In part 1, I talked about the type of men who were attracted to the KL; why they joined, and how they became inculcated and inured to the violence. How they soon became willing cogs in the machine. Here, I’d like to examine the context in which the machine grew, and the motivations which enabled... Continue Reading →
KL – A Story of Evil Part 1 Ordinary men, evil intent
‘may the world at least behold a drop, a fraction of this tragic world in which we lived.’ (Salutation by Chaim Zalman Gradowski, Auschwitz 1943) When I first encountered Nikolaus Wachsman’s book ‘KL - A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps’, I half-expected an account of the Holocaust in the vein of so many others.... Continue Reading →
A Revised View…
My post ‘1938 - The World Turns’ discussed some of the issues of Neville Chamberlain and the British Government's policy of appeasement towards European dictators in the 1930's, particularly Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. I portrayed Chamberlain as a somewhat misdirected figure, arrogant and naive in his belief that war could be avoided by meeting Hitler's... Continue Reading →
1938 – The World Turns…
I mentioned in ‘and about me’ how Shirer's book gave me a sense of the breadth of the Second World War as a subject for study; of how I came to understand that it had roots way before the shameful carving-up of Poland between Hitler and Stalin. In the years preceding that infamous act, another,... Continue Reading →