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We had our first exam in Ethics class today. Ha-ha….ha. Take from that what you will. The day was spent cooped up inside again. Unfortunately a lot of those days seem to be in my near future.
I saw something a bit odd today. I was walking down the sidewalk (which are actually an efficient size, unlike in Italy) and I saw a woman, probably in her 50's, crossing a street to the next block. A car went to turn off the main road onto the street she was crossing, stopping with only about a foot between itself and her. Instead of simply gesturing and continuing to walk or speeding up her pace to hurry out of the car's way, the lady halted in the middle of road, turned to face the car and its driver square on, and just stood and stared for a good 30 seconds before continuing on her way. I would definitely have to say Germany reps a masculine culture.
Ethics class was pretty interesting. We got a prelude to our visit to Dachau, a concentration camp, on Thursday. Dr. W told us about the Harvest Festival on November 3, 1943 when the Nazis marched every Jew left in the area (I'm not going to name it because I have no idea what the spelling is and can't look it up because the Internet connection sucks) into Majdanek (the worst of all the concentration camps) and killed 18,000 people in only 10 hours. He told of us how the Nazis would psychologically disturb the Jews. They actually took the time to read books written by Jewish psychologists to learn the best ways to torture them. They would use cremated remains to fertilize the fields that the Jews would sometimes be allowed to eat fruit from… fruit that was fertilized by the burnt remains of their families. When the Soviets finally made it into Majdanek, they found 800,000 pairs of shoes (left behind by murdered Jews) and rooms filled with human hair and other remains to be used for industrial purposes. The dominant culture at the time was power-crazed, cruel yet efficient. Nazis used every last resource they had… or could take. They were preoccupied with being a perfect, masculine society. Psychologists researched and determined how Nazi uniforms should be designed to optimally project the sense of unquestionable power and authority.
The most fascinating, yet repulsive, story was of Ilsa Koch (sp?). Ilsa was obsessed with jewelry, lamps and anything else she could dream up that could be made out of human remains. She developed a special interest in tattoos. At times, when prisoners would come off trains, Ilsa would be there to snag the ones with interesting tattoos and immediately have their skin ripped off for the production of her goods.
Some people are just crazy.
And that's all I have to say about that.
- comments
mari fisher Oh my goodness, that is a crazy story. In America that would already be a feature movie. great stories. keep us posted.