How have I gone a full month and not written anything here? I've
been busy reading other blogs, articles, Facebook and enjoying the
outside, watching my nephews...and just not in much of a writing/sharing
mood it seems. So this month apparently found me still fascinated
enough with Germany to read several more books about the World War II
era. Well, some delved off a bit from that, but these books were all in
the general vicinity of the WWII shelves in my library. Some of these
books have things I like to share on Facebook. Perhaps you've seen some
of these quotes there. Also I like playing "any guesses?" where people
have the opportunity to figure out the correct answer - at least correct
according to the book!
On Hitler's Mountain by Irmgard A. Hunt -- subtitled: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
-- I found this at the local library and really enjoyed the story of
this lady as she grew up in an ordinary Nazi family. Well, it was
extraordinary, I suppose, in that they lived on the mountain where the
Nazi leaders often met. It was also neat reading this since Samer
visited Berchtesgaden the week after we left Germany and I'd seen his
lovely pictures. The mention of Salzburg, of course, brought back
memories of our recent trip there. The author described life in
war-torn Germany, and even the months after the war as part of Germany
occupied by Americans. I enjoyed her thoughts of the soldiers and her
interactions with them. By the way, American cigarettes became THE way
to buy needed items. The locals would ask the soldiers to pay for
souvenirs with cigarettes. Good book!
A Woman in Berlin
by Anonymous -- The diary of a young woman during eight weeks in
Berlin. She talks of the Russians coming and how the women collectively
dealt with rape and survival as they became a defeated nation. It made
me appreciate the blessing of food - why do I take this for granted?
"As we walked out of the store a truck drove by with German troops,
red tabs, meaning antiaircraft. They were headed away from us, toward
the center of town. They sat there mute, staring off into the distance. A
woman called out to them, 'Are you leaving?' No one answered her. We
looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. The woman said,
'They're just poor souls themselves.'
These days I keep noticing how my feelings towards men -
and the feelings of all the other women - are changing. We feel sorry
for them; they seem so miserable and powerless. The weaker sex. Deep
down we women are experiencing a kind of collective disappointment. The
Nazi world - ruled by men, glorifying the strong man - is beginning to
crumble, and with it the myth of 'Man.' In earlier wars men could claim
that the privilege of killing and being killed for the fatherland was
theirs and theirs alone. Today we women, too, have a share. That has
transformed us, emboldened us. Among the many defeats at the end of this
war is the defeat of the male sex." (pg. 42-43)
"Why are they so fixated on watches? It's not
because of the monetary value; they don't ogle rings and earrings and
bracelets the same way at all. They'll overlook them if they can lay
their hands on another watch. It's probably because in their country
watches aren't available for just anyone and haven't been for a long
time. You have to really be somebody before you can get a wristwatch,
that is, before the state allots you something so coveted. And now
they're springing up like radishes ripe for the picking, in undreamt-of
abundance. With every new watch he can present or give away back home,
his status rises. That must be it. Because they can't distinguish a
cheap watch from an expensive one. They prefer the ones with bells and
whistles - stopwatches or a revolving face beneath a metal case. A gaudy
picture on a dial also attracts them." (pg. 80)
After the Wall: East Meets West In the New Berlin
by John Borneman -- an
anthropologist talks to individuals in East Germany many of whom feared
the change coming; This was an interesting look at differences in
socialism and capitalism - the pluses and minuses of each. An
interesting thought was how socialism created dependency, but the
problem was a people who demanded more than East Germany could provide.
For example, one lady wanted white, closed-toed shoes, but never could
find them and her government wouldn't drop them at her door (although
they did send tennis shoes for her boys and other things requested on
occasion.)
The discussion of how "socialism and capitalism both sought to
manage the basic populations under their control through...the creation
of needs" was interesting. Capitalism tells you what you need by
"furnishing a stunning satiation, an addictive array of goods and
services.Socialism worked through a system of fear, deprivation, and
punishment. The two approaches interlocked. The end result of each was
dependency." (pg. 82)
Life and Death in the Third Reich
by Peter Fritzsche --
Germany's "racial warriors" had three primary tasks:
1. increase the birthrate - they offered "tax incentives and interest free loans to reward childbearing marriages" BUT
since generally the "healthy and well-educated Germans tended to
restrict the number of children in order to maximize their own quality
of life" and "supposedly less healthy, less able Germans had higher
birthrates," they often "targeted allegedly unfit citizens" who had too
many children that "weakened the overall racial health of the nation"
2 weed out the unhealthy section of the population, primarily through sterilization
3. "eliminate foreign matter from the racial stock of the German people" (pg. 85-86)
Last 98 days of war in 1945 -- 1.4 million German soldiers dead; about 14,000 every day
"An
average of 127 German civilians died every day in air raids in 1944,
and more than 1,000 every day in the raids of 1945." (pg. 291)
"God is not accountable to us for the senseless harm we cause one another,...We are accountable to Him!" -- Etty Hillesum;
born 15 January 1914 in Middelburg
murdered 30 November 1943 in Auschwitz
Dutch author and mystic; Nazi victim
"German
readers after 1945 also developed more historically specific
explanations of the catastrophe of Nazism. They increasingly saw
themselves as victims of a brutal war imposed on them by a politically
fanatical minority that had misled and betrayed a patriotic majority and
misused the tribulations that most Germans felt had been inflicted on
them after World War I. They were appalled at how the war ended rather
than how it had started; they focused on Stalingrad and German prisoners
of war in the Soviet Union, Dresden and the air war against civilians,
and the expulsion of Germans from eastern Europe in 1945. This
perspective was obviously politically expeditious, since it not only
downplayed the active roles that Germans had played in the crimes of the
Nazis but turned Germans into victims first. It conceded that Germans
might have been complicit, but complicit because they were morally weak,
not because they were criminally motivated." (pg. 301)
Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace by
Masha Gessen -- The author shares the stories of her Jewish
grandmothers growing up in Russia. I particularly enjoyed the
descriptions of one grandmother who worked as a censor doing things the
author said would have blacked out most of what she (Masha) does since
she is a western journalist living in Russia as of this writing. By the
way, who knew Hungarian was such a difficult language?
Under Hitler's Banner: Serving the Third Reich by Edmund
Blandford -- this books tells the story of 13 ordinary Germans; each
chapter is one person's tale about how they came to serve Germany during
Hitler's time. It was pretty interesting to read the lives of mostly
ordinary people who came to be a pilot who bombed England, an U-boat
crewman (telling about the dangers of that task and how close they came
to the US coast), a bridge builder for the military, spies (two women -
one was a cook who was recruited to spy for Germany against the
Italians??), nurse, wife of an SS officer among other things. One of my
favorite stories was from the Eastern Front by a guy in the anti-tank
infantry. Oddly none of these people seemed evil and I'm not sure if I
liked that or not.
Why My Father Died: A Daughter Confronts Her Family's Past at the Trial of Klaus Barbie
by Annette Kahn -- When I first started this book, I was underwhelmed. I
had a hard time following the details - might have been the
distractions of my baby nephew and Facebook - so I thought of not
finishing it, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I sat here today reading
testimonies of people who were testifying against this monster and was
crying off and on the whole time. In fact, it prompted me to note this
to a friend who happens to currently live in Germany, but is not German.
Reading
this book (and the others I've read recently) reminds me why I grew up
not liking Germany. It's funny because when Leslie was here and I told
her what you said about people not touring Germany a lot, she suggested
it was because they still hold the Holocaust against them. I can
certainly see why after the books I've read. I have to remember to
separate the people now from the monsters back
then. And I do know there were a few good people back then.And some
who were just ignorant. A German soldier on a train taking prisoners
from France to Auschwitz was pale upon arriving. The lady heard him
tell his fellow soldier he thought it was only like a work camp - a
gulag -, but when he saw the gas chambers and smelled the stench of
death, he said, "The world will never forgive us for this." I've been
crying all day reading these testimonies. Especially when I picture
those little children...carted away to their deaths, fear in their eyes,
crying from hunger and separation from their parents. I think of
little Zach and my Michael, and I **cannot** understand that kind of
cruelty. Surely those monsters were demons in German bodies.
Also I found this link about Klaus Barbie and noted on Facebook:
The
current book I'm reading is about the trial of this monster. I am
completely dismayed to read of his crimes and then find out "With the
aid of the Americans, he fled from prosecution in France in 1950 and
relocated to South America together with his wife and children." He
lived in Bolivia and was friendly with dictator Hugo Banzer. Finally the
man was tried in France in 1987 after "He lived in
Bolivia as a businessman under the name Klaus Altmann from 1951 onward.
Though he was identified in Bolivia at least as early as 1971 by the
Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, it was only in February 1983
that the Bolivian government, after long negotiations, extradited him to
France to stand trial. This caused the U.S. to offer a formal apology
to France in August 1983." Sometimes I really really really really hate
what my country does! GRRR!
I
am grateful to France for prosecuting this guy. The Germans didn't
really want to go to the trouble (!!!). The Americans employed him at
one time (!!!). The Bolivians housed him. Thank you, France and the
Nazi hunters.
And after reading these, I decided to return to some of
the books I received for Christmas.
I could have continued on with library books, but why get books as
gifts if you fail to read them in a timely manner? I'd read half of
them, but was at a standstill on the others. Now I have no library books
at the house, but plenty of others that I need to read. (Update on that
to come.)
Behind the Veil of Vice: The Business and Culture of Sex in the Middle East
by John R. Bradley -- If you're thinking this book exposes the tawdry
side of the Middle East and then condemns those people for being
hypocrites. You know pretending to be all-pious Muslim and wearing all
those modest clothes - covering hair, face, even hands in some cases,
praying five times a day and all that. Well, this book does expose
sexual practices like prostitution, temporary marriages and child brides
and pederasty and pornography sold in souks, but the author is very
much pro-sex culture and comes across more scolding of people trying to
change it. (He labels himself in the conclusion as both "secularist" and
"libertarian" so his positions make better sense.) Granted,he is
against child trafficking and child marriages, but thinks numbers reported there are
exaggerated because studies are not documented well. The other stuff he
believes is fine and holds up Tunisia's treatment of prostitutes -
legalizing and caring for them - as an example to many other places in
the world. (He'd talked so highly of Tunisia as a positive example -
"the Arab world's most prosperous and peaceful country" - that I had to
wonder what the author thought of the "Arab Spring" beginning there not
too many months after this book was published.) The author thinks we
can learn from Arabs about homosexuality by treating this as a private
matter and not something we must bring up in public and political
arenas. This was the chapter on pederasty and how common and acceptable
this older man/young boy sex is in a culture that doesn't divide people
by age such as we do in the West, but by sex.
