Tag Archives: Holocaust

Sebald’s “Austerlitz” and Fascism’s Rise

Sebald’s novel “Austerlitz” provides insights to fascism than anticipate Trump.

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Paul Celan on Fascism’s Horrors

Paul Celan’s “Death Fugue,” about the Holocaust, reads differently during the Israel-Gaza conflict.

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Putin Is Giving War a Bad Name

Some who support fascists would prefer that they stay clean. Brecht has something to say about them.

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Feeding on Beauty in the Midst of Horror

If music sustained camp prisoners during the Holocaust, as Rita Dove describes in this poem, the arts can sustain us during our current pandemic.

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Curious George’s Escape from Hitler

Monday A recent New Yorker article about “Curious George” forces us to rethink the beloved children’s classic. While at first glance, Rivka Galchen points out, it uncomfortably echoes the Middle Passage, it actually grew out of a different atrocity. Authors Hans and Margret Rey were Jews fleeing the Germans as they invaded France. The Reys […]

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Books Protect Us from Madness

Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief” shows both the power and the danger of stories.

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Cain: A Positive Way Past Collective Guilt

Nazi perpetrators who turned to Christianity avoided true contrition. Both the story of Cain and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” show how to really get right with God.

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Could Beowulf Have Saved Jews?

In her book about Eichmann, Hannah Arendt praises the Danes for how they stood up to the Nazis. One can draw a parallel with how Beowulf stands up to Grendel and also apply the lesson to the Trayvon Martin case.

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