Word: nazi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Reviewing Claude Lanzmann's 9 1/2-hour documentary Shoah in TIME in 1985, I asked, "Why is this holocaust different from all other holocausts? In raw nightmare numbers, the Nazi extermination of 6 million European Jews ranks below the Soviet Union's systematic starvation of the rebellious Ukraine in 1932-33 (10 million by Stalin's count) and Mao's catastrophic Great Leap Forward into prolonged famine in 1957-62 (at least 27 million). Uganda and Kampuchea have produced more recent evidence" - alas, the examples of Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia could subsequently be added - "that Hitler's policy of mass murder...
Well, why not, says the mild-mannered, somewhat unworldly writer. And if, eventually, he is required to join the SS and start doing other chores for the Nazis, what of it? At first there is nothing onerous in his duties - and they carry obvious benefits. Lots of swell parties are part of the deal. And he is appointed head of his department at the university. Best of all, his blossoming ego permits him to undertake an affair with one of his students (Jodie Whittaker), which leads him to a divorce from his distracted wife and then into a new, happy...
...Before and since, there have been genocidal events that are comparable to it in scale and savagery. But never have we witnessed a nation with a civilization as high as Germany's succumbing to such carefully calculated inhumanity. Nor has the mystery of that nation's behavior during the Nazi era remained so insolvable, so beyond the reach of art and scholarship, so beyond the reach, certainly, of earnest, inept works like Good, which remains, like most such works, on the anecdotal fringe of the problem. In film, the Holocaust has become a topic addressed by journeymen writers (Good...
...study "Obedience Lite." The electric charges were purposefully subtler and the conditions less stressful. But the takeaway is no less disturbing: humanity's threshold for cruelty is, like everything else, situational. We seem wired to follow orders, even when they're harmful to others. In her chilling portrayal of Nazi middle-manager Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt famously excoriated this impulse as "the banality of evil." Evil is way too strong a word for the conduct of this study's participants, but it seems clear that despite all of humanity's horror shows over the past decades, we aren't getting...
...once said that people should embrace their heritage. What advice would you give to someone born during Nazi-era Germany? Ruth Savoia, LADY LAKE...