Veteran of four wars, four enlistments, four branches: Air Force, Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard. I am both an AF (Air Force) veteran and as Veteran AF (As Fuck)
Saturday, August 23, 2025
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
Friday, January 12, 2024
Dark Tourism
We talked about how much death camps were part of the towns and cities where they were located. Auschwitz is inside the city area of Oswiecim, Poland. Both times I went to the camp I thought how strange it was to hear the bells of the Catholic Church while walking through a death camp.
The Flossenburg camp is in an area that was very pro-Nazi in Bavaria. the camp was part of the community. The camp managers bought food and other supplies locally, as happened at most death camps, and made no effort to hide the slave labor and death in the camp.
A couple of years ago, I spoke to a professor who studies Dark Tourism: visiting places known for death and tragedy. Ten visits to nine different camps and a dozen other museums and memorials put me right in the definition of Dark Tourist.
Tonight the Rabbi talked about January 12, 2024, as the 100th day since the terrorist massacre, mutilation and kidnapping of more than 1,400 Israelis. At every death camp, the guides make clear that all Nazi death camps had other prisoners in addition to Jews. But at every camp, Jews were the lowest of the various prisoners. They were most likely to be tortured and humiliated by design or by whim.
When HAMAS terrorists invaded Israel torture and sexual violence and mutilation were the plan. The Holocaust began with humiliation and led inevitably to extermination. HAMAS has the same agenda.
May the IDF destroy them completely.
Monday, December 4, 2023
Austria 1938--The Sudden Betrayal
In September I walked through this square in the center of Vienna where Hitler spoke from a balcony announcing the Anschluss (joining) of Austria and Nazi Germany. This sudden tragedy haunted "The Sound of Music" one of the annual movies of my childhood.
When Trump was elected, I read many books and articles about how The Holocaust happened. Each country was different. Each was a tragedy. In some ways, Austria was the worst.
Jews in Austria, Vienna in particular, had very good lives. They lived in a country of long cosmopolitan tradition. So when the Nazis took over on March 11, 1938, the change was sudden, dramatic and terrible. Teenagers planning to be in college the following year were in ghettos. Many lost one or both parents to suicide or beatings. Doctors, lawyers, professors, artists, writers and others middle class professionals were broke, shunned by all, their property confiscated, humiliated in public.
While no one could have believed in 1938 how bad The Holocaust would be, Jews in other countries had experienced years of prejudice and open violence. German Jews knew that rural white Christians, Catholics and Jews, led the coalition that put Hitler in power, knowing that Jews would suffer and die if he took office. Once the Nazis invaded Poland, Jews across Europe knew they were in mortal danger. They had months, sometimes years, to adjust to knowing the entire world hated them.
Austrian Jews went from citizens to pariahs overnight. Which is why, I believe, the suicide rate was so high among Austrian Jews. Their world collapsed overnight.
As an American Jew, I can barely imagine what it felt like to be a Jew when Nazis ruled much of Europe and had millions of sympathizers here in America. Anyone who thinks it was easy for Jews in America between the World Wars should read People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn.
Since 2016, I have experienced an emotional kinship with Jews under the Nazis. When Trump was elected and put the Nazi-enabler Steve Bannon in the White House, I was alarmed. When Trump winked at the Nazis in Charlottesville, I thought America would show the true Nazi basis of "America First." The Tree of Life Synagogue shooting by a Trump lover is so far the worst violence against Jews.
From Trump's election to October 7 of this year, I joined more than 300 protests from New York to Washington, but mainly in Philadelphia. The only protest I have been to since October 7 was the Pro-Israel Rally on the National Mall.
Beginning on October 7 and since, many organizations I protested with have become open Jew haters. They have cheered HAMAS. The Jewish babies burned in their cribs, the Jewish women raped and killed, the slaughter of families in their homes is not even tragic, it is an acceptable cost.
So I can no more ally with those groups than I can join with the Republicans who want to abandon Ukraine and support Christian Nationalism.
Since October 7, Black Lives Matter, the Democratic Socialists of America, the World Workers Party, all of whom I have joined at protests, are now my enemy. If I am to ally with any feminist organization, I will want to see their condemnation of the barbaric violence against women on October 7.
HAMAS celebrated their rape and torture and murder on videos they posted on social media. A transcript of one is here.
The feeling I had on October 7 hearing BLM, DSA and other progressives is the sudden betrayal with an echo of Anschluss. Anyone who can cheer for HAMAS is the same as a swastika-wearing Nazi to me.
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Zanis Lipke Memorial, Riga, Latvia: Honoring a Man Who Hid Jews from the Nazis
Sunday, January 22, 2023
The Death Camp Next Door: The Sites Where the Holocaust Happened
In March I will be speaking to a group at my synagogue about visiting death camps. More specifically, I will be talking about why I visited eight different death camps between 2017 and last year. Actually nine visits since I went to Auschwitz/Birkenau in both 2017 and 2021.
It was not my original intention to visit so many death camps. In 2017, I wanted to see the worst death camp, the place where the Holocaust was the worst outside of a death camp, and a place where Jews left and did not return. That year I rode from Belgrade, a place that once had a large Jewish community but now has none, to Auschwitz, the largest death camp, to Lviv, Ukraine, where the Jews were completely wiped out by their neighbors. The Nazis did not have to do anything.
Until 2017, I had never visited a Holocaust Memorial or a Holocaust Museum or a Death Camp. I lived in Germany from 1976-79, so I certainly had the opportunity, but I grew up in a very non-religious home, so the Holocaust was something that happened that no one I knew talked about.
Then in 2016, Steve Bannon was named Co-Chief-of-Staff in the White House. He owned Brietbart.com, the host of Nazi and fascist web sites.
In early 2017 I planned a trip that would take me to the worst of the Holocaust. After riding from Belgrade to Lviv by way of Auschwitz, I visited the first concentration camp. It was a warehouse in the state of Hesse, Germany, put in service to Hitler in February 1933. It was not a death camp. Anti-Nazi journalists and academics were the first inmates.
Less than a month after I returned from my 2017 trip, Nazis with torches marched in Charlottesville and the President said there were "fine people" on both sides of the protest. He was wrong. Nazis are evil. Nazi sympathizers are evil. I knew I should visit more death camps and be ready to fight Nazis wherever they crawled out from under rocks. Especially now that they had a friend in the American President.
In 2019, just months before the beginning of the COVID epidemic, I was in Germany again. My friend Cliff and I visited the Buchenwald and Dachau death camps.
After visiting four death camps, it became clear that every camp was very different, built where it was for very different reasons and carrying out its mission of murder in its own way.
On my first visit, I was stunned to see the Auschwitz camp was right in the town of Oswiecim, Poland, right near the Catholic Church. The Nazis need a rail junction and barracks to make the biggest death camp. Oswiecim in southern Poland offered both. And the town now lives with the legacy of horror.
Buchenwald was built on a hill above Weimar, where the government was before the Nazis. Hitler built Buchenwald on a hill above Weimar as a raised middle finger to Germans who hated the Nazis. They camp was visible and the smell of death floated down from the camp on the hill.
Dachau, was built early in the Nazi regime. It is first facility built as a concentration camp (Hesse was a converted warehouse) and remained in operation until the end of the war, in part as a "School of Violence." It is right on the edge of the town and, like Buchenwald, not hidden in any way. Dachau is in Bavaria, the most pro-Nazi region of Germany, so the hate was on display.
In 2021 I was vaccinated and returned to Germany. Cliff and I visited the Flossenburg death camp in Bavaria, Auschwitz/Birkenau and Terezin. Later in the same trip, I went to Berlin and visited Sachsenhausen.
Last year on the way to Denmark, Cliff and I visited the Bergen Belsen and Mittlebau-Dora death camps.
Each camp shows another dimension of the Holocaust. I plan to visit more of the camps on future trips to Europe.
I wrote about most of the visits. I will write about the Belsen, Mittlebau-Dora and Sachsenhausen camps by the beginning of March.
My first visit to Auschwitz is here.
The Hesse camp is here.
Buchenwald is here.
Dachau is here.
Preview of the 2021 trip is here.
The 2021 visit to Auschwitz is here.
Flossenburg is here.
Terezin is here.
Saturday, December 3, 2022
The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy Book 42 of 2022
The book explicitly on faith that moved me the most was The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy. This book looks at the history of the Jewish people and Israel through the lens of the Book of Jonah. Levy shows us Judaism and his view of the Jewish world by his interactions with “Nineveh” in the form of modern-day enemies of Jews and Israel. One modern Nineveh he visits is Lviv, Ukraine.
I knew my trip last summer was to visit Holocaust sites would center on Auschwitz, But this book led me to pair Lviv with Auschwitz as two sad extremes of the Holocaust. Auschwitz is the most industrial site of slaughter, Lviv is the most personal. At Auschwitz, the Nazis built a place of extermination. In Lviv they simply allowed the local population to act out their own anti-Semitism.
Lviv was the most personal of the sites of Holocaust slaughter. Neighbors killed neighbors and dumped their bodies in ditches. Levy went to Lviv to make peace with this site of unbridled hate. He seems to have succeeded. I did not. Ukraine tried to kill my grandparents. Ukraine remains a cauldron of anti-Semitism.
Which brings up another aspect of Judaism which Levy makes so simple and beautiful. We Jews, at our best, are committed to Justice, to repairing the world.
Until this year, I was ambivalent about Ukraine as was Levy. From the beginning of the war, I have volunteered for Ukraine, sometimes three or four days a week making combat medical kits. Levy made a documentary backing the fight to keep Ukraine free.
When the Russians invaded, Ukraine needed all free people to rally to her defense. Whatever problems I had with Ukraine before February 24 are insignificant compared to the unjust attack on an innocent country.
Glory to Ukraine.
The book is a celebration of Jewish history and life and is beautifully written.
First 41 Books of 2022:
C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis
Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard
The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil
Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin
Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz
Essential Elements by Matt Tweed
Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud
The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Cochrane by David Cordingly
QED by Richard Feynman
Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis
Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer
The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton
If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut
The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss.
Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins
Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
First Principles by Thomas Ricks
Political Tribes by Amy Chua
Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen
A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson
1776 by David McCullough
The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt
Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss
Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
Marie Curie by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)
The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche
Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
"Jewish Politics" by Hannah Arendt. Published in 1942. So Relevant Now.
In 1942 Hannah Arendt, philosopher, historian and refugee of Nazi Germany wrote the following essay. As I read it, I felt myself sitting up straighter to pay better attention to what Arendt was saying about the Jewish people in the midst of World War II and why we need democracy and now always.
I love Hannah Arendt's writing and thought. This essay is among the best 900 words in all the millions of words she wrote.
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Axl Rose T-Shirt Leads (Naturally) to a Discussion of the World War II and the Holocaust
On the first day of a history of science conference, I met the author working on a book about Le Résidence Palace, the revolving door of history of a building that is now home to The Europa building, the seat of the European Council and Council of the European Union, located on the Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat in the European Quarter of Brussels, Belgium--the follow up to a book she wrote about her father's escape from Nazi-occupied Europe and service in the American Army.
The conversation began with an Axl Rose t-shirt. Neither I nor Nina Wolff was wearing the t-shirt. We were at the registration desk for the conference. One of the graduate students registering attendees, Noemie Taforeau, was wearing Axl Rose. I asked if she was a fan or just like the shirt. She said, "A fan. Definitely."
Nina said she met Axl Rose in a movie theater on Long Island. Then the conversation went from Guns and Roses and "Welcome to the Jungle" to the Army, to her father and war.
We talked more at the evening reception. Late in his life Nina's father, Walter C. Wolff, handed her a box of letters which turned out to be a trove of information about a part of his life he had spoken very little about. Walter Wolff came to America as a young refugee. He volunteered to serve. He and other young immigrants worked in Army Intelligence. They became known as the Ritchie Boys:
The Ritchie Boys[1] were a special collection of soldiers, primarily German-Austrian units, of Military Intelligence Service officers and enlisted men of World War II who were trained at Camp Ritchie in Washington County, Maryland. Many of them were German-speaking immigrants to the United States, often Jews who fled Nazi persecution.[2][3] They were used primarily for interrogation of prisoners on the front lines and counter-intelligence in Europe because of their knowledge of the German language and culture. They were also involved in the Nuremberg trials as prosecutors and translators.[4]
A documentary film was made in 2004 about the Ritchie Boys. I will order the book about Nina's father Walter "Someday You Will Understand" when I return to America.
Sunday, November 21, 2021
A Holocaust Memorial in Darmstadt Attacked Twice and Still Standing
Near the central station of Darmstadt, Germany, there is a memorial to the deportation of Jews and Gypsys (Roma) during 1942 and 1943. This memorial is located on the corner of Bismarckstrasse and Kirschenallee.
The monument was designed in 2004 by the artist couple Ritula Fränkel and Nicholas Morris. It represents a glass cube filled with shards of glass, on which 450 names are engraved. These names represent 3400 persons from Darmstadt and the surrounding area who were deported to various concentration camps.
Three sides of the glass cube were destroyed by vandals on the night of July 9-10, 2006. In 2014 the damage was repaired but six weeks later it was destroyed again. The monument will not be removed but will remain in this historic place.
This memorial was the last place I visited before boarding a train to return to Paris and then home. My friend Cliff said this memorial was the other end of the tracks that lead to the rail sidings in Auschwitz we visited in July. Darmstadt was a well-known as being very Nazi as soon as Hitler rose to power.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
A Cathedral and a Holocaust Memorial Share the East End of an Island in Paris
The most famous Cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, sits the east end of the most famous island in the Seine River, il de la cite.
The grand cathedral is currently in the midst of a many millions of Euros makeover. It will be closed for years.
Behind the soaring cathedral on the very eastern tip of the island is the Holocaust Deportation Memorial. The entire memorial to the 200,000 Jews deported to death camps is underground.


The death camps are listed in blood red.
The view to the east up the Seine River is lovely.
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Every Day, All Day Humiliation at Auschwitz
On my return visit Auschwitz in July of this year, I saw things I missed or forgot I saw on my first visit in 2017.
In 2017 I was overwhelmed by the scale of the camp--so many people murdered, so many German soldiers and civilians running the camp.
One of the horrible sights was the latrine in a barracks at Birkenau. The guards herded the inmates to the latrine. They used the latrine together, dozens at a time. The guards used a stopwatch. When time was up, the inmate had to get up or be beaten.
When I try to imagine how horrible life truly was I think of times when I lived and worked in close quarters large groups of men--the Army and Teamsters loading docks. One lament common to both places was, "Can't I take a shit in peace?"
No one wants to be rushed in a latrine.
And even men I have known who care little for privacy would occasionally want "to shit in a latrine with a door."
When I was on German gunnery ranges in the 1970s, some of the ranges had a place we called a "Make A Buddy" Shitter. It was an outhouse with two boards with three holes connected by a narrow floor space. When it was full, three men sat on each side facing each other with interlaced knees. The inside guys had to wait until the outside guys were done to get out. Sometimes men would wear their gas masks to use that latrine.
And yet, these laments of dock workers and soldiers hardly touch the deep humiliation of prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps forced to use latrines on a stop watch.
The Nazis who marched in Charlottesville represent the very same things as the guards at Auschwitz. They see me and everyone who is not in their tribe as less than human. Nazis are never "fine people." We can never have peace with a government that tolerates Nazis. We are fortunate to be delivered from a government that numbers all American Nazis among its voters.
Sunday, August 1, 2021
Terezin: "Model" Concentration Camp and Death Camp for "Mosaic" Christians
Virgil Got Eternally Screwed: Review of Dante’s Purgatorio (Mark Musa Translation)
Dante’s Purgatorio , in contrast with the fire and fury of Inferno and Roman splendor of Paradiso , is the canticle of hope. It is the most...
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Tasks, Conditions and Standards is how we learn to do everything in the Army. If you are assigned to be the machine gunner in a rifle squad...
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On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan. Artist Larry Selman i...
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W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz is a novel built on the slow recovery of memory. Rather than unfolding in a straight line, the story emerges throu...