Continued Confessions

because it is Thursday

I was very eager to start posting this morning until Afib had its way with me for a few hours. But I’ve got rhythm now, so here we go.

It’s the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which is a very fitting memory to pair with my book reports today. I finished reading the Jimmy Carter memoir An Hour Before Daylight and serendipitously the next paperback which fell to the floor was Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. This is the new translation by his wife Marion Wiesel issued in 2006 (the book was originally published in French in 1958) with a new preface by the author and the addition of his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize conferred in Oslo on December 10, 1986. My copy also has the imprimatur of Oprah’s Book Club on the cover and a quote from the New York Times that it is “A slim volume of terrifying power.”

So what do these two books have in common besides the fact that Jimmy Carter was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (his in 2002)? Well, I checked some history and find out that in 1978 President Carter appointed Elie Wiesel to chair the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, which was to explore the creation of an American national memorial to the Holocaust. It was then chartered by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1980. We now have such a memorial known as the United Stares Holocaust Memorial Museum which is located adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, DC. My then-husband and I visited the Museum soon after our marriage in late 1993, which I now realize was shortly after its dedication and opening. I highly recommend that anyone younger who is unaware of this history takes a special trip to view the artifacts which have been collected. No, it won’t be pleasant, but it is absolutely essential that the horrors never be forgotten. Personally, I still have seared into my memory a visit to a neighbor shortly before we left the Isle of Man to go to Canada, which would have been about 1954. This neighbor had photographs which someone she knew had given her from when they liberated one of the concentration camps. My sister and I at 12 and 9 were probably too young to be sufficiently horrified by the ragged and skeletal survivors huddling near the gates. But looking at some of the same scenes at the Museum brought back the memory in full force. And now reading the Wiesel memoir of his time in the camps takes me back to those post-war memories as well. I think the reason this particular book came to me just as I finished the somewhat more heartwarming story of a rural boyhood (albeit racially segregated to the nth degree) is that history should be able to teach us lessons which will carry us forward.

I have lately taken to reading other sources from the amazing technology now available online, and I have to call out the incredible amount of misinformation and downright propaganda which is presented as news. I am in particular calling out The Epoch Times and its parent company NTD (which stands for New Tang Dynasty by the way) and the fact that it is an organ for Falun Gong. You might be thinking that’s a good thing because Falun Gong is against the Chinese Communist Party and they have those lovely dancers, Shen Yun. But, no, please take the time to do your own research and realize that they are extremely right-wing and reactionary and against feminism and LGBTQ people. And I strongly suspect that they are doing everything in their power to get the 34-felony-convicted presumptive candidate elected. Caveat emptor!