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Review: Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark
Sep. 16th, 2018 09:45 am
When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 by Ronald C. RosbottomMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is about the Nazi occupation of Paris and fits nicely in my Goodreads tag "dystopian nonfiction." It's well written, and Rosbottom clearly loves Paris deeply. I particularly liked the way he talked about the many secret Parises of the city, from the Metro to the hidden rooms in apartment buildings where Jews hid. It's also a book about collaboration (in the negative sense): about what that is, what it means, the imperceptible gradations along the spectrum from Vichy to the Resistance where French people had to place themselves. About what you do when the question is not abstract at all, but is present in the shape of a German officer in your favorite cafe. He also talks about the backlash after the liberation of Paris, in which people who were guilty of nothing were accused of and executed for collaboration within the span of minutes and without any impediment like a trial or even a chance to speak.
This is a book about a city, but it is also a book about how flawed human nature is.
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UBC: Klemperer, Lingua Tertii Imperii
Mar. 20th, 2018 03:47 pm
Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii by Victor KlempererMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is what happens when a Jewish philologist takes up a project to keep from going insane under Nazi rule. It is
amazing
.
Klemperer was a Jew married to an "Aryan" woman who refused to give him up. So he spent the years of the Third Reich in Dresden, working in a factory instead of a university, living in a "Jews' House," being harassed by the Gestapo, forbidden to read any books written by Aryans. . . and to keep himself sane, he started what today we would call #LTI: notes in his diary about the Lingua Tertii Imperii, the way Nazis used language, and the way their use of language infected and corrupted the German language as a whole.
This is a brilliant book. His observations about language always lead back to the society he's living in, the oppression he's suffering under, the way ordinary Germans behaved (along a sliding spectrum of anti-Semitism), the way the Gestapo thugs behaved, the character of Goebbels as revealed in his speeches . . . thousands of tiny details that even the best social history of the Third Reich can't offer, because this is a man observing and analyzing from ground zero.
I tend to prefer secondary sources to primary sources (I feel this is a terrible character flaw, but there it is), but Klemperer is both. He's analyzing his own experiences as they happen to him, analyzing his own reactions, and always digging at words, the words people use, the words people don't use, the way metaphors influence the way people think.
This reprint was published by Bloomsbury in 2013 (in a TERRIBLE sans serif font which I hate with a cold and venomous hatred), so it's still readily available. I got it from Amazon. If you are interested in the Holocaust, in Nazi Germany, or in linguistics, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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Dear Senator Johnson:
I am very disturbed by your reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, August 11-12. You made a statement condemning "hate and violence" initially, but since then, you seem determined to make everyone forget that the rally ever happened, that white men carrying Nazi flags, making Nazi salutes, and chanting Nazi slogans marched through an American city--and that a woman is dead because one of them thought he could get away with ramming his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in broad daylight.
What's even worse is your reaction to President Trump's appalling speech. You have said you "don't think" Trump is a racist, although you can't offer any reasons for that belief, and the most negative thing you have yet said about his speech is that "it didn't move us closer. It certainly didn't put the issue behind us."
Senator, it's not clear to me what you think the "issue" is.
You have not spoken out against the racism of the rally. You have not condemned the white nationalist principles of its organizers. You haven't even gone so far as to say that you are anti-fascist. This isn't hard, Senator. "Nazis are evil" is not a complicated or difficult concept. And yet it's one you don't seem to grasp.
You want us to "put the divisive issues off to the side" and "accentuate the positive." By which you mean, you want there to be no consequences of this Nazi terrorist action. You want those of us who are not white men to, once again, swallow the insult and injury offered to us because we are being "divisive" by pointing out that these alt-right Nazis want us dead and are demonstrably ready and willing to kill us themselves.
That's what the fuss is about, Senator. That's why some of us are so unreasonable as to not yet be ready to "put the issue behind us."
Moreover, your call for unity is alarming. I'm willing to extend you the benefit of the doubt--perhaps you genuinely don't know this--but the root of the word fascism, and the concept at the movement's core, is the fasces, the bundle of sticks that is stronger together than any one stick would be by itself. Fascists are all about unity, and when you call for "unity" in the wake of a fascist attack, and when it is clear that by "unity" what you mean is that non-whites and non-males need to sit down, shut up, and stop rocking the boat, I think a person is justified in wondering what you, yourself, think about fascism.
So that's my question to you, Senator. Are you pro- or anti-fascist? It's a very simple question, requiring only a one sentence answer.
I eagerly await your public response.
[ETA: I have emailed this letter to Senator Johnson, and will send a hard copy tomorrow. Plus I have sent a shortened version of this letter both to my tiny local paper and to the Capital Times.]
I am very disturbed by your reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, August 11-12. You made a statement condemning "hate and violence" initially, but since then, you seem determined to make everyone forget that the rally ever happened, that white men carrying Nazi flags, making Nazi salutes, and chanting Nazi slogans marched through an American city--and that a woman is dead because one of them thought he could get away with ramming his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in broad daylight.
What's even worse is your reaction to President Trump's appalling speech. You have said you "don't think" Trump is a racist, although you can't offer any reasons for that belief, and the most negative thing you have yet said about his speech is that "it didn't move us closer. It certainly didn't put the issue behind us."
Senator, it's not clear to me what you think the "issue" is.
You have not spoken out against the racism of the rally. You have not condemned the white nationalist principles of its organizers. You haven't even gone so far as to say that you are anti-fascist. This isn't hard, Senator. "Nazis are evil" is not a complicated or difficult concept. And yet it's one you don't seem to grasp.
You want us to "put the divisive issues off to the side" and "accentuate the positive." By which you mean, you want there to be no consequences of this Nazi terrorist action. You want those of us who are not white men to, once again, swallow the insult and injury offered to us because we are being "divisive" by pointing out that these alt-right Nazis want us dead and are demonstrably ready and willing to kill us themselves.
That's what the fuss is about, Senator. That's why some of us are so unreasonable as to not yet be ready to "put the issue behind us."
Moreover, your call for unity is alarming. I'm willing to extend you the benefit of the doubt--perhaps you genuinely don't know this--but the root of the word fascism, and the concept at the movement's core, is the fasces, the bundle of sticks that is stronger together than any one stick would be by itself. Fascists are all about unity, and when you call for "unity" in the wake of a fascist attack, and when it is clear that by "unity" what you mean is that non-whites and non-males need to sit down, shut up, and stop rocking the boat, I think a person is justified in wondering what you, yourself, think about fascism.
So that's my question to you, Senator. Are you pro- or anti-fascist? It's a very simple question, requiring only a one sentence answer.
I eagerly await your public response.
[ETA: I have emailed this letter to Senator Johnson, and will send a hard copy tomorrow. Plus I have sent a shortened version of this letter both to my tiny local paper and to the Capital Times.]
