Auschwitz-Birkenau: 75 years later

When I was first planning a trip to Poland, I thought I might pass on a visit to Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp and only one preserved in much of its original condition. I had been to the Dachau concentration camp on my first visit to Europe half a century ago, and in the intervening years, learned how the Holocaust had shaped postwar history. I had seen so many movies, read many books and articles. What more was there to learn or feel? But Renate wanted to go, and yes, of course, I realized, how could I not go to this place during a trip that took me so close to it.

So one afternoon during our stay in Krakow, we boarded a mini bus for the hour's ride to the Auchwitz-Birkenau Memorial. On arriving with our tour group, we were assigned a guide--in Spanish or English--and began our tour of Auschwitz I, the main camp. A sobering walk from the first moment. We filed through exhibit halls, through barracks, down a basement corridor and rooms where lethal injections took place, a room where prisoners awaited "trials", past gallows and a courtyard where people were shot. We filed past exhibits of piles of prosthetics, shoes, suitcases, and chillingly, human hair. In a women's dormitory, photos of the inmates with their direct gazes stared back at us, and I can still see their faces, mostly impassive, and all the more heartbreaking for that.

A three-kilometer bus ride to Birkenau showed us the ruins of the crematoria and a monument to the victims. We walked along the train tracks where selections were made--to one side, death, and to the other forced labor under cruel and  humiliating conditions. Most victims were Jews, but there were also Slavs (also considered an inferior race in Nazi ideology), Roma, gays, political prisoners and many others. Categories that would have included me had I lived in that time and place.

Although I was already aware of most of the facts our guide related, the emotional impact of walking in this place where such massive crimes occurred caught me by surprise. I could not take photos--how could any capture the reality of what this place once was. At Birkenau, I took just this one.

Auschwitz was clearly more visceral and overwhelming compared to the Dachau memorial in Germany. Sobered by that visit, I remember staring at "Never Again" engraved in stone. I think I believed it then--in the sense that surely the world had learned its lesson. That was in 1969, 20 years past the Nuremberg trials, well into an era of people's liberation movements rising in many colonized countries. Many of my generation shared a belief that we were well past the horrors of World War II, and that these progressive movements around the world would bring more and more freedom into being. 

Today an older me, with a half century more of history behind me, sees elements of fascism reemerging in places around the world. Just yesterday PBS carried a story of the suppression of the judiciary in Poland; of course, the US has Trump, Russia has Putin, and nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic parties have gained power in many places. Not as toxic as the Nazi regime and without the military might behind it, but a potentiality; Never Again will always remain a hope and challenge rather than stated fact.

Renate and I spent the last day of our Krakow visit in Kazimierz, the historic center of Polish Jews, once its own city, now a part of Krakow. In a bookshop there I bought a copy of Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor E. Frankl. I remember reading this book in college, this story of Dr. Frankl's imprisonment in Nazi camps and his story of survival. "The classic tribute to hope" was the phrase on the cover of this book. I decided to read it again to counter the despair I felt after visiting Auschwitz. When we left Poland, I took it home and finished reading it just yesterday. I found more in it than I had remembered from my first reading all those years ago.

Frankl, an Austrian medical doctor and psychologist, argued that humans can endure any "how" as long as they have a "why". He saw that prisoners who could imagine a positive outcome--a reason to stay alive--often lived longer than others who had given up. A Wikipedia synopsis of the book put it this way: "Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner's psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering." He also notes a connection between hope and the immune system. Death rates spiked during the last week of the year, after those who vainly hoped for freedom by Christmas faced another year with no freedom in sight. 

Clearly positive thinking won't save us. On the contrary, only 1 in 20 concentration camp laborers--those who survived the initial "selections"-- would survive their ordeal, dying from typhus, starvation, cold and overwork, the random brutality of SS guards. Also, another much-less-quoted section from Frankl in Chapter 1 tells us this: "On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples....they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles....we know: the best of us did not return." 

By 1997, when Frankl died, his book had sold more than 10 million copies and been translated into 24 languages. A gift from the past to those of us entering a future of continuing injustices around us.  

And a message to remind us that we have to create our own "why"in life, remembering we always have the power to choose our response to what befalls us.

Next: a tour of Kazmierz and the resilience of Jewish culture

"Casablanca" and "Allied": different fundamentals apply

I was thinking about the movie Casablanca the other day, wondering how many times I've seen this iconic film. Surely at least a dozen times, probably beginning in my early adolescence. Undoubtedly, I saw it on TV, as I was part of the first generation able to see outside of a movie theater. It's been on TV and in theaters for more than half a century now. I associate it with New Year's Eve, that special time of year full of excitement and longing and nostalgia for times past. One Dec. 31 comes to mind, when I watched it as my partner slept, unable to stay up until midnight. Nothing like a wartime film to remind me how petty my discontent was.

Released in November, 1942, Casablanca stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick, a disillusioned cafe owner in wartime Morocco, who meets his lost love, Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman. They were lovers in Paris, but she left abruptly after learning that the husband she believed had died was in fact alive.

"As Time Goes By" was their song. Take a moment to enjoy one of the most memorable scenes from this film. Yes, you must remember this.... Watch below or click on this link.

Now Ilsa is in Casablanca with her husband, Victor, an important fighter in the Resistance to the Nazis. I try to remember what my teenage self might have absorbed from this movie. Less about the war and more about gender roles and adult life, perhaps. Actresses were beautiful,  actors not necessarily; that somewhere there is or was an adult world where important things happened, where people were complex beings who could change over time, where love was public but sex private, where sometimes people had to make sacrifices for the greater good of their country and the world. In later viewings,  I could see other things, such as the dynamics of race relations in the 1940s.

(Spoiler Alert for the film Allied.) I was thinking about Casablanca last Saturday when I saw a new movie that has been compared with it: Allied. This film, which also opens in wartime Casablanca, stars Brad Pitt as Max, a Canadian intelligence agent whose first task is to meet the woman who will pose as his wife, Marianne, a French Resistance fighter played by Marion Cotillard. This film also invokes more of another Pitt film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, leaving just a superficial resemblance to Casablanca, which was filmed well before the feminist revolution of the late 20th century. Pitt is a trained assassin, sent to kill a German official, and Cotillard is every bit his equal handling a machine gun. This film also has explicit sex, and a sudden change in location mid-film. Pitt and Cotillard escape Morocco and marry in London, where we suddenly see Cotillard giving birth to a daughter in the middle of the Blitz. Then the plot turns: Is Cotillard who everyone thinks she is? Evidence has been found that she is really German, a woman who took over a French woman's identity and is now funneling secrets to the Nazis. A test is set, and if failed, Pitt will be ordered to kill her.  

Clearly, Allied is a plot-driven movie. The suspense had me on the edge of my seat, and only later did I question whether any of the characters made sense. They didn't, I concluded. Character development was definitely sacrificed to action, and secondary characters are stereotyped. What went on in the Cotillard character's mind, other than seeing what a good-looking hunk the Pitt character was? Was she ever a committed Nazi? What changed her mind? How did she learn to speak French so flawlessly? How did this trained assassin fail to find a solution to the intimidation of German agents in England? I wondered what my adolescent self would have made of this movie, had I seen it then. The gender roles would not have been inspiring. It was discouraging enough to realize that I would never look as beautiful as Ingrid Bergman; knowing that I had neither Cotillard's looks or bravado with a gun would have probably done me in. I would have also learned that sacrifice has more to do with saving someone you love than anything about patriotism or the common good.

What the first viewers of Casablanca had that we don't is a context: World War II. The movie was rushed into release to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942. In the US, the war was less than a year old, and people knew that sacrifices had been made and would be required for some time. It resonated with audiences of the time in ways that Allied cannot, and would not, even if set in present-day Syria, for example. There may be national unity about defeating ISIS, but no consensus on what role, if any, we should have in that.

Casablanca opened to good reviews, Wikipedia reports, but it did not get best picture at the 1942 Academy Awards, losing out to In Which We Serve. Its real success came later, thanks to new generations finding their own meanings in it. More than 70 years later, it's considered one of the greatest films of all time. The late movie critic Roger Ebert believed it is so well loved because the "people in it are all so good" and "it's a wonderful gem".  Umberto Eco said it was really a mediocre film, but because it touches on so many archetypes, including the theme of sacrifice, it reaches "Homeric depths."  In 2006 the Writer's Guild of America selected it as "best ever" in its  list of 100 great screenplays. 

Allied has gotten decent reviews (61% on rotten tomatoes). Its computer graphics are light years from what was available in 1942. Costumes, music and strong performances by the actors all contribute to a film that's well worth seeing. Still, I don't expect to watch it again, certainly not on New Year's Eve. I wouldn't mind another viewing of Casablanca. As time goes by, it seems, the fundamental things really do apply.

1968 and 2016: Older Self and Younger Self talk politics

I never had a a rebellious daughter--or any daughter for that matter--but I get a taste of how that feels now and then. My younger self comes to visit sometimes, and when she does, she's apt to scold me. We talk about politics and elections and what must be done to end war and bring America into a new era. She brings me back to 1968, an election year that looks very much like this one. Both had and have a lot at stake.

She is 21, newly graduated from college (with a social science/political science degree no less!) and ready to take on life in this most extraordinary year. So extraordinary that a major museum exhibit traveled the country in 2015, dedicated solely to the tumultuous events of 1968.

April, 1968: Younger Self is excited and happy because the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, the Bernie Sanders of his day, has just won the April 2 Wisconsin Democratic Primary. She and a few Mundelein College classmates traveled from Illinois to join hundreds of other young people working for him. The issue--the only issue for many--was the Vietnam war and the military draft, which was taking unwilling young men into war and sending thousands back home in caskets.

"This war is unjust and McCarthy can bring an end to it--I know it! she tells me. But I know she's also here to chide me. "Why aren't you working for Bernie? You've been for Hillary all along, haven't you? What happened to you!? What will happen to me?!" she suddenly realizes. "She disappears and returns just to shout, "I'm not going to become you! I'm just not!"

She leaves before I can explain myself: that I think Hillary has the ability to work with a very divided nation in a way that Bernie does not; that she's better than what the left and far right media have said about her; that 50 years of observing political campaigns has taught me that outside-the-mainstream candidates don't often fare well in a general election. Most of all, I believed--before the Republican implosion--that the Democrats could not afford dissension. Hillary has worked for it, she can do the job, let her run unimpeded. The general election will come, and I'm convinced that the Republicans are masters in well-funded deceitful campaigns, that sexism continues to affect how candidates are evaluated, and that Hillary's personal style doesn't always serve her well.

Younger Self returns periodically, and I keep returning to memories and images of 1968.

Here's Sen. McCarthy at a rally. He was a rather urbane, intellectual man who had once spent months of his youth in a monastery. I don't recall him ever raising his fist.

His supporters went "Clean for Gene"--the guys, for the most part--by shaving their beards and cutting their long hair, all traces of counterculture trappings removed. We were out to convince Middle America--and many were already questioning, if not convinced, as Walter Cronkite, the almost universally respected television commentator, seemed to be on our side. I remember seeing the photo below in a Wisconsin newspaper. I regret I've lost the news clipping of my classmate, Eibhlin Glennon, talking to a voter on the phone. Ah, the days when voters answered phones and wanted to talk with you.... I digress.

Younger Self doesn't yet know about cell phones or caller ID. A cell phone camera might have been handy then, as I have no pictures of myself on the campaign trail--precious few from my college years. I don't think I even had a camera. Or perhaps I just had the romantic view that I need not live life through a camera lens. Surely I would remember all the important things. Ah, yes.... Anyway here's one of the few close-up college photos I have, taken after a blood donation. You got paid for donating then, and the money always came in handy when buying textbooks. No doubt the smile is similar to the one I had when McCarthy won in Wisconsin. The smile hides Younger Self's often self-righteous and argumentative tendencies.

President Johnson, whose ratings had once soared after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, shocked everyone when he withdrew from the race just before the Wisconsin primary. McCarthy won his second victory after New Hampshire. Two days later Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. By then the popular Robert F. Kennedy had joined the race and was set to eclipse McCarthy--until he was assassinated in June following his win in the California primary.

"We wondered, didn't we," I muse, "whether adult life was going to be like this always." Younger Self nods; she's come back, a bit mellower, perhaps hoping to change the course of her future self.  "I know our generation has a really big part to play. Compromise won't get you anywhere," she insists. I look dubious, remembering those political science courses. Compromise is the life blood of politics, I would argue.

Democrat and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was the Establishment candidate. He was the Hillary Clinton of his day, a man with a long record on behalf of Civil Rights and other progressive causes, but tainted by the Johnson Administration's war policy. There was a third party wild card--segregationist George Wallace, a precursor of Donald Trump.

Younger Self returns. It's now July, 1968. "I'm volunteering with this group called the Coalition for an Open Convention," she reminds me. " If McCarthy can't get the nomination, we're going to lobby for an anti-war plank in the Democratic platform. This war must end!" I listen to this, trying to remember exactly how we thought we were going to do this. I believe we talked a lot, issued press releases, and tried unsuccessfully to get a permit to demonstrate.

Younger Self revisits in late early September. She's wearing a "plague on both your houses" button. The hawk Richard Nixon is leading the Republican ticket. Humphrey got the Democratic nomination, as expected. The peace plank efforts failed. The convention, held in late August in Chicago, was marked by Yippie protests and police violence. Younger Self was not part of that--the gathering of hundreds of protesters in Grant Park. "I feel a little embarrassed", she confesses, "but I'm relieved I didn't get assaulted or arrested. Her education had made her a sort of establishment protester it seems. I point this out to her, not unkindly.

November, 1968: Younger Self writes in McCarthy for president--a way of staying true to herself. Nixon wins the presidency. Humphrey comes close in the popular vote, but not in the Electoral College. Segregationist Wallace carries the Southern States--traditionally a Democratic stronghold. Without his candidacy, would the Democrats have won?

December, 1968: Younger Self has put the election behind her, focusing on her first real job--as a reporter for the Lerner Home Newspapers in Chicago. She wants to make a difference, to focus on her writing and learning more about Chicago politics. I tell her I understand. "Keep on learning and looking honestly at yourself--that's the key." "She leaves before I can add, "We're different, but I'm so glad I was you once! And yes, Bernie Sanders rocks! He's part of our generation, after all."

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A reflection

It was my first year in Japan—1990—and I knew I wanted to be in Hiroshima on August 6. That date was the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing, and as an American I wanted to make my own amends by joining the memorial observance held every year at the Peace Memorial Museum. Arriving on a sweltering morning, I walked among the thousands of survivors (hibakusha), family members and peace advocates, feeling very self-conscious. How would I be viewed by those who had suffered so much at my country’s hands? I remember attracting very little notice, however, as people were there for their own reasons—for the moment of silence (at 8:15 a.m., the time when the bomb struck), the casting of lighted lanterns on the water, the museum exhibits, the speeches.

In 2010, a few months before I left Japan to return to the US, I visited the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, which was devastated three days after Hiroshima. I took these pictures then, both showing paper cranes, a now-international symbol of peace.

This year, as Hiroshima prepared for the 70th anniversary of the bombing, a BBC reporter approached Jamal Maddox, an Princeton University student, who had toured the museum and talked with a survivor. The reporter asked him this question: Has this experience changed your opinion of the US decision to use the bomb? The student thought for awhile and then answered: "I think we as a society need to revisit this point in history and ask ourselves how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities. I think that's what's really necessary if we are going to really make sense of what happened on that day." 

To make sense of what happened....Today as I read stories on the commemoration, I came across this National Public Radio story: “70 years after atomic bombs Japan still struggles with wartime past”. I wondered why it seems the losers of wars tend to struggle with the past, while the winners tend to leave it all behind, except among pockets of remembrance—veterans’ groups, historians, those with a strong connection to the suffering.

Like nearly all children growing up in post-war America, I absorbed the standard rationale for the dropping of the atomic bombs: the bombings were tragic but unavoidable because they shortened the war. Japan formally surrendered the same month.  But I also absorbed the seeds of doubt. I remember my father, always skeptical of the actions of politicians but an admirer of President Truman (who authorized the bombing) saying, “But he should never have dropped that bomb”. Clearly Dad remembered the news reports of the time, of the bombing itself and the effects of a new disease: radiation sickness. Hundreds of thousands died in the blasts and in the following years. 

Yet, like my family, most Americans were probably happy to put the war behind them and get on with building new lives. As a child and teenager, I don’t think I thought much about WWII; it seemed like ancient history—as did all events occurring before my birth. College didn’t help much with my understanding of WW2, as we were then embroiled in a new war in Vietnam. Later, as I came to appreciate history and the importance of remembering the past, I learned more about the the US role in WWII, about the heroism (such as liberation of concentration camps in Germany) and also the acts that would be considered war crimes had we lost the war.

A few years after my Hiroshima visit, I saw how remembering depends very much on who is doing it. For the 50th anniversary of the end of WW2, the  prestigious Smithsonian Institution created an exhibit of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Veterans groups and historians clashed over differing interpretations of the war and the bombings. The show was taken down and a less controversial exhibit ensued, but in early 1995 that one also closed after more protests about self-censorship and the lack of context. 

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum really impressed me. First of all, I had never been in a museum exploring the context of war as well as functioning as a memorial.  This one focused on Japan’s imperialist actions leading up to the war as well as what happened to the country during the war. There were state-of-the-art videos as well as simple, yet powerfully touching, paintings done by child victims. The museum has expanded in the past 20 years and there is more to see and reflect on. Did I think then as I do now, that a part of healing is remembering, sharing stories, taking responsibility for one’s actions?

Today in Japan the average age of the bombing survivors is 80, and people are looking at ways to keep alive their stories and their strong beliefs in peace. A Washington Post story describes the Memory Keepers (denshosha). Through this 3-year-old project, younger people volunteer to learn the stories of a survivor, agreeing to share those stories at events where they can. This year in Hiroshima there was the unveiling of a large public art project, a composite of the work of a thousand young artists. A 5-minute video of this year’s memorial celebration from NHK World News shows the result and is worth a view.

While the mainstream American view of the bombings (“tragic but necessary”) lives on,

historians have challenged it. One of them is Greg Herken, an emeritus professor of US diplomatic history at the University of California. He cites—and then explains—what he calls “five myths about the bombing”: 1. The bomb ended the war. 2. The bomb saved half a million American lives. 3. The only alternative was an invasion of Japan. 4. The Japanese were warned beforehand. 5. The bomb was a “master card” in the early cold war against Russia. Read Herken’s analysis here. 

Herken's arguments make sense to me, though I have no illusions they'll go mainstream anytime soon. Nevertheless, I believe that we—meaning winners as well as losers—would still do well to “struggle with our war past”, to use memory as part of healing and taking responsibility, and of answering young Jamal Maddox’s challenge: to reflect on “how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities.” That’s a moral dilemma that speaks to the future and the present as well as the past.