everything up that was both reasonable and from fairly respectable sources, and still came away with that enormous spread of between 80,000-200,000. The biggest trouble was determining whether a Mason was arrested and remained incarcerated or killed SPECIFICALLY for being a member of the fraternity - or were they taken by the Nazis for other reasons, and their Masonic membership had little or nothing to do with it. That alone is almost impossible to discover.
Additionally, tens of thousands of lodge and grand lodge records from the occupied countries that were confiscated by the Nazis during the war were seized by the Russians as they advanced from the east. The Soviets wanted the Masonic membership records for the same reason the Nazis did - to have an easy, ready-made list to track down potential troublemakers. Those records often included names, addresses, relatives, associates, occupations and much more from lodge petitions and membership rosters. Some of those lost records were locked away in storage and forgotten for decades. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a lot have been shipped back to the countries from where they were taken, providing a huge trove of information for researchers that didn't exist until 15 years ago.
Anyhow, if that 80,000-200,000 is not considered reasonable by most recent scholarship, I would love having some real revised numbers with more concrete sources.
It would be a worthy endeavor. I would love to collaborate with any brother who is interested in taking on this project.
DeleteIt would indeed be a worthy endeavor. Probably the first place to start is with Pierre Mollier. He's the the director of the library, archives, and museum for the Grand Orient de France (Musée de la Franc-Maçonnerie) in Paris. Fortunately, he speaks fluent English, and he's been a point of contact for 20 years concerning the returning of captured Nazi/Soviet archives. He and his team are well versed in what's available and what is not. Also contact Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, an independent researcher at Harvard who really spearheaded the recovery of these documents. Finally, have a look at this story and the French documentary it links to : https://freemasonsfordummies.blogspot.com/2019/10/video-nazis-vs-freemasons.html
DeleteIt is dangerous to be a mason in many places in the world
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you can delete "in the world".
DeleteDoug Price
Scurry Lodge #706
Snyder, Texas
The various obediences in Paris incorporate in their buildings monuments to those murdered by the Nazis. I have never counted the names or asked if those listed were anywhere near a complete ist.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I instituted a program as New York Grand Master for security cameras and doors locked for ALL Masonic Halls in New York. Similar to Ring and others. Some put in DVR's etc. But in many cases damaged was recorded and given to the authorities. It was a very successful program. Bill Sardone
ReplyDeleteThis person should spend some time in jail.
ReplyDelete