The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to the elements by the Communists, at least after they had briefly employed it as a 'furniture facility.' It had then been vandalized and perhaps accidentally set aflame by incurious and callous local 'youths.' Only the well-crafted walls really stood, though a recent grant from the European Union had allowed a makeshift roof and some wooden scaffolding to hold up and enclose the shell until further notice. Adjacent were the remains of a mikvah bath for the ritual purification of women, and a kosher abattoir for the ritual slaughter of beasts: I had to feel that it was grotesque that these obscurantist relics were the only ones to have survived. In a corner of the yard lay a pile of smashed stones on which appeared inscriptions in Hebrew and sometimes Yiddish. These were all that remained of the gravestones. There wasn't a Jew left in the town, and there hadn't been one, said Mr. Kichler, since 1945.
Christopher HitchensTag: animals religion world-war-ii hebrew communism jews nazis vandalism judaism relics animal-sacrifice rituals 1945 european-union obscurantism women-and-religion wroclaw tombstones abattoirs animal-slaughter desecration jerzy-kichler mikvahs synagogues white-stork-synagogue women-in-judaism yiddish
Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.
Vladimir NabokovTag: death fiction world-war-ii holocaust nazis germans signs-and-symbols
What people still do not like to admit is that there were two crimes in the form of one. Just as the destruction of Jewry was the necessary condition for the rise and expansion of Nazism, so the ethnic cleansing of Germans was a precondition for the Stalinization of Poland. I first noticed this point when reading an essay by the late Ernest Gellner, who at the end of the war had warned Eastern Europeans that collective punishment of Germans would put them under Stalin's tutelage indefinitely. They would always feel the guilty need for an ally against potential German revenge.
Christopher HitchensTag: war revenge antisemitism world-war-ii genocide holocaust jews poland germans nazism stalinism eastern-european ernest-gellner ethnic-cleansing stalin
This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.
Christopher HitchensTag: patriotism elections world-war-ii britain india united-kingdom winston-churchill british-people clement-attlee indian-independence-act-1947 indian-independence-movement labour-party-uk national-health-service prime-minister-of-the-uk rationing-in-the-united-kingdom socialised-medicine toyrism uk-general-election-1945 welfare-state
Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed.
Patrick WhiteTag: war futility world-war-ii novels hotels comfort whisky
A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important. So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal human condition.
Guy SajerTag: world-war-ii memoir third-reich
As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.
Iris ChangTag: world-war-ii holocaust nanking
After the Second World War, San Francisco was the main point of re-entry for sailors returning from the Pacific. Out at sea, many of these sailors had picked up amatory habits that were frowned upon back on dry land. So these sailors stayed in San Francisco . . .
Jeffrey EugenidesTag: world-war-ii homosexuality san-francisco united-states-navy
Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism... neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the worlds greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.
Richard WeikartTag: war evolution world-war-ii genocide holocaust darwinism darwin racism hitler eugenics nazism macro-evolution macroevolution world-war-two world-war-2 ethnic-cleansing social-darwinism
Were prayers of murderers, when fighting on the “right side” of the war, ever heard—let alone answered?
Kristina McMorrisTag: inspirational philosophy war tragedy world-war-ii prayers philosophy-religion
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