Veteran of four wars, four enlistments, four branches: Air Force, Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard. I am both an AF (Air Force) veteran and as Veteran AF (As Fuck)
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Zanis Lipke Memorial, Riga, Latvia: Honoring a Man Who Hid Jews from the Nazis
Saturday, December 3, 2022
The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy Book 42 of 2022
The book explicitly on faith that moved me the most was The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy. This book looks at the history of the Jewish people and Israel through the lens of the Book of Jonah. Levy shows us Judaism and his view of the Jewish world by his interactions with “Nineveh” in the form of modern-day enemies of Jews and Israel. One modern Nineveh he visits is Lviv, Ukraine.
I knew my trip last summer was to visit Holocaust sites would center on Auschwitz, But this book led me to pair Lviv with Auschwitz as two sad extremes of the Holocaust. Auschwitz is the most industrial site of slaughter, Lviv is the most personal. At Auschwitz, the Nazis built a place of extermination. In Lviv they simply allowed the local population to act out their own anti-Semitism.
Lviv was the most personal of the sites of Holocaust slaughter. Neighbors killed neighbors and dumped their bodies in ditches. Levy went to Lviv to make peace with this site of unbridled hate. He seems to have succeeded. I did not. Ukraine tried to kill my grandparents. Ukraine remains a cauldron of anti-Semitism.
Which brings up another aspect of Judaism which Levy makes so simple and beautiful. We Jews, at our best, are committed to Justice, to repairing the world.
Until this year, I was ambivalent about Ukraine as was Levy. From the beginning of the war, I have volunteered for Ukraine, sometimes three or four days a week making combat medical kits. Levy made a documentary backing the fight to keep Ukraine free.
When the Russians invaded, Ukraine needed all free people to rally to her defense. Whatever problems I had with Ukraine before February 24 are insignificant compared to the unjust attack on an innocent country.
Glory to Ukraine.
The book is a celebration of Jewish history and life and is beautifully written.
First 41 Books of 2022:
C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis
Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard
The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil
Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin
Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz
Essential Elements by Matt Tweed
Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud
The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Cochrane by David Cordingly
QED by Richard Feynman
Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis
Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer
The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton
If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut
The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss.
Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins
Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
First Principles by Thomas Ricks
Political Tribes by Amy Chua
Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen
A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson
1776 by David McCullough
The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt
Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss
Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
Marie Curie by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)
The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche
Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
"Jewish Politics" by Hannah Arendt. Published in 1942. So Relevant Now.
In 1942 Hannah Arendt, philosopher, historian and refugee of Nazi Germany wrote the following essay. As I read it, I felt myself sitting up straighter to pay better attention to what Arendt was saying about the Jewish people in the midst of World War II and why we need democracy and now always.
I love Hannah Arendt's writing and thought. This essay is among the best 900 words in all the millions of words she wrote.
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Axl Rose T-Shirt Leads (Naturally) to a Discussion of the World War II and the Holocaust
On the first day of a history of science conference, I met the author working on a book about Le Résidence Palace, the revolving door of history of a building that is now home to The Europa building, the seat of the European Council and Council of the European Union, located on the Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat in the European Quarter of Brussels, Belgium--the follow up to a book she wrote about her father's escape from Nazi-occupied Europe and service in the American Army.
The conversation began with an Axl Rose t-shirt. Neither I nor Nina Wolff was wearing the t-shirt. We were at the registration desk for the conference. One of the graduate students registering attendees, Noemie Taforeau, was wearing Axl Rose. I asked if she was a fan or just like the shirt. She said, "A fan. Definitely."
Nina said she met Axl Rose in a movie theater on Long Island. Then the conversation went from Guns and Roses and "Welcome to the Jungle" to the Army, to her father and war.
We talked more at the evening reception. Late in his life Nina's father, Walter C. Wolff, handed her a box of letters which turned out to be a trove of information about a part of his life he had spoken very little about. Walter Wolff came to America as a young refugee. He volunteered to serve. He and other young immigrants worked in Army Intelligence. They became known as the Ritchie Boys:
The Ritchie Boys[1] were a special collection of soldiers, primarily German-Austrian units, of Military Intelligence Service officers and enlisted men of World War II who were trained at Camp Ritchie in Washington County, Maryland. Many of them were German-speaking immigrants to the United States, often Jews who fled Nazi persecution.[2][3] They were used primarily for interrogation of prisoners on the front lines and counter-intelligence in Europe because of their knowledge of the German language and culture. They were also involved in the Nuremberg trials as prosecutors and translators.[4]
A documentary film was made in 2004 about the Ritchie Boys. I will order the book about Nina's father Walter "Someday You Will Understand" when I return to America.
Sunday, November 21, 2021
A Holocaust Memorial in Darmstadt Attacked Twice and Still Standing
Near the central station of Darmstadt, Germany, there is a memorial to the deportation of Jews and Gypsys (Roma) during 1942 and 1943. This memorial is located on the corner of Bismarckstrasse and Kirschenallee.
The monument was designed in 2004 by the artist couple Ritula Fränkel and Nicholas Morris. It represents a glass cube filled with shards of glass, on which 450 names are engraved. These names represent 3400 persons from Darmstadt and the surrounding area who were deported to various concentration camps.
Three sides of the glass cube were destroyed by vandals on the night of July 9-10, 2006. In 2014 the damage was repaired but six weeks later it was destroyed again. The monument will not be removed but will remain in this historic place.
This memorial was the last place I visited before boarding a train to return to Paris and then home. My friend Cliff said this memorial was the other end of the tracks that lead to the rail sidings in Auschwitz we visited in July. Darmstadt was a well-known as being very Nazi as soon as Hitler rose to power.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
A Cathedral and a Holocaust Memorial Share the East End of an Island in Paris
The most famous Cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, sits the east end of the most famous island in the Seine River, il de la cite.
The grand cathedral is currently in the midst of a many millions of Euros makeover. It will be closed for years.
Behind the soaring cathedral on the very eastern tip of the island is the Holocaust Deportation Memorial. The entire memorial to the 200,000 Jews deported to death camps is underground.
The death camps are listed in blood red.
The view to the east up the Seine River is lovely.
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Every Day, All Day Humiliation at Auschwitz
On my return visit Auschwitz in July of this year, I saw things I missed or forgot I saw on my first visit in 2017.
In 2017 I was overwhelmed by the scale of the camp--so many people murdered, so many German soldiers and civilians running the camp.
One of the horrible sights was the latrine in a barracks at Birkenau. The guards herded the inmates to the latrine. They used the latrine together, dozens at a time. The guards used a stopwatch. When time was up, the inmate had to get up or be beaten.
When I try to imagine how horrible life truly was I think of times when I lived and worked in close quarters large groups of men--the Army and Teamsters loading docks. One lament common to both places was, "Can't I take a shit in peace?"
No one wants to be rushed in a latrine.
And even men I have known who care little for privacy would occasionally want "to shit in a latrine with a door."
When I was on German gunnery ranges in the 1970s, some of the ranges had a place we called a "Make A Buddy" Shitter. It was an outhouse with two boards with three holes connected by a narrow floor space. When it was full, three men sat on each side facing each other with interlaced knees. The inside guys had to wait until the outside guys were done to get out. Sometimes men would wear their gas masks to use that latrine.
And yet, these laments of dock workers and soldiers hardly touch the deep humiliation of prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps forced to use latrines on a stop watch.
The Nazis who marched in Charlottesville represent the very same things as the guards at Auschwitz. They see me and everyone who is not in their tribe as less than human. Nazis are never "fine people." We can never have peace with a government that tolerates Nazis. We are fortunate to be delivered from a government that numbers all American Nazis among its voters.
Sunday, August 1, 2021
Terezin: "Model" Concentration Camp and Death Camp for "Mosaic" Christians
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Visiting Auschwitz Again It Is Even More Horrible
camp itself. Auschwitz began as a Polish army camp taken over by the Nazis shortly after their victory in 1939. The camp is on the edge of the small city of Oswiecim.
Sunday, July 18, 2021
Entrepreneurs of Violence: Money and Hate Drove SS Innovations in Horror
Friday, July 16, 2021
Surviving War and Terror: Sister Hildegard
On my second day in Dresden, I met Sister Hildegard. She is 84 and has lived in Dresden all of her long life. During that life her world has changed dramatically again and again.
She was born in 1937, one of four children of German parents. Her father was a member of the Nazi party. Her mother had left the Church so there was no religion in her early life. The war began in 1939 when Hildegard was two and soon her father left to serve in the army. At the beginning of 1943 her father was reported "missing presumed dead" in the Battle of Stalingrad.
Also in 1943, Allied bombing of Germany began in earnest. Hildegard and her siblings went to the country for school. In February 1945 the beautiful city of Dresden was smashed and burned in consecutive nights of Royal Air Force fire bombing raids.
The war ended in May of 1945, with more trouble ahead. Dresden was in the Soviet occupation zone so the communist East German government was in charge. When Hildegard turned 14 years old in 1953 she had to find a job. She could not continue her education. The problem was not that her father was a Nazi, it was that her parents were educated. Preference for education under the communists went to the children of workers.
Hildegard found work at a Catholic hospital in Dresden. At first she cleaned bricks to help in rebuilding the hospital which was nearly completely destroyed in the fire bombing of 1945. She eventually trained as a nurse and decided to become a sister in the order of nuns that work in the hospital. Her mother returned to faith in 1947 and would become part of the Land of Kanaan sisterhood in Darmstadt.
Until 1961, Hildegard and her family could cross back and forth between East and West Germany with little difficulty. But the Berlin Crisis in 1961 led to a fully closed border. Hildegard was in Dresden. Her mother was in Darmstadt and it would be many years before they were reunited.
With the communists in full control, Hildegard took charge of the OB GYN section of the hospital from 1967 to 1997. She worked under increasingly harsh control by the communists then suddenly in 1990 they were gone. One of the things that made life bearable under the communists was everyone in her community and in other faith communities were clear that the danger was the communists. The communists had spies everywhere. As devout Catholics the nuns were always under suspicion.
But believers were all united in opposition to the communists. When communism fell, the freedom that followed led to competition and the end of opposition to a single enemy and the unity that went with it.
Sisters who had lived through the Nazi era said life then was very different. During that time, some of the sisters were devoted Nazis and some were ardently against the Nazis. The challenge was to keep the community together when the worst strife was within. Hildegard said after the war, the sisters who were devoted Nazis either repented or left the order. The purge was rapid.
My friend Cliff and I visited Sister Hildegard in her room in the hospital residential area for nuns and women in long-term care. She speaks no English. I speak no German. Cliff and Hildegard talked and every ten minutes of so, Cliff would give me a summary of what he learned. I asked questions in these intervals.
Part of her story was in a speech she gave in 2015 explaining the many radical changes she lived through. She and Cliff reviewed the speech which was written in neat handwriting while I watched and wished I had learned German. She does not have a computer or a phone--except the phone with a wire on her desk.
Sister Hildegard has retired from nursing but still a leader in her community. We ate lunch in the hospital cafeteria and sat at her table. As the guest, I got to sit in her chair and eat some very good goulash and mashed potatoes. On the walk to and from the cafeteria she greeted everyone we met with a smile. She is in every way a gracious host.
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