Archived entries for Nazis
Triumph of the Will
NYU Film Institute flyer meets Nazi swastika. Note the Obama campaign slogan détournement. Rome, January 2010.
Contest of the Wills
You have to appreciate the linkage of the word “Nazi” to Islamophobia. As easy as it is to call any racist a fascist, at the same time, it’s an admission of what ties contemporary anti-immigrant politics to modern anti-Semitism.
They Care Alot
“Never again,” was a phrase that lost its meaning for me as a child. Forever linked to then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin (it was his signature phrase) in reference to the Shoah, it eventually lost its meaning for me during the siege of Beirut, in 1982.
This is not to compare the events, because they couldn’t have been more different. Nonetheless, I was old enough to discern the discrepancies between the significance of this slogan, and the events that unfolded five years later, under Begin’s own watch.
Obviously, the late Israeli leader was troubled, not just by the past, but how it intersected with his present. As though to compare, it took 28 years for me to feel moved by the statement again. As far away as 1982 seems, the distance couldn’t feel shorter.
Lists Make Perfect
Imagine being able to think about history the way we want it to be imagined. That is, interpreted, reacted to, summed up in ways that make it all better. Compiling lists of favorite books, music and literature at the end of every year is one way to do this. Hence my eleventh annual editor’s top ten.
The Song Remains the Same
The best stocked section (aside from the Health and Diet shelf) in San Francisco’s Green Apple Books bargain media annex.
Perhaps the single most frequently asked question posed by my interns at Tikkun was why we continued to receive so many books about Nazism and the Holocaust to review.
Indeed, every day, new books about the Shoah would inevitably outnumber arriving titles on Israel and Judaism. “It’s one of the occupational hazards of being a Jewish magazine,” was my stock reply.
Time Traveler
German was the last thing I expected to hear that morning. But, as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I could hear my grandmother screaming, "Raus, Nazis, raus." I didn’t know what to think. I imagined that I’d been dreaming, and tried to go back to sleep. But my grandmother wouldn’t stop. She was absolutely terrified. Nervous, I looked at my watch. It was only six AM. Finally, I decided to get out of bed and see what was going on. "Yoel," Safta announced as I reached the bottom of the staircase, "Arafat is hiding in the bushes outside. He’s wearing an SS uniform, and has a couple of German shepherds with him."
While I was only nine at the time, I was old enough to know that there was something terribly wrong. "Safta, doesn’t Arafat live in Beirut?" I remember asking her. "No, mottek, he’s the head of the Gestapo, here in Israel," she replied. I started to tremble. I’d begun reading newspapers, and knew that Arafat was leading the Palestinians next door in Lebanon’s civil war. "Safta, do you think you could call Abba in London and ask him what we should do?" I asked. "No," she said sternly. "We shouldn’t use the phone right now. It would be a dead giveaway. Just go up to your room, lower the shutters, and be quiet."
Sitting behind my closed door, for the next two weeks, the only sound I could hear was that of my eighty- four year old grandmother’s mind blasting apart. Speaking to herself incessantly, in Hebrew, German, and sometimes even Arabic, at varying volumes, she’d recount imaginary reports she claimed to have heard on army radio about how the Gestapo had finally returned to Palestine (not Israel) from Lebanon, with the sole purpose of kidnapping Jewish children. Unable to distinguish between the mandate period and independence, it was the first time I’d ever heard the Palestinians described as though they were Nazis.