Salem, Nebraska, 68433

By the 2010 census, Salem was home to 112 people.

Salem is an earlier name for Jerusalem, from shalom, the Hebrew word for “peace.”

"And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God." (Genesis 14:18)

"In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion." (Psalm 76:2)

Tacy Adelia Wilkson was born in Salem, July 3, 1870. In 1901 she married Herbert Atkinson in San Rafael, California. The couple went to eastern Turkey in 1902 and remained there until 1908. In 1910, the Christian missionaries returned to Kharpert. Between 1915 and 1917, they witnessed the Turks’ attempts at eliminating all Armenians.

She wrote: "Today large crowds have gone from the city. We are told that the people who started Tuesday were taken to Hulakueh only two hours distant. There the men were killed, the girls carried away, and the women robbed and left...We do not know what is still coming. Large crowds of women and children are coming in today. I don't know where from and those who are here are dying as fast as they can, and are being thrown out unburied. Vultures that are usually so thick everywhere all are absent now. They are all out feasting on dead bodies. The women started out today were followed by a large crowd of Kurds and gendarmes.”

She believed the Turks incapable of planning and carrying out such large-scale murders.

"We all know such clear-cut, well planned, all well carried out work is not the method of the Turk. The German, the Turk and the devil made a triple alliance not to be equaled in the world for cold blooded hellishness.”

Of course, the devil does not exist, so additional blame must be given Turks and Germans. However …

A few days before adding his life and that of his wife to the tens of millions already dead, Adolph Hitler said to someone in the Berlin bunker: “I have been defeated by a greater power. I have been betrayed.”

Was that “greater power” the alliance of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt? By whom was Hitler betrayed? He made his deal; he was overlord of all Europe; he rid the world of millions of subhumans – Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, Jews. But in the end, he was “betrayed.”

Perhaps at introduction and during negotiations, Hitler’s main supporter failed to say, “Pleased to meet you. Hope you know my name.”

Tacy and Herbert Atkinson had three children. Tacy died on Dec. 1, 1937.