American History

[Donotremove]

No one who has not read the two volume "I Will Bear Witness" by Victor Klemperer, the account of a Jew (and his wife) in Germany during the years between 1933 and 1945, can really understand how the screws were slowly tightened on the German Jewish residents. There are excellent accounts of this same method used on Jews in other countries controlled by the Nazis although I can't recall any titles right now.

There was never the sudden withdrawal of civil liberties of the Jews (and other so-called undesirables) like the U.S. did with the Japanese when they rounded them up and sent them to camps (that was the bad news. The good news was the U.S. never intended to murder the Japanese-American citizens).

And, of course, we all should be aware of the ship bearing 900 Jews, who did try to get away, trying to dock in country after country--including the U.S.--and were refused. A ghost ship wandering the seas, until the captain, nearly insane with grief, took his ship back to Germany.

Many Jews did realize, early on, that things didn't look/sound right and escaped. Alas, some of them went to "safer" places only to be caught up in the maelstrom again.

Six million died.

In the time-line of history, this number falls into context, but since the arbitrary year one, it stands out. Jesus was a Jew. This whole subject should be treated with respect.

[madupont]

Donotremove,

The writer is Victor Klemperer; because of my childhood early into music and listening to the radio provision of music on weekends, I often confused him with this man --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Klemperer

I first learned about Victor, several reviews of the book at The New York Times as a matter of course considering but, probably would not have gone right out and bought it, had it not  been for chosing in  March of 2003 to ask if I could join the Western Europe forum where the moderator had the same last name as our Austrian landlord back in the Thirties.

That was when I inquired, since they, the moderator and her husband, were living in the same home town, if they might be any relation to Oscar who came with his wife in the late Twenties. Germany in itself as the Weimar Republic was already experiencing economic Depression following WW1.

Since the moderator had met her husband at university in the Midstate, it became clear that she knew relatively nothing about the background and history of her husband's hometown( in any case he was not a relative; but recently pre-Xmas I realized there was still a bakery back there with the same family name attached which I hope may trace those things my mother never mentioned to me. Those thing which I recall about the Third Reich were entirely from my observation as a child of how the adults behaved as they talked about certain matters that were occurring. Like the  Berlin Olympics, etc.

Why it seems significant to me is that somewhat in reverse, a young woman living there (as we did at the time) met and married a school teacher from Germany,then went back home with him. Although she thought that she had a close relationship, a friendship, with the daughters of the American ambassador to Germany, at this point the entire embassy staff was relocated out of the embassy and quarantined for a short period which was an inconvenience that they found rather exciting, to await  transportation back to the US.

The young German-American woman along with her husband and others recruited did a great deal of "resistance" work and she was eventually executed in one of the small facilities within the Berlin metropolitan environment, as were her husband and young college-age recruits; all at varying times however. Hitler, as often hinted in regard to his "cousin" Geli Raubal, had a very psychologically sadistic nature that other young women who worked closely in his environment never guessed; thus his timing of the executions were carefully calculated. The young woman from the US,and being the last to die, was guillotined.   

Our Germanic American town, a very small city at the time, had all the usual features of that era when the Bund was in operation locally. I talked with Bob Whelen about that during the reading of Philip Roth's,The Plot Against America, and since Bob was raised in New Jersey (as Roth had been), he confirmed that the same social events were occuring: the Bund Camp for families and children to have summer and autumn outings, the pre-Xmas parties for children at the "Turners"(the Turnverein).

By the time that I was in grade school, the Church and the religious orders had brought us new school-mates and friends and "choir" masters who arrived, through reverse proceedures than the "Ratlines", as "hidden Jews". Before the end of the 1960s, most of my younger sisters' generation had been informed by their grandparents that they really were not Roman Catholics or Christians but were Jewish; thus, this whole suburban generation in German-American communities integrated their Chanukah/Christmas parties as one big holiday bash of togetherness.

Most of us raised through this era never lost our German holiday traditions, those who made their communion in Spring forever hungered after Kaiser tortes that we were allowed to run to the bakery and purchase for our breakfast between morning Mass and the beginning of the school day. We went to soccer games at the Bavarian Club in the summer months; to Oktoberfest in the Autumn for Spanferkel and DAP beer.

However, joining the Western Europe forum made us acquainted with German speakers once again: a Swiss(or, Switzer), an East German, an Austrian, and best of all a shy German seminary-educated "archivist of sorts who rarely spoke but having the strict academic training organized his files of everything (I fall behind every day!). 

He tried to entice me to speak/write German by proffering every dialect imaginable including Plat-Deutsch(known locally as dietsch, a language which makes no sense to me whatsoever except for an occasional descriptive word that relates instantly to English as half of English is derived from the Germanic languages).

He then filled me in on many of the events that were clouded as to how they came about( that we had German prisoners residing in our suburban neighborhood, their barracks fenced in behind high wire; it is kind of a German joke, like the mirror image of what began in their homeland). Larger camps were not talked about with children who became our fellow posters and were never told they existed close-by while they were growing up. (as you know, perhaps the largest existed in Texas, it looked relatively gigantic)

Of course I already knew that the Gau/districts into which American states were divided up existed as maps on the walls of the Gau headquarters in Deutschland(because of the German who had told me how to exist in the cellar in case I ever had to during a bombing;and I was told that forty years before it might even become necessary).

Martin then told me, after going through the Nurnburg Laws for maybe the tenth time in my life, revisiting all the refinements, about Victor Klemperer's wife who was not Jewish. They had to decide what to do as a mixed couple. Frau Klemperer organized with the many other wives, since these marriages had been ordinarily very common throughout metropolitan Germany,  and held a rally and public demonstration that was just astounding and a revelation to the Nazi authorities who backtracked for quite awhile although imposing stringent regulations of what Jews could do or not do, have or not have, in a household of a mixed relationship.  Can you imagine not having a cat because you are not the same race as your spouse?

This however was just biding for time; the Nazis only abiding until things got much worse and did not develop how they intended it would.


The Modern Library  through Random House Publishers put out the two volumes in paperback in 1999 but it took me another ten years because I didn't start reading the very small fine print of Victor Klemperer's diary or day-book (so he would not forget anything of the petty, picayune details over time)until three-quarters of a year ago when I had to sit for hours waiting for a friend having knee surgery to come out of the anesthetic and be wakeful enough to be taken home by a special taxi service for moving surgery patients.

There may be another format by now that might make it easier to read on line or by Kindle or listen on CD.  I find that everything I am able to read in the fine tiny print of this edition brings to mind several dozens of things from the past, so that I stop to reflect and remember and interpret what it meant while we were having a normal American childhood during the Second World War.

[Gintaras]

So, the greatest Jewish Resistance debate has moved to the American History forum.  As Alice would say, it just gets curiouser and curiouser.  But, as a bit of American history I found the sad fate of the transatlantic liner St. Louis in 1939, the so-called "Voyage of the Damned" with over 900 Jewish refugees on board, very sad, especially in regard to FDR's decision,

Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never responded. The State Department and the White House had decided not to take extraordinary measures to permit the refugees to enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States." U.S. diplomats in Havana intervened once more with the Cuban government to admit the passengers on a "humanitarian" basis, but without success.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005267

It just goes to show you we were all anti-Semites.

[weezo]

It must have been a terrifying experience to be on that ship, trying to find a port, only to be rejected over and over again.

Whatever did Jewish people do to the world population as to be so unwelcome?

[Gintaras]

I think you might want to rephrase that.

[Donotremove]

Weezo,, I asked myself that very same question in my middle thirties. After a lifetime of reading, and listening to all sorts of people talk, I have found that there are many answers, none of which hold water. I have concluded that, generally, people need scapegoats to tilt some sort of power axis (political, personal, whatever).

Not to say that in any populace there aren't some jerks.

[whiskeypriest]

Weezo,, I asked myself that very same question in my middle thirties. After a lifetime of reading, and listening to all sorts of people talk, I have found that there are many answers, none of which hold water. I have concluded that, generally, people need scapegoats to tilt some sort of power axis (political, personal, whatever).

Not to say that in any populace there aren't some jerks.

In the immortal words of William of Baskerville, "When your real enemies prove too strong, choose weaker enemies."

[MrUtley]

It must have been a terrifying experience to be on that ship, trying to find a port, only to be rejected over and over again.

Whatever did Jewish people do to the world population as to be so unwelcome?

They did nothing but live among Christians and other bigots.

 

[weezo]

It must have been a terrifying experience to be on that ship, trying to find a port, only to be rejected over and over again.

Whatever did Jewish people do to the world population as to be so unwelcome?

They did nothing but live among Christians and other bigots.

If that is your answer, then why did the Jewish people choose to live among bigots?

[whiskeypriest]

It must have been a terrifying experience to be on that ship, trying to find a port, only to be rejected over and over again.

Whatever did Jewish people do to the world population as to be so unwelcome?

They did nothing but live among Christians and other bigots.

If that is your answer, then why did the Jewish people choose to live among bigots?

Sweet Jesus, you are an idiot.

[weezo]

It must have been a terrifying experience to be on that ship, trying to find a port, only to be rejected over and over again.

Whatever did Jewish people do to the world population as to be so unwelcome?

They did nothing but live among Christians and other bigots.

If that is your answer, then why did the Jewish people choose to live among bigots?

Sweet Jesus, you are an idiot.

You aren't stereotyping alll people who are not Jewish as bigots, are you?

[madupont]

MrUtley,
Although I've known all the factors involved as reported in the above material, I had to post it for those who might want to know the facts as they are; a lot more than the person I recently ran into who didn't like Revolutionary Road(the film) because Kate Winslet was not "Feminist" enough in a mentally healthy way back in the 1950s.

How do I break it to him that  Feminism was not on the agenda until the 1970s after Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer had head to head combat in a debate.

[madupont]

MrUtley

At some point just before the mid-Fifties, a year or two before, I met a girl at rehearsal in the theatre one evening  who was French and her family name was Moreau.  Her father had been a lawyer in Paris and I could picture him walking to work from where they lived on the Ile St.Louis by the Pont Louis to the other island Ile de la Cite and past Notre Dame, the Hotel de Ville, the Conciergerie, the Prefecture de police to the Palais de Justice.

When she told where they lived and I thought c'est beau, she seemed surprised that I knew where it was: those two islands in the Seine , the domicile island just south of the Marais connected by Deux Pont and the Pont Marie and on the south the Quai de le Tournelle into St Germaine.  For several years I had a small framed drawing in crayon on stone of Ile St.Louis done by one of the artists in St. Antoine Allee next to the  Cathedral in New Orleans. Coincidence or fate? I also had a large and thorough enough map of the city under glass on my coffee table for the project of identifying the place names from the many novels and stories,Zola, de Maupassant,etc.,etc.,  and their locales on an actual map.

For safety sake, we hung out with the other Europeans, a former director of cabaret in Munich who was now a lithographer and his friend a local-actor who was German-American and a commercial artist. Moreau said that her father also liked to paint although he was not old enough to be the famous Symbolist Gustave Moreau. I learned practical French from her record collection. Otherwise, she made me memorize poems and then would correct my pronunciation during the recitation. Her husband came from my mother's birthplace;  he had been an orphan raised in the school dormitory where  the convent had previously had an orphanage when my mother's uncle was chaplain.  When he came of age, he enlisted  in WW2

They met, or rather my fellow actress became a war-bride following the Allied invasion of Algiers.  Gradually, by listening one learns that when it was obvious the boche were headed in the direction of Paris, famille Moreau had to leave their lovely apartment behind and vacate to the South of France  at Nice and await their turn for passage to North Africa.

Some years later my friend's mother came from North Africa to take her daughter back to Algiers which she thought best, given an impending divorce. Typically French, she brought her daughter a lovely negligee; just in case the marriage could be saved. Then we had the two mothers get together by inviting Mme.Moreau  to my parents home.  That was the last that I saw my friend, after they returned to Algiers.

[weezo]

In case any one is interested in reading American History and discussing it, I just got a couple of new books that I'll be reading under the blankets as the winter blows outside. Fall lasted a long time this year, but it has gotten cold quickly and firmly. One is "Founding Brothers" by Joseph Ellis. Also "I am Soldier"....

I just started a book on Winston Churchill. The author warns early on that Churchill was ELITE, so I don't suppose there would be a favorable comparison between Churchill and Ben Franklin....

[Lhoffman]

In case any one is interested in reading American History and discussing it, I just got a couple of new books that I'll be reading under the blankets as the winter blows outside. Fall lasted a long time this year, but it has gotten cold quickly and firmly. One is "Founding Brothers" by Joseph Ellis. Also "I am Soldier"....

I just started a book on Winston Churchill. The author warns early on that Churchill was ELITE, so I don't suppose there would be a favorable comparison between Churchill and Ben Franklin....

What is "I Am Soldier"?