What's Going On Here?

There are SO MANY wonderful book review blogs out there and I can't compete with them, that is for sure. So this is not a book review blog. This is just a way for me to organize what I have read so that I can be better at matching the right book to the right person. The blog title comes from the brilliant mind of the most talented woman who ever lived, Ms. Judy Garland. The full quote is, "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else." That is what I hope to do here and in ever aspect of my life.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Hitler Youth

Denazification is a term of which I was unfamiliar until reading Projekt 1065:  A Novel of WW2 by Alan Gratz who also wrote Prisoner B-3087.  I read more about former Hitler Youth and I found this article to be of interest, about Melita Maschmann and her Account Rendered memoir.  And this article about Pope Benedict XVI.  And I thought back more to that Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor who was a Nazi.  He was not a kid though.  So that is different.  Maybe?  How old is "old enough" to know?  Does evil have an age? I just don't know.  I don't know.  I think also about Kurt Waldheim.  And I remember telling a joke to my ninth grade gym teacher, "What is Waldheimer's Disease?"  When you forget you were a Nazi.   I remember being sickened by Waldheim, even then.  It surprised me, but my gym teacher had never heard of him.  I think that was one of those moments when I realized that just because someone is a teacher, doesn't mean they have all the answers.  But that is a topic for another time.
Gratz's book is excellent.  Heart crushing.  But that is life, especially the horrors of it.

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