Here is a list of books about Nazis and their atrocities that I have read and reviewed in this blog. You can follow the links to the reviews.
Archive for the ‘Atrocities’ Category
Books about Nazis and Their Atrocities
Posted in Atrocities, Books on July 20, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Book Review: The Tattooist of Auschwitz – by Heather Morris
Posted in Atrocities, Books, Three Stars on July 20, 2019| 2 Comments »
Lale was a Slovakian Jew who was ordered by the Nazis in 1942 to go to a work camp. After days of travel in a cramped and filthy cattle car, he stepped off the train in the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz.
Rather than despairing, he commits himself to survival. Because he speaks six languages, he is chosen to become the tattooist, the person who marks arriving prisoners with a number on their arms. He serves as the camp’s primary tattooist from 1942 to 1945. The position comes with privileges, like his own room to sleep in, additional rations, and the ability to come and go with much more freedom than the common inmates. Through his resourcefulness, he starts smuggling food into the camp, not just for himself to survive, but to help as many of his fellow prisoners as he can. One day, when he writes a number on a trembling girl’s arm, he looks up and instantly falls in love. Her name is Gita. Over time they develop a friendship and eventually a love that transcends the conditions in the camp and gives them both a reason to survive, and fight for their future.
This story is based on the true experiences of Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov, the tattooist of Auschwitz. Just last month I posted this story about three men who arrived at Auschwitz on the same day and had their numbers only 10 apart. Chances are high that we’re looking at Lale’s work.
I have heard people talk about how good this book is and that it’s a love story. I found that – yes – it’s a love story, but that is not the reason to read The Tattooist of Auschwitz. The reason to read it is because it illustrates life in a concentration camp and it shows the atrocities the Nazis committed, the murders, the mutilations, the humiliation, the forced starvation, the diseases, upon millions of innocent men, women and children. There are many books about Auschwitz, and this is one more, but in my opinion, you can’t read enough of those.
Fascism, and what it does to people, must be exposed, over and over again.
This book reminds me of many other books I have read and documented here that deal with the subject of Nazis and the atrocities they committed in the concentration camps. I have compiled them here in a separate post.
With Liberty and Justice for All – Except for Some
Posted in Atrocities, Books, Political on July 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »
In April 2013, I reviewed the book Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy. It tells the story of a Sylvia Perlmutter, a Jewish girl in the Lodz ghetto who was liberated in 1945 when she was 12 years old. Out of a quarter of a million people in the ghetto, only 800 survived, and of those 800, only 12 were children. Sylvia was one of them.
When I read the book in 2013, I wrote this in my review:
The Germans, for reasons I do not understand, took all the children away in the latter years and told their parents they were going to care for them better than they could in the ghetto. However, the children, being of no use to the Germans as workers and only a distraction to the adult Jews, were jammed into cattle cars and taken to death camps like Auschwitz, which was only a few hundred kilometers south from Lodz – where they were killed within hours of arrival.
What bestial people take babies, toddlers, small and older children under 14 away from their parents by force, by the thousands – with the full intent to just kill them? My German ancestors did.
The desperate parents went to extraordinary measures to hide their children. When the soldiers went house to house, they kicked open locked doors and ransacked apartments, looking for children in closets, trunks, under beds, wherever they could possibly be hidden. The agony the parents went through is unimaginable.
The agony for the children – well, you need to read Yellow Star to find out.
The key sentence here is:
What bestial people take babies, toddlers, small and older children under 14 away from their parents by force, by the thousands?
The Jewish Men at Auschwitz
Posted in Atrocities on June 20, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Animal Cruelty we Sanction
Posted in Atrocities on March 2, 2019| 3 Comments »
Here is what our agricultural system does to animals. This calf is wearing a device that prevents it to suckle from its mother. Can you even imagine the frustration? This is what homo sapiens does to its subjugated species just so there is a good supply of milk.
Testmarketing a Dictator
Posted in Atrocities, Trump on July 15, 2018| 1 Comment »
[picture credit: Irish Times]
Read this article and watch the 2-minute video, and scare yourself shitless.
The Trump Circus and the Stock Market
Posted in Atrocities, Business, Economy, Trump on June 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »
I am tired of Trump supporters telling me that Trump is a brilliant business man. He is not. He is a failing business man who routinely files bankruptcy when he can’t make his businesses work, stiffing his creditors and workers. He is a con man who spent his entire career sucking money out of the middle class to enrich himself. Trump University is just one example.
Trump knows the game of the rich class, and he is putting on a circus for the middle class to distract us from what is really going on. The ultra rich, and the corporate world, are benefitting from what is going on quietly behind the scenes while we’re all distracted by the dazzling magic show of blunders and corruption and outrageous stagecraft at this rallies.
He puts on the Immigrants are Evil public show, knowing fully well that none of his facts make any sense, immigrants have nothing to do with the problems of America, because he knows we can only be angry about one thing at a time.
It’s the deeds of Congress and his cabinet behind the scenes that we should really be worried about. Here are just a few of them:
- Dismantling National Parks or opening them to exploitation by mining and logging.
- Removing consumer protections imposed on banks and credit companies.
- Instituting tax cuts that favor businesses and super wealthy individuals and are largely meaningless to the middle class.
- Neutering the EPA, whose mission it is to protect the public from corporate pollution.
- Dismantling the Department of Education and pushing our public funds to private for profit schools where we have no control over the use of the funds.
- Increasing the military budget and thus feeding the military industrial complex. The increase of $80 billion this year alone is more than the entire military budget of Russia.
- Removing civil rights protections.
- Removing all our work toward research and protection against climate change. This is the worst crime of all, since it’s going to take decades to fix, and our grandchildren get to clean up the mess. This is a crime against humanity.
Watch the hand behind his back, not the circus in front of our faces.
We, the middle class, are getting hurt and exploited everywhere along the way. The debt is skyrocketing. Some day we will have to pay for all this, and Trump won’t be around to help with it.
Corporate America is doing great and the middle class is not getting the benefits. That’s why the stock market is rising.
When it all comes crumbling down, the rich aren’t going to be affected much. They’ll still eat and travel in helicopters. It’s the middle class that will lose everything – once again.
Trump will long be gone by then.
We will still be here.
We Have Lost Our Moral Authority
Posted in Atrocities, Commentaries, Trump on June 20, 2018| 4 Comments »
I have spent more than twenty years of my career helping human services and early education agencies all around the country with administration of childcare programs and everything related to it.
My customers are child advocates who have dedicated their lives to breaking the cycle of poverty in our country, and helping young children get out from under the yoke of economic oppression and sometimes misfortune. They are dedicated to the welfare and safe-keeping of young children, and they are passionate about it. Their work means everything to them.
I cannot imagine what it must feel like for them to be forced to be complicit with state-organized and state-created child abuse and human trafficking, because that is exactly what I think is going on in our country now.
These child advocates are now finding themselves in a position to have to search for care and safety for thousands of children who should be with their parents, but have been kidnapped by our government. This is a crisis entirely of our own making.
We have lost our moral authority.
The United States used to be John Winthrop’s Shining City upon a Hill, and we came after countries for human rights violations. Then it started to get shaky when Bush and Cheney started openly torturing people. McCain, a torture victim himself, spoke out against the practice. Once we tortured our prisoners, every American soldier, upon capture anywhere, would then have to fear to be tortured him or herself.
Now, with open racism, and state-enacted kidnapping, child abuse and human trafficking, taking children, even babies, away for their parents with no hope of reunification, we have lost all moral authority for decades to come.
It will be a very long time before the United States can lecture a rogue dictator for human rights violations. It will be a very long time before we can justify invading a country because it abuses its own citizens. We have given up this bargaining chip. It will be generations before our representatives, our presidents, can walk into a room again and command moral authority, and stand on the principle that the United States does the right thing.
I am disgusted with my government that commits crimes against humanity. I am disappointed with my fellow citizens who support these practices by propping up the Little Man in the White House.
Make America Great Again?
Right now, I am ashamed for my country!
Trump – Immigrants Infest our Country
Posted in Atrocities, Trump on June 19, 2018| 2 Comments »
The tweet by Trump above is an abomination.
Democrats don’t want illegal immigrants. Nobody wants illegal immigrants. Over the last 20 years, every Congress under every president tried to enact immigration reform, and none of them succeeded, due to political differences. This is not a “Democrat” problem.
Democrats, as everyone else, care about crime.
Democrats do not want more illegal immigrants because they are potential voters. This is utter drivel.
Insane, inane and atrocious nonsense coming out of the mouth of the president of the United States is an insult to every law-abiding, decent American.
Likening illegal immigrants to vermin (since only vermin “infests” something) is a racist insult to all human beings. Vilifying immigrants as the “problem” in our country is pure propaganda.
Trump and his ilk have created a divisive issue and problem where one doesn’t exist. Our country has a lot of problems, and illegal immigration is one of its problems, but it’s by far not its biggest problem. The idiotic border wall makes no sense. Separating children from parents makes no sense. Neither solves the immigration problem. Proper legislation and proper enforcement of that legislation solves the problem.
But the Trump administration is making it sound like this is the big problem of our time. They talk like Democrats want open borders. Nobody wants open borders. But saying it often enough and loud enough makes it sound like it is true and real.
They are pegging those who care about the child abuse occurring on our borders now as enemies of the country by wanting open borders against those who want to “enforce the laws.”
The whole argument is ridiculous, and it is meant to desensitize us.
I can’t help it now, I have to invoke Godwin’s Law again.
During the night of November 9, 1938, Hitler’s thugs, all over the country, raided Jewish businesses by breaking their windows and looting their stores. The night was called Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, due to the shards of broken glass that lined the streets the next morning. They then blamed the opposition.
Jews were soon and openly treated as vermin who infested the German society. They used the same word that our United States president used in his tweet this morning: Infest.
Once a significant percentage of the population is supporting brutal policies simply by being quiet when they are carried out, the enactors and enablers become bolder and more brazen.
Today we are tearing babies away from their parents without any plan of reuniting them later. How is a deported mother ever going to find her infant child again, weeks or months after separation? Today we’re putting babies in cages. Tomorrow we’re letting them die. After all, they are the offspring of vermin, right?
And all this is being done in front of the watchful eye of the American public, and we’re letting it happen, and the Republicans in Congress are letting it happen.
I am starting to think of Republicans as repugnant.
To me, it looks like we have organized crime running the White House, enriching themselves at the expense of the country, systematically de-sensitizing us to brutality, first against the vermin crossing our borders, later against “Democrats” who “want open borders,” and then, in the end, they’ll come after people like me who do not agree with those tactics and politics, who speak their minds in public.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.
— Martin Niemöller, a Nazi dissident
As you can see in Trump’s tweet, he has been coming after the immigrants ever since he started his campaign. And he has got a significant portion of our population convinced that immigration is our problem. He has emboldened white supremacists.
He is now gradually setting up to come after Democrats, whatever that is. He is actually blaming the family separation activity on Democrats, and his supporters are eating it up. Watch it, soon we’ll start seeing atrocities committed against Democrats.
And then, they’ll come after the media and free speech.
It has worked before, all over the world.
Racism
Posted in Atrocities, Racism on June 18, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Racism isn’t getting worse, it’s getting filmed.
— Will Smith
Siblings in Camps May Not Hug
Posted in Atrocities on June 18, 2018| 2 Comments »
I don’t understand what makes people do things like this to other human beings.
I don’t like child molesters.
I don’t like child cruelty.
I don’t like things like this being done by my government in my name.
The Nazi Salute and the American NFL
Posted in Atrocities, Police Brutality, Political on May 26, 2018| 2 Comments »
In 1934, the leadership of Germany made sure that every sports team exercised the salute of the dominant political party.
Not doing the salute was considered unpatriotic, and as time progressed, it had more and more serious repercussions.
Today members of American NFS teams are using their spotlighted status in society to protest injustice perpetrated on American citizens based on the color of their skin. See the video below as an example, where a young black man is dragged out of his own car, in his own driveway, because he has a broken tail light. Good grief!
Now our American government, led by the American president, is verbally attacking the NFL and its players for “disrespecting the National Anthem.”
Seriously? We are concerned about a piece of music? A flag? A ceremony?
One group of society, in this case the leadership of the government, decides it attaches some meaning to a ceremony, and then harasses citizens when they use their right to protest an injustice, and claims they are disrespecting the country.
The logic just does not work.
This is the same logic that Christians usurped in medieval times against people who didn’t buy into their religion – heretics.
It is the same logic many contemporary religions still use today in many places of the world to cast out, or chastise and punish those that do not accept that religion. Examples are radical Islamic factions in a number of countries and fundamental Mormons in the United States, and there are many others.
The video below shows police injustice, and humiliation of private citizens, which is the very thing the NFL members are protesting, the very occurrences our leadership should be working on to eliminate.
Instead, our leadership bullies.
How do they expect us to treat them with any respect?
The First Five Years are so Important
Posted in Atrocities, Education, tagged Lane Degregory, Lara Cerri on December 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »
My work is serving human services agencies that administer childcare and early education programs. So I get into contact a lot with educators and activists on behalf of children. In those circles, it is common knowledge that 80% of the brain development occurs during the first five years of life. When you know that, it is tragic to see how many children are left in a state of stupor staring at the compelling distractions on a television screen, bombarded with cheap programs and highly targeted commercial messages.
Small children need to be held, cuddled, tickled, read to, and played with. Children need to be stimulated, they need to be taught.
They need to be loved.
What happens when a small child is completely neglected? Missing the window of the first five years has a devastating effect on the entire life.
Completely Destroying North Korea
Posted in Atrocities on September 22, 2017| Leave a Comment »
North Korea has a population of 25,337,000 million people. Of those, 25,336,999 are hardworking, malnourished, completely impoverished and constantly living if fear. Many are political prisoners. One is a dictator.
When the president of the United States says that he thinks we should completely destroy North Korea, what does he mean? Kill 25,336,999 innocent people who have suffered from lack and abuse all their lives?
Could somebody define what “completely destroy North Korea” means?
We Need to Take Our Country Back from the Buffoon
Posted in Atrocities, Commentaries, Trump on October 4, 2018| 1 Comment »
If I was a guest at your house for a backyard BBQ party and
You would throw me out and I would likely no longer be your friend – at best.
And yet, here is our president doing exactly those things on national TV, and the people standing behind him laugh and applaud and act like this is funny.
It would be horrendous if I did it as a private citizen. You would throw me out and beat me up.
But here is the man who holds the office that we teach our schoolchildren they should look up to as a role model, and we accept it.
It destroys the dignity of the presidency, and it may take generations before the image and decorum recovers.
I don’t know exactly what the people standing behind Trump laughing and applauding really think deep inside. But I know that I think that Trump is a despicable human being, one that I will try to forget about quickly once he is voted out of office.
I also don’t know exactly what the Republican leadership, all those men and women that ran against Trump in the campaign, are thinking. I remember Rubio and Cruz saying that it was our duty to make sure that Trump never got anywhere near the Oval Office.
Really – damn their careers – one or more of these cowards need to stand up, man up, and do what they know is right, and do what they are really thinking inside, and end this national disgrace of a reality show of a country.
We need to take our country back.
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