"One thing about life in New York: wherever you are, the neighborhood is always changing. An Italian enclave becomes Senegalese; a historically African-American corridor becomes a magnet for white professionals. The accents and rhythms shift; the aromas become spicy or vegetal. The transition is sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy. But there is a sense of loss among the people left behind, wondering what happened to the neighborhood they once thought of as their own."
For Sophia Goldberg (98), Holocaust survivor, change has meant the end of a way of life.
posted by zarq
on Dec 1, 2011 -
34 comments
"Just months before the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union, they had nothing better to do than to obsess about this dog." Introducing Jackie, the
Finnish dog that
infuriated the Nazis.
posted by naju
on Jan 7, 2011 -
69 comments
A family traveled to France and Germany in 1938 and shot
this footage which features two appearances by Adolf Hitler. It's creepy seeing this Nazi spectacle shot by an amateur. It's a perspective I don't know if I've ever seen. The video opens in France and the Nazi footage starts around 1:45.
The collector writes: "The Basement Collection presents: An 8mm film bought at an estate sale back in the 90's. This reel is part of a series of a family vacation movies to Europe in 1938. On this reel the family visits France and then Germany. The footage of Hitler is from a celebration in the Berlin Stadium on what I think is a May Day celebration (May 2, 1938) then another celebration at Berlin's Lustgarten. (on May 1st). (I think the reel was edited together out of order)."
posted by zzazazz
on Aug 12, 2010 -
95 comments
Poetry in Hell contains a complete collection of poems recovered from the Warsaw Ghetto's
Ringelblum Archives. The project, which took ten years to complete, gives English translations of poems that are shown in their original Yiddish.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 23, 2010 -
9 comments
You may have seen
Newt Gingrich this past Tuesday on
The Daily Show describing Obama's decision to try the Underpants Bomber in the courts as "radical." He pointed
out an incident in 1942 when Franklin Roosevelt suspended habeus corpus for Nazi saboteurs dropped off on Long Island by submarine to wreak havoc on Ameica. While "Nazi
Terrorists" might be almost comic book class villains, Newt probably would prefer people not to recall the true story and villains of
Operation Pastorius.
posted by justkevin
on Feb 11, 2010 -
43 comments
In other news: prominent Iraq war supporter and atheist writer Christopher Hitchens
caught in street brawl with
Syrian nazis in Beirut, Lebanon, after defacing the group's poster with
"No, no, Fuck You". The assault occurred on the eve of a
lecture held by Mr. Hitchens at the American University of Beirut, on the subject of "Who are the revolutionaries in today's Middle East".
posted by Anything
on Feb 19, 2009 -
99 comments
DOOM is a 3D adventure game with arcade-style elements. It was programmed for computers running
DOS Flash 10. Here's the plot: your character is a Space Marine on the planet Mars, who uses guns his fist, and even a chainsaw to kill monsters from another dimension.
posted by Smart Dalek
on Dec 4, 2008 -
85 comments
The Dictionary of Coming to Terms with the Past (
Wörterbuch der 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung') examines over 1,000 German words that have Nazi connotations, such as
Endlösung (Final Solution) and
Selektion, It is featured in a
review by der Spiegel. Such loaded words still constitute a minefield for Germans today, as the Archbishop of Cologne
discovered last year in a situation
analogized to Senator Biden's use of the term "articulate" when referring to Senator Obama.
[more inside]
posted by Rumple
on Feb 17, 2008 -
49 comments
It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi.... Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities.... His code is not his own; it is that of his class–no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value–success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.... Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy.... Mr. G will never be a Nazi,... [h]e will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along.
"Who goes Nazi?" via
sott.net, with added context. [more inside]
posted by orthogonality
on Jan 24, 2008 -
76 comments
Triumph of the Will - the Director's Cut This rare director's cut of Triumph of the Will (German: Triumph des Neger) is a propaganda film by the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the Nazi getting fonky at Nuremberg. The film contains excerpts from rhymes kicked by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including dat Brooklyn flava by Adolf Hitler, interspersed with footage of splifted party members.
posted by empath
on Oct 6, 2007 -
39 comments
Nazi Pop Twins is an
eerie documentary that debuted this year on BBC's
Channel Four about the neo-Nazi teen folk musicians,
Prussian Blue. The girls are managed by a neo-Nazi stage mom from hell, and the girls already seem to be more interested in shopping at the mall than singing white power lyrics. One of the creepiest scenes includes the twin girls on a phone call with their prison "pen pal,"
David Lane, the Neo-Nazi convicted of the murder of radio talk show host,
Alan Berg. Lane refers to the twin girls as his "fantasy sweethearts," raising issues about whether an obsession with genetic "purity" leads to
pedophilia on the Racist Right. Watch the documentary on YouTube (Parts
1,
2,
3,
4, and
5) (Warning: may be exposed to YouTube comments from racist asshats.)
posted by jonp72
on Aug 11, 2007 -
165 comments
Dr. John K. Lattimer died earlier this week. &nCThe fact that he was the former chairman of the urology department at Columbia University is the
least interesting fact about him. He was an expert in ballstics and became the first private citizen granted access to Kennedy's autopsy photos (he made this
drawing to explain the path of the bullet). He treated survivors of the
Hindenburg explosion and
Nazi defendants at Nuremberg. He was also a collector of some very odd items: a pair of Eva Braun's earrings, the cyanide ampule that Hermann Goring used to
commit suicide [.pdf], the key to Lincoln's presidental box at Ford's Theater. Oh, and he bought
Napoleon's penis in 1977 for $3000. Some think it should finally be allowed to
rest in peace.
posted by scblackman
on May 19, 2007 -
9 comments
A Nazi Christmas Since its most ancient days, the Christmas holiday has been continually reshaped to serve commercial, social, and political ends. These Nazi-era Christmas materials, including an
Advent calendar and an
essay on how to turn Christian holidays into National Socialist ones, come from the
German Propaganda Archive of the Calvin College library. Of course, the Allies also enlisted Christmas in both pop culture and propaganda with
cards,
V-Mails,
and posters.
posted by Miko
on Nov 29, 2006 -
21 comments
Mildred Fish Harnack was the only
American woman executed for treason during World War II.
Born, raised, and
educated in Wisconsin, she moved to
Berlin with her German husband
Arvid in
1929. Arrested by the Nazis in September 1942 for their
pivotal role in the Communist
Red Orchestra resistance movement, they were tried in December 1942:
Arvid was hung and
Mildred received six years hard labor. Reviewing her case (during the humiliating German defeat at
Stalingrad), Adolph Hitler ordered her retried in January 1943. This time, she was convicted, sentenced to death, and
beheaded by
guillotine in
Plötzensee Prison on February 16, 1943.
[Mildred's life is detailed in the 2000 biography Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra.]
posted by cenoxo
on Jul 24, 2006 -
10 comments
From cooperation to complicity. In 1988, the German chemical giant Degussa commissioned a study (by American historian
Peter Hayes) on its collaboration with the National-Socialist regime. The corporation's involvement in the production of Zyklon B has been well publicised, due to the controversy over the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, but it's only one chapter of a larger story that,
according to the author (PDF), "
suggests that most people, when presented with opportunities or imperatives that they have every imminent or material reason to accept or accede to and only potential or moral grounds to reject, will choose the course of least resistance, internalize the arguments that legitimate it, and balk at admitting that one could or should have done otherwise."
posted by elgilito
on Jul 11, 2006 -
18 comments
Wanna Fanta? Don'tuwanna wanna Fanta? You don't support the Jews do you?
Once the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, German Coca-Cola head
Max Keith
(pronounced Kite) was no longer able to get Coca-Cola syrup and so invented
Fanta out of cheese by-products and apple cider for the Nazis.
According to
Snopes
who went with a report prepared by an investigator commissioned by
Coca-Cola
to examine Max Keith's actions, it was all quite noble. Of course that
doesn't address what was happening
before
the
war. But in all fairness that the Coca- Cola only in rare instances
directly
endorsed
the Nazis.
posted by Smedleyman
on May 31, 2006 -
56 comments
Rudolf Vrba-RIP --he escaped from Auschwitz with another guy, Wetzler, in April 1944 and got to Slovakia and Hungary, telling the world of the atrocities in the Auschwitz Protocol. Some Hungarian community leaders, however (Hungary was the only country that hadn't had its Jewish population deported yet),
were busy making deals with Eichmann for safe passage away.
In any case, the result was that about 1,700 Hungarian Jewish leaders, with their families and friends, ended up in Switzerland, while almost half a million unsuspecting Hungarian Jews ended up dead in Auschwitz. Vrba's report first alerted the world (including the Vatican, Red Cross, and US and British authorities) to exactly what was going on, and helped prosecute some who were tried later.
...Knowing perfectly well that it was the secrecy surrounding their actions that allowed the Nazis to herd unsuspecting Jews and transport them like sheep to slaughter, Vrba and Wetzler — as soon as they got in touch with Jewish community representatives in their native Slovakia — compiled a detailed report. They wrote about Auschwitz and what awaited Hungarian Jews once they arrived: immediate death by gassing.
posted by amberglow
on Apr 11, 2006 -
17 comments
Nazi swing music from the 30s. FMU's terrific blog presents mp3s of songs by Charlie and His Orchestra, a big band assembled by Hitler's minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, to spread the Nazi message abroad even while trying to stamp out jazz and swing domestically.
"Leave it to Goebbels to take the music of The Andrews Sisters, Paul Whiteman and Irving Berlin and fill it with venomous rants against Jews, America and the British."
Vol. 1 is here. Some
history. And now I want to see
this movie about the band.
via BB
posted by CunningLinguist
on Dec 10, 2005 -
20 comments
