Joseph Stawinoga, tramp, hermit, holy man, Facebook celebrity and (alleged) former member of the SS, has died, aged 86.
posted by low_horrible_immoral on Nov 21, 2007 - 11 comments

"Before you kill me, can you give me a bit of bread?" How a Jew, orphaned by Nazi atrocity, became a mascot -- to the Schutzstaffel.
posted by orthogonality on Aug 22, 2007 - 33 comments

Blogger goes to Wal-Mart and finds t-shirt with Nazi SS logo. Wal-Mart apologizes and promises to pull the shirts. But have they been doing a good job? [via] the consumerist
posted by paulinsanjuan on Jan 2, 2007 - 112 comments

A 10 minute home movie taken by an SS officer has been discovered in an English church. It shows SS officers and secretaries relaxing in the summer of 1942 in southern Russia. The last couple of minutes shows footage from a slave labor camp in that area. The footage was taken at the height of the German success in Russia, a few months before the turning point in the Russian campaign - and probably the turning point in the Second World War.
posted by bobbyelliott on Oct 26, 2006 - 51 comments

As of today, the German language has changed, ending a 10 year state of flux which has seen new spelling rules mixed with the old ones. Under the new system, "extremely long compound words have been broken up, comma rules have been simplified, and in many cases a double-S replaces the old letter sign for the sound, which resembles a capital B." But given the strong resistance to the new rules from some in the German community, it may be a little premature to add the old German language to to the list of lost languages (previously discußed here) just yet. Anyway, for Mefite linguaphiles interested in this significant and now seemingly permanent change to the German language, check out the German spelling reform timeline.
posted by Effigy2000 on Aug 3, 2005 - 54 comments