What are the best books about World War II (and/or the Holocaust)?
My favorite isn't published. It's my grandfather's handwritten journal he wrote before he died. My grandfather, Willis B NeSmith, served under Patton in Italy and Africa fighting against Rommel. He was a tank commander and served in the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion. He was awarded the Silver Star with two oak leaf clusters, the Eame Campaign Medal with four bronze stars and the Purple HeartThe picture below was taken in Tunisia in 1943. He's on the leftHe started his journal March 4, 1990 which was 50 years to the date of him joining the Army. He finished it in 1996. He was showing early signs of Alzheimer's and must have known he needed to finish it. The things I love about this journal besides it being written by my grandaddy are the following:He joined the Army because he was tired of working on a farm and he saw no future in it. It's a portrait of the Greatest Generation after the Great Depression. Here's a South Georgia boy looking for a way out of the way of his family's past failures. (Side note: I actually used the early version of this journal for a Sociology/Anthropology of the South research paper about the South pre-WWII and how things were different post-Reconstruction era).Its realism. He tells it like it is. His commentary is abrupt, brash, and there is no sugar coating. This was war and you fully feel what he went through.He included newspaper clippings from WWII all the way through the 90s to illustrate his points of view. This includes the creators of the atom bomb and what it actually does. He warns of what will happen if there is another large scale war. His words are quite prophetic. The pictures he took throughout the years are amazing. It would be a treasure trove for any historian.Here's what I really felt from his writing. He didn't like what he was seeing with new veterans and their sense of entitlement, especially Vietnam veterans. (His words not mine). He said he received no parade and no grand hooray when he came home. He just came home and returned to his life and family. He feels true patriotism is fading and it's a shame because people forgot what his generation did to save the world. I do agree with him on that.Maybe one day I'll get this published. Of course my sister and uncles will have to approve it. It is something I treasure more than anything I could buy or watch. He died in 2011 and if there ever was a true American hero, it was my grandfather.
Is it wrong for teachers to make students uncomfortable in order to make a point?
No. Kids often need to be a bit uncomfortable to learn valuable lessons.If you forget to bring your water bottle to lunch after you have been reminded then you can wait the 20 minutes until we get back to class to get a drink.If you refuse to take a coat then it's your fault later if you get cold.If you refuse to do your math during math time then I’m going to take some of your “fun" time later to finish it.If you goof off at snack time and run out of time to eat I'm not going to give you an extra snack later when you're hungry.If you don't return your library books then you don't get to check out new ones.If you don't take advantage of a toilet break then ask me in the middle of instruction to go then my answer is going to be to wait 5 mins.Kids need to learn these things and to learn them they need to be made a bit uncomfortable. They need to learn it as kids when things are more forgiving, not have to learn it as a teen/adult where things become less forgiving. The best leaening is from experience. How else do you learn that being on time is important if you aren't a few times and get the consequences for that?
What are the best books about the Holocaust?
In order to better understand why the Holocaust occurred one must know the history behind the term anti-semitism. Known as the father of modern antisemitism, Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) led the fight to overturn Jewish emancipation in Germany. Marr’s conception of antisemitism focused on the supposed racial, as opposed to religious, characteristics of the Jews. His organization, the League of Antisemites, introduced the word “antisemite” into the political lexicon and established the first popular political movement based entirely on anti-Jewish beliefs.Marr’s often-reprinted political tract, “The Victory of Judaism over Germandom,” warned that “the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.” He called for resistance against “this foreign power” before it was too late. Marr thought that before long “there will be absolutely no public office, even the highest one, which the Jews will not have usurped.” For Marr, it was a badge of honor to be called an antisemite.Over the centuries, antisemitism has taken on different but related forms: religious, political, economic, social, and racial. Jews have been discriminated against, hated, and killed because prejudiced non-Jews believed they belonged to the wrong religion, lacked citizenship qualifications, practiced business improperly, behaved inappropriately, or possessed inferior racial characteristics. These forms of antisemitism, but especially the racial one, all played key parts in the Holocaust. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds Historyby Art Spiegelman Mila 18by Leon Uris Schindler's Listby Thomas Keneally All But My Life: A Memoirby Gerda Weissmann Klein Anne Frank RememberedAnne Frank Rememberedby Miep Gies Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childh...by Alison Leslie Gold Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Trouble...by Art Spiegelman The Hiding Placeby Corrie Ten Boom Voices and Views: A History of the HolocaustDebórah DworkEscape from Sobiborby Richard RashkeSobibor - The Forgotten Revoltby Thomas Toivi BlattLegends of Our Time by Elie Wiesel After the Darkness: Reflections by Elie Wiesel The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, and the Accident by Elie Wiesel A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy more by Thomas Buergenthal, Elie Wiesel
How easily could you have hidden the fact you were Jewish to escape persecution in Nazi Germany?
Here is a wonderfully detailed, helpful chart from the Third Reich:It helpfully identifies who is a Jew and who is not under the Nuremberg laws. You know, you cannot just ask those pesky Jews... who knows what deception they are capable of. For all you know, they might even pretend that they are Christians and atheists, just so that they can continue to poison the blood of the Master Race with their presence. No, if you want Germany to be a country of racially pure Aryan Folk, free of Bolshevism, deviant art and other inferior Jewish influences, you must get rid of each and every Jew and not fall for their lies. And even if some Jews weren't practicing their religion, weren't enjoying deviant art, weren't spreading Bolshevik propaganda, even if some of them actually behaved like loyal citizens of the German Reich, you cannot afford to be sentimental... they are an inferior race, it is in their blood, and so long as you let them survive in the midst of the German Folk, the future of Germany is in danger.Well, at least that was the ideological justification for the Nurenberg laws and the ensuing industrialized mass murder. I find it ironic though that they identified so many people as Jews who themselves weren't aware of their Jewish ancestry, some people argued that there were more Jews as a result in 1945 than in 1939. It is also ironic that by persecuting Jews, they rid the country of some of its greatest scientists, at least some of whom ended up working in Los Alamos.Meanwhile, though, sadly, the algorithmic quality of the chart above did not go unnoticed: punch card tabulating machines of Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft m. b. H. (DEHOMAG), IBM's German subsidiary, were working overtime in death camps, in occupied Holland and elsewhere, identifying Jews in the general population and ensure that they are properly accounted for when used either as a slave labor force or raw material in macabre factories. Here is another, almost perfectly Orwellian image from that era, an advertising poster by DEHOMAG:The text reads, in English: Oversight (or surveillance) with Hollerith punch cards. German Hollerith Machines LLC, Berlin-Lichterfelde.No, there was no easy escape.