Nazi Germany
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Sound over Water
We tell the stories to fit the narrative we need. But within each story we must maintain the grain of truth that will provide the urgency.
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Color at the Mercy of the Light
What if I said: while people still believe they are white in America, that delusion, and the dream upon which it is founded, needs to be seriously examined.
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Hitler’s Ghostwriter
New evidence uncovered by history professor and researcher Thomas Weber indicates that Hitler himself wrote the 1923 biography Adolf Hitler: His Life and His Speeches, which is credited to Baron Adolf Victor von Koerbe. Weber’s research implies that Hitler had designs…
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The Rumpus Interview with Rachel Hall
Rachel Hall discusses her debut collection Heirlooms, her mother’s experience growing up in a French Jewish family during World War II, and crossing genre borders in her writing.
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Home Is Where
Helen Levinson was fourteen years old in the 1940s when she left Lublin, Poland. I was fifteen years old in 2005 when I arrived.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Song in the Subjunctive
Perhaps the city looked more poignantly lovely because I was conscious of its tragic history.
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Thebes
The tragedy of a mentally ill mind or a richly realized fantasy is that its world exists only for its inventor. It is the loneliest party, the most isolating game.
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Amis, Oates, and the Foul-Smelling Meadow
Recent [WWII] novels by Susanna Moore and Ayelet Waldman achieve their emotional power by focussing upon characters peripheral to the terrible European history that has nonetheless altered their lives. The conflagration must be glimpsed indirectly, following Appelfeld’s admonition that “one…
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The Ex-Nazi Poet You’ve Never Heard Of
Prussian poet Gottfried Benn landed on the wrong side of history, supporting Hitler’s government in the early 1930s when it promised solutions to the global economic collapse. But by 1934, his allegiance to the regime ended as it became clear…
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Modern Art in Nazi Germany
This BBC story goes into fascinating detail about the way the degenerate art was displayed alongside insulting graffiti, and, of course, what role Hitler’s youthful art education played in all this. (Via.) In 1937, the Nazi regime staged two simultaneous art…
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A Former Nazi Tells Her Story
“She may have been the first German, and certainly the first German woman, who tried to face her past with honesty.” In a blog post for the New Yorker, Helen Epstein describes a remarkable memoir she has just reprinted at Plunkett…
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Keep the Kevlar Handy: The Rumpus Interview with Mark Slouka
“In America, we tend to think belief trumps knowledge. To tease out the truth from the fabric of lies that surrounds us requires a certain degree of intelligence. Which is bad news for us, alas.