Bookworm Room

Tweet The one thing that’s been nice about Obama’s presidency is the fact that the Democrats ramped down their Nazi rhetoric.  It used to be that you couldn’t open a Leftist web page without hearing that Bush and Cheney were Nazis, and that every Republican policy initiative promised to create a new Holocaust. Sadly, the [...]

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Tweet As a Jew, the Holocaust is always with me.  When I whine about something (which I often do), I’m instantly stricken with guilt because I know that, 70 years ago, across Europe, women with lives similar to mine (middle-aged, middle-class) were suddenly pitched into a nightmarish maelstrom from which there was no escape. Am [...]

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Tweet A matched set:  The first about the beasts at the top of the Nazi hierarchy, the second about the beasts at the bottom.

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Tweet When I watch Obama in action, I become very worried that Yom Hashoah, instead of being only a remembrance of things past, will be joined by a Yom Hashoah II, the sequel.  But today, I won’t blog about that.  Instead, I urge you to read this story of a young British man, imprisoned in [...]

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Tweet I’ve long had a conflicted emotional relationship to Poland.  I know that Poland bore the brunt of the first official Nazi invasion in WWII, back in August 1939.  I also know that the Poles suffered horribly under the Soviets.  In the modern era, it was the Poles whose bravery exposed the weaknesses in and [...]

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Tweet You’ve no doubt read about the false Holocaust love story that’s caused Oprah such anguish.  I have a real story for you.  I knew the players and can speak to their veracity. Harry’s parents were able to get him out of Germany during the late 1930s.  By that time, he’d already suffered mild brain [...]

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Tweet With regard to Iran, Israel is currently facing two options.  It can launch a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, which will allow Israel to survive intact while inflicting minimal loss of life or property against Iran.  Alternatively, it can allow Iran to take a preemptive strike against Israel (which would be a nuclear [...]

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Tweet From today’s news: Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday after a long illness, local media said. [snip] Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said: “Irena Sendler’s courageous activities rescuing Jews during [...]

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Tweet Today’s news about yesterday: In honor of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, marked in Israel on Thursday, Yad Vashem expanded its Internet presence this week by opening an online database containing nearly two-thirds of the 200,000 photos in its archives. [snip] Earlier this week, Yad Vashem launched two YouTube sites. The English version [...]

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Tweet A few days ago, I posted about the rise in antisemitism around the world. One of my readers, who I know is a good and kind woman, decried this trend, but then said something interesting: “And now many Jews insist that we hate Muslims to support them. [snip.] [E]very anti-Islamic article posted makes it [...]

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Tweet Here you will find amazing film clips from almost one hundred years of 20th Century Jewish history, including images and testimony from Eichmann’s trial. It is a reminder that, while the Jews wanted Israel as an escape from bloodshed and tyranny, the Palestinians joyfully imagine their lands awash in a sea of blood. Hat [...]

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Tweet Note: I originally posted this bit of family history in August 2006. I’m reposting it now, inspired by two things: Ken Burns’ excellent “The War” (I swear the man’s a conservative) and Ahmadinejad’s pretending that the Holocaust’s historical reality is open for some sort of debate. I think both — the one almost sublime, [...]

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Tweet I blogged earlier about the new album of photographs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the ones showing Auschwitz guards frolicking during their off hours. I’ve got a couple of things to add. The first is a link to the entire album, here. And the second is Roger Cohen’s article, at Germany’s Spiegel [...]

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Tweet The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received an unusual donation last Christmas:  a photo album taken during the last year of Auschwitz.  But unlike all our other images of Auschwitz, which show the horrors visited on the camps’ victims, this one shows the perpetrators at play.  It’s mind-bending to see images of brutal killers [...]

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Tweet My friend Patrick, who blogs at The Paragraph Farmer, tackles a very difficult question in today’s American Spectator:  Why, in a world that daily reminds us of man’s inhumanity to man, does the Holocaust still stands as the ne plus ultra of the human ability to kill?  It’s a thoughtful article, and one I [...]

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Tweet As I’ve noted before, my mother spent the war years interned in a Japanese concentration camp in Java.  These camps were not Nazi death camps, but they were no picnic either, with a horrible attrition rate from disease, starvation, overwork and abuse.  (See here for more information about one of the camps my Mom [...]

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Tweet After reading my post about Huckabee, my friend the Soccer Dad directed me to an Israel Matzav post about Huckabee’s visits to Israel and to Yad Vashem. Reading that post, I can only conclude that (a) Huckabee recognizes Israel as a nation amongst nations and (b) that Huckabee has correctly understood that one of [...]

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Tweet Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.  The war ended 62 years ago, and the vast majority of the survivors and perpetrators are dead.  Why do we still care? Is it, as the Muslims want the world to believe, a Zionist ploy to garner the sympathy vote in world politics?  Aside from the fact that such [...]

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Tweet The best WWII stories aren’t just about those who killed lots of Nazis.  They’re about those who killed lots of Nazis and who managed to maintain their humanity despite the horrors around them, who went on to live successful lives, and who had children and grandchildren to offset the millions who died at Nazi hands.  [...]

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Tweet [I haven't had the chance to think this busy weekend, let alone blog.  For some reason, though, I can't get out of my head the WWII stories of a few people I met, long after the war, when they were old and gray.  I'm therefore resurrecting this post because I think it tells a [...]

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Tweet To my shame, I only sort of paid attention to the story of Irena Sendlerowa, the Polish Catholic nurse who saved 2,500 Jewish children, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, and escaped death by minutes through a well-placed bribe.  Fortunately, the Webloggin editor was on the case, and he’s written a lovely tribute [...]

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Tweet In a brilliant essay at The Weekly Standard, Matthias K

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Tweet Holocaust denial about the Nazi death camps is gaining traction in part because witnesses are dying. After all, the camps were liberated more than 60 years ago, and both the camps’ victims and their liberators are an increasingly shrinking breed. There’s not much left of the world that bore witness to the staggering scope [...]

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Tweet Despite the fact that more than 60 years have past since the end of the Nazi’s deranged regime, stories about survival and decency still crop up.  Here’s one that came through my email: Here is an unknown story that I believe will be of interest and that you might like to pass on.  Carry [...]

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Tweet The Captain says that the earth itself just reminded us of yet another horrible Nazi practice:  euthanizing those Aryans whom the Nazis deemed physically or mentally unfit to live.  In a Western Germany town, relying on sixty years of rumors, authorities dug up a mass grave that included skeletons of children as young as [...]

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