The Theresienstadt ghetto in Terezín is mentioned in this article. There is a book titled "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" by Hana Volavková. First seen as a 16 year old, this book of Theresienstadt children's art and poems has had a lifelong impact on me. Beautiful and sad as each child's name, age, and place of death is noted.
Wow. I’ll look into Ivan Klima. Sounds a little like my own early mentor, Leif Hovelsen, active in the Norwegian resistance during Nazi occupation and active in defusing & refuting the resurgence of communism in a certain industrial part of Germany after WW2 (can’t remember the name of that region at the moment).
He was captured by the Norwegian version of the Gestapo and tortured in ways that meant he never had children, but he treated my brothers and I like his grandkids whenever he came to visit my parents, which was often enough to build a real friendship with him in my teen years. Leif was amazingly gracious and patient person, yet also clear-eyed about where any brand of illiberal government will wind up: with political castes, political violence (physical, that is), oppression. Eventually the economic and political impoverishment intended for the Other metastasizes and infects the dominant political caste too, and the entire society degrades in every way.
The once-impressive Soviet Union is a textbook case, but the pattern repeats in all sorts of creative ways and at unexpected scales and scopes: in sunny prosperous and gritty impoverished nations, across the world within tight-knit metacultures or across a neighborhood within extended families.
Glad to hear about Ivan Klima and his legacy. It’s much more public than Leif Howelsen’s, and Leif would probably point us all to read Klima instead of Leif’s own articles, anyway. ;-)
Thank you for this excellent article.
The Theresienstadt ghetto in Terezín is mentioned in this article. There is a book titled "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" by Hana Volavková. First seen as a 16 year old, this book of Theresienstadt children's art and poems has had a lifelong impact on me. Beautiful and sad as each child's name, age, and place of death is noted.
Thank you. I just ordered it.
Wow. I’ll look into Ivan Klima. Sounds a little like my own early mentor, Leif Hovelsen, active in the Norwegian resistance during Nazi occupation and active in defusing & refuting the resurgence of communism in a certain industrial part of Germany after WW2 (can’t remember the name of that region at the moment).
He was captured by the Norwegian version of the Gestapo and tortured in ways that meant he never had children, but he treated my brothers and I like his grandkids whenever he came to visit my parents, which was often enough to build a real friendship with him in my teen years. Leif was amazingly gracious and patient person, yet also clear-eyed about where any brand of illiberal government will wind up: with political castes, political violence (physical, that is), oppression. Eventually the economic and political impoverishment intended for the Other metastasizes and infects the dominant political caste too, and the entire society degrades in every way.
The once-impressive Soviet Union is a textbook case, but the pattern repeats in all sorts of creative ways and at unexpected scales and scopes: in sunny prosperous and gritty impoverished nations, across the world within tight-knit metacultures or across a neighborhood within extended families.
Glad to hear about Ivan Klima and his legacy. It’s much more public than Leif Howelsen’s, and Leif would probably point us all to read Klima instead of Leif’s own articles, anyway. ;-)