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| 08 September 2013 ©smck |
Weather Today
woke up to sun and cloud and wind - and now it's mostly sun and cool breezes - (sweatshirt weather for us southerners and a few others) - and my little piece of the universe is lovely and worth living - so we are enjoying the last few day here to the hilt
The Angel of Zin - a book review
I just finished reading
this excellent book tonight, 30 August 2013 and feel compelled to give a brief
review of this book published some twenty-nine years ago – not just to add my
little bit to the memory of this terrible blot on the sanity of the human race,
but also to further the thrust of Mr. Irving’s commentary of how normal
seemingly decent human beings can be led to accept unthinkable acts of
depravity against another group of people.
His perceptive prose is not an indictment of the German people, but
rather an indictment of the human race in general. I can do no better than to quote the first
three paragraphs of his thoughtful preface:
“Zinoswicz-Zdroj (the Zin of the title) will not be found on any map of Poland. Its physical and administrative details are
borrowed from Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
More successful revolts similar to the one described, in fact occurred
at Treblinka, Sobibor, Kolcyczewo, and other smaller work camps.
Writing in The New York Times of 5 December 1982,
Michiko Kakutani warned that ‘. . . a kind of intellectual distancing has begun
to occur in depictions of the Holocaust, which threatens to trivialize, even
distort, the actual event.’ “
- and here Mr. Irving
gives a thoughtful comment on the duties
of an author – and in particular in answer to the above Times quote –
“It is a writer’s
obligation to make you see, feel and ponder; the writer does not trivialize or
distort historical events by shaping them into a design that is more visible,
more deeply felt. It is not instructive
to say, ‘Six million Jews were
killed. These Nazi murderers were beasts.’ Unless we are content to be victims of media
simplism, it is necessary to know the names of some of those six million (even
if some of those names are fictionalized), to see their faces, to emphasize
with their experience. It is also
necessary to view the murderers not as beasts but as men and women who
abdicated their humanity in favor of warped visions, brute economic need, and a
dreadful conformity. Because as Mordecai
Lieberman is quoted as saying, ‘Perhaps
this is just the beginning of man’s possibilities.’ “
I hope more of today’s vocal pundits and blind followers would heed
that comment “. . . who abdicated their
humanity in favor of warped visions, brute economic need, and a dreadful
conformity.” and that you too gentle reader might read this book and not only
feel empathy with the dread plight of those Jewish people trying to hold on to
dignity while being prepared for the ultimate indignity but also feel empathy
with those of the human persuasion of today who are different from you by
virtue of birth or blind luck of the draw in economic level. This is a great book worth spending some
hours in reading.
Fog Off The River
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| 06 September 2013 ©smck |
I woke early (for me - not for the fishermen at Larcheveque) and looking out the bathroom window I could see the river of fog that rises from the warmer river. What a lovely view - and so short lived, for in another half hour or so the rising sun chases it all away
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