Is That Legal?

It is even conceivable, if her father died during the war (and he was not regular Army or police), she would complain about how her family did not receive a pension from the West German government. I have heard several people discuss this aspect of their childhood, and it is very, very difficult to say nothing in connection to what their father actually was.

Children are not to blame for their parents, and punishing children for their parent's sins is also wrong, but such self-pity is somehow impossible to grasp when you know the reason such families did not receive pensions. Being too ashamed to talk about it at all would be reasonable if perhaps not correct either, but the woe is me aspect is simply beyond my understanding.

It is one of the less attractive traits you find in Germans, though in the last couple of decades, the whining of American Christians about their oppression in America comes close in a number of ways.

If you are in Karlsruhe, enjoy the weather. If you have the chance to take a street car to Ettlingen (S1 or S11), use Erbprinz as a stop, cross the street, and wander around the old town - Ettlingen is a very pretty town from the 1400s, though it also has Roman roots. Both the Schloss and the Rathaus areas are interesting, and when you cross the bridge next to the Rathaus, look up at the Grim Reaper depiction during WWI - there are a few other suprises to note also. There is also a nice ice cream place, Cafe Peirrot, essentially next to the bridge. And if you wish to buy some of the beer you recommended, the Walmart in Ettlingen (maybe five minutes walk from 'downtown') after crossing that bridge, should have still some in its Getränkemarkt downstairs.

ELM: Thanks for the tip, cya, but I am in Bad Kissingen today, and tomorrow and Friday in Würzburg.

Eric,

I don't know what to say. That's so sad, incredible, moving, disturbing... all those things.

Good luck

Wow. I wish I'd asked you to look some things up for me. If you find/hear anything about the shtetl Jelenkowate, I'd love to know. It's where my grandfather's family come from, and, naturally, it's not far from Lodz. And, of course, you're following in the steps of Daniel Mendelsohn, who wrote last year's "Lost: the Search for Six of Six Million," which is one of the most remarkable bits of writing I've ever read.

ELM: Peter, I very much liked "The Lost" too, though its narrative style was a touch to digressive for my taste. I know that his family's storytelling style was itself digressive, and that it was therefore important to him to tell the story in that way. I suspect he was also somewhat emulating the style of W.G. Sebald, whose writing I adore, and whose style is in a sense nothing but digressions. But there were moments when I thought that Mendelsohn's digressions were only for his own benefit, or perhaps his family's, but not for his reader's. That said, though, it was a remarkable book nonetheless.

Ah, I see our differences in appreciating Mendelsohn's "Lost." I wholeheartedly agree with your view that Mendelsohn was deeply influenced by Sebald. I also saw Mendelsohn's profession, that of a Classicist, as a profound influence on his style. As you perhaps do not recall, my undergraduate concentrations were in Latin and Ancient Greek. I was wowed by Mendelsohn's stylistic strategy, but I can certainly appreciate your, and perhaps most people's, view that his digressive style was more self-indulgent than a more straightforward style might've been.

Bless you for doing this.
I just finished a biography of Dorothy Thompson.
A lot of her friends were murdered during the Third Reich.
She was almost crazy with distress as Hitler gained power. Her warnings were mostly dismissed.
I lived in Austria in the late 1960's. WWI and WWII will never be over in Europe.
We now see the US going in this direction. It is not a good time to be Muslim

Ah, I see our differences in appreciating Mendelsohn's "Lost." I wholeheartedly agree with your view that Mendelsohn was deeply influenced by Sebald. I also saw Mendelsohn's profession, that of a Classicist, as a profound influence on his style. As you perhaps do not recall, my undergraduate concentrations were in Latin and Ancient Greek. I was wowed by Mendelsohn's stylistic strategy, but I can certainly appreciate your, and perhaps most people's, view that his digressive style was more self-indulgent than a more straightforward style might've been.

My maternal grandmother was born in Lodz, although luckily she & her immediate family all got out in time.

That is not an easy point of conversation to respond to.

It isn't easy or common for someone to be better than their times, than their countrymen.

What I do not and may never understand is how with such better examples before them, the Germans went the way they did.

Flanders' fields seem to be no explanation.

Respectfully, yours, Tom Perkins

Maude: "We now see the US going in this direction. It is not a good time to be a Muslim."

Are you out of your MIND?

The DAY AFTER 9/11, the US President started repeating over and over how Islam is not the enemy. Hitler would not have done that.