Musings of the Obsessive Kind

I don't often post news articles, but I wanted to post this one.

Scholars run down more clues to a Holocaust mystery By ARTHUR MAX and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers
Sun Apr 27, 3:51 PM ET

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of a cattle car.

Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus "passports" that extended Sweden's protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on, dumbfounded.

Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and gentle manner. Recruited and financed by the U.S., he was sent into Hungary to save Jews. He bullied, bluffed and bribed powerful Nazis to prevent the deportation of 20,000 Hungarian Jews to concentration camps, and averted the massacre of 70,000 more people in Budapest's ghetto by threatening to have the Nazi commander hanged as a war criminal.

Then, on Jan. 17, 1945, days after the Soviets moved into Budapest, the 32-year-old Wallenberg and his Hungarian driver, Vilmos Langfelder, drove off under a Russian security escort, and vanished forever.

( The rest of the article )

I am reading an absolutely fascinating book: The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duffy. It's a non-fiction account of three Jewish brothers who escaped into the woods during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and formed a large and effective guerilla unit to fight the Nazis. Not only that, but they rescued and sheletered over a large number of 'civilian,' non-combatant Jews deep in a hidden base camp they created in the woods. After two and a half years of this, over twelve hundred people emerged alive when the Red Army reoccupied the territory. I am especially fascinated by one of the three brothers, Asael, who was killed in battle after he joined the Red Army to continue the fight against Nazis once the Russians retook Poland and so the guerilla unit was rendered redundant. I think I sat up and went 'whoa' when the author mentioned how when he performed an informal self-done wedding ceremony with his wife (whom he'd known before the war and whom he rescued at quite a risk), instead of giving her a ring during the part of the ceremony which mentions an exchange or rings, he gave her a gun. Guns were a very valuable commodity but he gave her one as a sign of love, so she could defend herself or kill herself if captured. Ummm. Yeah. Incredibly cool.

The book is especially good because the author didn't just go through documents and such but interviewed the widows of the three brothers, as well as people they rescued or who fought with them, or the local civilians. It's an excellent, excellent read. I've been off fiction for a while, but my non-fiction kick is manifesting especially strongly.

In completely unrelated news, the rest of the post is about doramas. I wrote most of it last night but I wanted to reread it to see if my zonked ramblings made sense. They (oddly enough) do, so here they are.

All 18 eps of Silence that are out so far are on youtube with subs. I think I just might die. For some reason my computer at home won't let me do the 'full screen' thing so I have to watch it on this tiny tiny window, but I don't care. My weekend is shot to hell because I am going to be watching 13 hours of dorama at a go. Whoa.

It Started with a Kiss is LOVE.

Really.

I don't know why it's taken me seven episodes to fall in love with it (not that I didn't like it before, I did. But it wasn't the giddy irrepressible squee that it is now). I am still on episode 7 as I've been crazy busy and I have officially decided that ISWAK is the cutest, sweetest thing ever. And that autumn_yaar is absoultely spot on in her assessment of Joe Cheng as "definitely on my list of people I wish I had the chance to take advantage of." Yes. (If you are curious, go to her awesome picspam here). But even though Joe Cheng is definitely easy on the eyes, the reason for my crush is the character of Zhi Shu. For one thing, I can get behind any story that posits that geeks (ZS is the smartest student in the school) are cool. His reactions to things (he is such a tease, with an off the wall sense of humor) are also cracktastic. And I am a sucker for guys struggling about being dragged kicking and screaming into falling in love. If a guy has fallen but the fact is driving him crazy? I am in.

( Longish ISWAK ramblings )

I've also been watching the beginning parts of Tokyo Juliet ep 11. Wu Zun continues to be unearthly pretty. It doesn't hurt that Liang with ponytail=hot.

( Brief thoughts )

I am reading an absolutely fascinating book: The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duffy. It's a non-fiction account of three Jewish brothers who escaped into the woods during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and formed a large and effective guerilla unit to fight the Nazis. Not only that, but they rescued and sheletered over a large number of 'civilian,' non-combatant Jews deep in a hidden base camp they created in the woods. After two and a half years of this, over twelve hundred people emerged alive when the Red Army reoccupied the territory. I am especially fascinated by one of the three brothers, Asael, who was killed in battle after he joined the Red Army to continue the fight against Nazis once the Russians retook Poland and so the guerilla unit was rendered redundant. I think I sat up and went 'whoa' when the author mentioned how when he performed an informal self-done wedding ceremony with his wife (whom he'd known before the war and whom he rescued at quite a risk), instead of giving her a ring during the part of the ceremony which mentions an exchange or rings, he gave her a gun. Guns were a very valuable commodity but he gave her one as a sign of love, so she could defend herself or kill herself if captured. Ummm. Yeah. Incredibly cool.

The book is especially good because the author didn't just go through documents and such but interviewed the widows of the three brothers, as well as people they rescued or who fought with them, or the local civilians. It's an excellent, excellent read. I've been off fiction for a while, but my non-fiction kick is manifesting especially strongly.

In completely unrelated news, the rest of the post is about doramas. I wrote most of it last night but I wanted to reread it to see if my zonked ramblings made sense. They (oddly enough) do, so here they are.

All 18 eps of Silence that are out so far are on youtube with subs. I think I just might die. For some reason my computer at home won't let me do the 'full screen' thing so I have to watch it on this tiny tiny window, but I don't care. My weekend is shot to hell because I am going to be watching 13 hours of dorama at a go. Whoa.

It Started with a Kiss is LOVE.

Really.

I don't know why it's taken me seven episodes to fall in love with it (not that I didn't like it before, I did. But it wasn't the giddy irrepressible squee that it is now). I am still on episode 7 as I've been crazy busy and I have officially decided that ISWAK is the cutest, sweetest thing ever. And that autumn_yaar is absoultely spot on in her assessment of Joe Cheng as "definitely on my list of people I wish I had the chance to take advantage of." Yes. (If you are curious, go to her awesome picspam here). But even though Joe Cheng is definitely easy on the eyes, the reason for my crush is the character of Zhi Shu. For one thing, I can get behind any story that posits that geeks (ZS is the smartest student in the school) are cool. His reactions to things (he is such a tease, with an off the wall sense of humor) are also cracktastic. And I am a sucker for guys struggling about being dragged kicking and screaming into falling in love. If a guy has fallen but the fact is driving him crazy? I am in.

( Longish ISWAK ramblings )

I've also been watching the beginning parts of Tokyo Juliet ep 11. Wu Zun continues to be unearthly pretty. It doesn't hurt that Liang with ponytail=hot.

( Brief thoughts )

The best thing about discovering I like anime? The treasure trove of badfic I can mock now.

In other news, Husband and I were in Pittsburgh this weekend, and the city has gone mad with superbowl mania. There are lines to get into the Steelers' memorabilia store, the buses have "Go Steelers" on them instead of the route, there is a "Go Steelers" sign on the church, and they are selling Steelers everything from Steelers candy to Steelers thongs. And there are fight songs playing everywhere. Crazy.

I have also finally given up on trying ro read Dan Kurzman's The Bravest Battle a non-fiction book about the 28-day uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. It's very well written, and the subject matter is incredibly gripping, and I've found a number of real life people to admire (especially the leader of the uprising Mordecai Anielewicz who is way way more amazing than the fictional protagonist of Leon Uris' Mila 18 who is based on him) but I just can't take it. It freaks me out and I've been having nightmares about it for two nights straight, so color me a wimp, but I just can't read it any more. It also makes me freak out about 'what if this happened to me' scenario and 'what would you do,' as I realize Anielewicz was 24 when he organized and fought to the death and at the same age I was being bored by my professors (and a lot of the people fighting were even younger) and then I get thankful for my own (knock on wood) non-horrific life and then bad headspace happens and my imagination goes into overdrive and basically I can't take it.

I think this is only a second book I ever gave up on because I couldn't deal with the subject matter.

When we were in Jerusalem, we went to Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. It was a horrifying couple of hours. Walking through the Children's Memorial, with its infinity of candles in the sheer darkness and a voice intoning the name, age and nationality of the child is truly awful (Apparently, to hear the same name of the murdered child again you'd have to come back in over three years).

I don't think I'll ever forget one particular photo (taken by an anonymous German soldier) of three or four Jewish men digging their own grave, minutes away from being shot. Most are middle-aged and weary and bent over their shovels. But one person, a boy in his late teens, stares with desperate intensity at the camera, right at you. He is movie-star-gorgeous but you don't even think about it because you can't think about anything but the look in those eyes. I keep thinking about that picture at random parts of the day ever since.

But the thing I remember most vividly was a grainy black-and-white video. I found after it ended that it's a clip from the Eichmann trial. But at first all I saw was a slight man in his late 30s, with the face of a poet and intensity to match reading something out loud. People in the audience (at the trial) were weeping. The intensity of not just his words, but of his whole person pulled me to watch even though I was going to walk past (you couldn't look at everything, you'd have had to spend days). I sat down to watch and found out the man was Abba Kovner, the leader of the uprising in the Vilna ghetto. He was reading a call to resistance he'd written years ago, to get the resistance in Vilna started, which was the first call to arms for the Jews to fight.

I wanted to know more about him and found it, both in the museum and on-line. After the ghetto was liquidated, he became a partisan leader. After the war, he was a leader of the organization to smuggle Jews out of Europe into Israel and was briefly jailed for his activities by the British. He fought in the Israeli War of Independence and ended up living on a kibbutz with his wife who was a fellow partisan. And, oddly enough, my first impression was correct. He was a poet.

Here's a web page that describes this in more detail. Abba Kovner. I post so often about men whose claim to fame is acting and nice looks, or heroes that are fictional, that I wanted to post about someone who is a real life hero, and someone I admire greatly. I've just bought "The Avengers" by Rich Cohen that deals with Kovner and other Vilna partisans.

( A poem by Abba Kovner )

When we were in Jerusalem, we went to Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. It was a horrifying couple of hours. Walking through the Children's Memorial, with its infinity of candles in the sheer darkness and a voice intoning the name, age and nationality of the child is truly awful (Apparently, to hear the same name of the murdered child again you'd have to come back in over three years).

I don't think I'll ever forget one particular photo (taken by an anonymous German soldier) of three or four Jewish men digging their own grave, minutes away from being shot. Most are middle-aged and weary and bent over their shovels. But one person, a boy in his late teens, stares with desperate intensity at the camera, right at you. He is movie-star-gorgeous but you don't even think about it because you can't think about anything but the look in those eyes. I keep thinking about that picture at random parts of the day ever since.

But the thing I remember most vividly was a grainy black-and-white video. I found after it ended that it's a clip from the Eichmann trial. But at first all I saw was a slight man in his late 30s, with the face of a poet and intensity to match reading something out loud. People in the audience (at the trial) were weeping. The intensity of not just his words, but of his whole person pulled me to watch even though I was going to walk past (you couldn't look at everything, you'd have had to spend days). I sat down to watch and found out the man was Abba Kovner, the leader of the uprising in the Vilna ghetto. He was reading a call to resistance he'd written years ago, to get the resistance in Vilna started, which was the first call to arms for the Jews to fight.

I wanted to know more about him and found it, both in the museum and on-line. After the ghetto was liquidated, he became a partisan leader. After the war, he was a leader of the organization to smuggle Jews out of Europe into Israel and was briefly jailed for his activities by the British. He fought in the Israeli War of Independence and ended up living on a kibbutz with his wife who was a fellow partisan. And, oddly enough, my first impression was correct. He was a poet.

Here's a web page that describes this in more detail. Abba Kovner. I post so often about men whose claim to fame is acting and nice looks, or heroes that are fictional, that I wanted to post about someone who is a real life hero, and someone I admire greatly. I've just bought "The Avengers" by Rich Cohen that deals with Kovner and other Vilna partisans.

( A poem by Abba Kovner )