A Long Story of Trauma, Good Luck and Suspense – education and deconstruction.com

All the Worst Humans

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “All the Worst Humans, How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians” by Phil Elwood, published in 2024. This short volume was authored by an alcoholic adrenaline-junkie and occasional drug addict who was happiest when he was afforded opportunities to use his creativity to help his clients weasel out of image-trouble, burnish their image, or launch a smear campaign.

Born around 1980, Elwood began to acquire valuable contacts in Washington, D.C. when he did a summer internship in the U.S. Senate. Elwood was pleasantly surprised that, after ruining his own reputation, one such contact wrote a recommendation letter on his behalf to help him get accepted to a different college.

Most of the time, the following publications are the major influencers on breaking news: Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, Politico, Axios, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The last three have a paywall– users must subscribe to them, and pay to read their articles. As is well known, in the last several decades, elected officials and their staffs in Washington, D.C., the media, the entertainment industry, Silicon Valley, professional sports and Wall Street have all incestuously melded together to create one big gossip circle. Readers who are no longer willing to pay for news, miss out on the gossip.

The author commented that there are currently a few tens of thousands of people who call themselves “journalists” while there are a few hundreds of thousands of people employed in the public relations industry. Very nearly all (except for this blog!) global communications are now sponsored-opinions, after so many decades of changes to information-sharing. Four of many milestones that set shameful precedents include:

In 1963, a journalist broke the taboo against prying into the personal lives of professional athletes when he revealed that Sandy Koufax was adopted. After that, privacy invasion became the norm.
In 1982, the New York Times eliminated the firewall between its editorial and advertising departments. Sports Illustrated did the same in the late 1980’s.
The year 1984 saw Republicans launch a fishing expedition of, and vicious smear campaign against Democrat vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s husband. Even for modern times, the high level of nastiness was extreme– and Republicans have continued such behavior to date, more than the Democrats.
Beginning in the 1980’s, the FCC relaxed its antitrust laws, allowing Rupert Murdoch to create a monster-sized multimedia empire (by purchasing the New York Post newspaper, Twentieth Century Fox, HarperCollins and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few propaganda outlets) with its attendant extremely large concentration of resources that allowed for infinite conflicts of interest that afforded him and his cronies the kinds of growth opportunities that free-market competitors couldn’t possibly hope to match.

To get additional information on how money, power and political hacks have corrupted every aspect of how people find out what’s going on in the world, feel free to read all the posts in this blog’s category “Publishing Industry Including Newspapering.”

Anyway, the author planted the following naive passage in his writing: “Salaries in some newsrooms are going up. Private equity is buying up media companies left and right. Foreign nations are investing heavily, too. Lines of ethics are blurring.” Newsflash: all these trends are decades-old!

Nonetheless, read the book to learn of the author’s adventures in image-management.

Along these lines, here’s a song about yet another downfall of someone once-rich and powerful (brought to you by Elwood-style PR.). This is what the Democrats are singing to the American president, whose name rhymes with “rump” and “dump.”

MIDTERMS-KARMA

sung to the tune of “Instant Karma” (1970 version) with apologies to the Estate of John Lennon and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

Gonna flip the states that are Red.

You’ll try to give yourself a pardon.

No one will shut up and take your bread.

All the world has had enough,

laughing behind your back,

all over the earth you’re a TACO.

They know you go low, yeah, low.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

A man like you is once-and-always.

Even the “new” Nixon wasn’t the “new” Nixon.

Yours is an open and shut case.

Your sins, the whole world is gonna see.

You’ll be blasting the fools in your GOP.

Everyone on earth knows who you are. A has-been tsar.

Far Right you are.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on. Everyone. Come on.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

You lay down with dogs, you got fleas.

You know a man is known by,

the company he keeps.

Everyone knows you’re outa here.

You’ve made so many live in pain and fear.

Why are you there, when you should be nowhere?

You got more than your share.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Gone and gone and gone, gone and gone.

Yeah, yeah, alright, uh-huh, uh.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Gone and gone and gone, gone and gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone…

Swimming to Freedom

The Book of the Week is “Swimming to Freedom, My Escape From China and the Cultural Revolution” by Kent Wong, published in 2021. Wong was born in 1948 in a coastal town in China. Mao became the official leader of China in October 1949. So that Wong’s father could keep his job at the customs agency, the family moved to Hong Kong. However, they returned to Guangzhou because the father missed his homeland.

Mao brainwashed people into believing that the Americans and their puppet, Chiang Kai-Shek were evil imperialists. The people in northern China were mostly peasant-farmers, while the people in southern China worked in factories and were better educated. More northerners starved to death, as local Communist leaders stole their harvests of grain. So after the food sources of chickens, pigs and horses were exhausted, the people resorted to cannibalism.

From the mid-1960’s, onward, Mao recovered his all-powerful position and cult of personality in the Chinese government. The Chinese times, they were changing in many ways, including:

Anyone who joined the Communist Party enjoyed a significantly better lifestyle than not.
Beginning in the early 1960’s China was gradually becoming less friendly with Russia, claiming via Mao’s drama-queen performance that Khrushchev had criticized their Communist idol, Stalin, and that their ideologies differed (actually, China didn’t want to pay Russia the humungous financial debt it owed).
Contrary to a decade earlier, the schools began to teach the English language instead of the Russian language.
High school kids were sent to the countryside to be “reeducated” (do hard manual labor) with the peasants.
Mao brainwashed the teenagers into becoming child-soldiers called Red Guards.

Across the country, the Red Guards got uniforms, marched in parades, and once they got weapons, they acquired the power to behave like Nazis. And did. They harassed people on the streets, looted stores of cigarettes and cold drinks. They incited terror by whipping people with a belt, in the public square.

In 1966, there arose two different gangs of Red Guards, who were enemies of each other. The main target of the Red Guards, though, was any “Black” family (see the paragraph below) or individual who showed capitalist leanings (thoughts, actions, writings of any kind) or association with bourgeois rich people. Every man, woman and child in China had what amounted to an FBI file on them from the time they were born, as they were legally required to register with the government.

A family was labeled Black if, prior to Mao’s reign, it had been in any kind of business or had been affiliated with Chiang Kai-Shek. One family member could shame the entire family, and cause it to be labeled Black. Wong’s family was labeled Black because they had lived in the Chiang-affiliated, British colony of Hong Kong, and his father had criticized workplace conditions.

Red Guards ransacked the family’s house for any evil materials, but found none. A Red family consisted of loyal Communist peasants. After a while, people of all ages whose families were Black were sent to the countryside. Only loyal Party hacks and rich people dodged the recruitment process.

The internet has greatly automated the kinds of surveillance, censorship and propaganda practiced by China (and the United States!) since Wong’s generation. Political retaliation has never been so easy.

On the other hand, the unbloodied elites (i.e., Donald Trump, Zelensky, etc.) don’t need to actually go into physical combat the way their countries’ militaries (or their cult-of-personality members) do. They simply sit in a TV studio to boost media ratings during a slow-news period, and have a screaming match like the clowns on the “Jerry Springer Show” used to do.

Dictatorial leaders in recent history whose names are still known, of course, have varied in their evilness and attention whoredom. However, only two (Hitler and Stalin) dominated lands (not including Churchill– whose empire was in decline) that potentially had the resources (not including nuclear weapons) to take over the entire earth. They might have, if events had happened a bit differently.

Mutual Assured Destruction has thus far kept world leaders from obliterating one another. There are other factors at work that provide a smidgen of hope for the continued survival of global humanity:

Because nations of the world are so economically interdependent or incestuous of late, no matter how much their leaders rant, rave, brag and deny– their governments are liars regarding trade negotiations.
It has become routine for leaders to incite a hue and cry from their citizens via instantaneous communications methods. This means fewer people are paying attention to the propaganda that is filtered through the narrow lens of a small number of media outlets (which are monster-sized, but not as influential as they used to be).
At least in the United States, more and more families of different ethnicities and religions are converging or assimilating, so hypocrisy among xenophobes is on the increase. The voices of the xenophobes will be eclipsed eventually when the U.S. leadership becomes more diverse. It might take a while, but it has to happen.
Nowadays, violent places of the world are confined mostly to ones that have a reputation for centuries of tribal or religious warfare, as practically all the resources have been looted from once-colonized territories.

The above are reasons why world conquest is too difficult to achieve for any current aspirant. Even so, here’s a little ditty on Trump’s latest speechifying to Congress.

JUST AN OLD FASCIST LOVE SONG

sung to the tune of “Just an Old Fasioned Love Song” with apologies to Three Dog Night, their estates, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Just an old fascist love song, emanating from the idiot-box,
and wrapped around the words, is the bragfest of a power-hog who’ll never go.

In-history you’ve heard it before. Hypocrisy rolls on.
Money, power, political-hacks. They’re never really gone.

Just an old fascist love song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.
Just an old fascist love song.
Coming forth from backroom bargaining.

Boosting ratings but failing to question,
because their intellect’s low.
To emphasize Trump’s love affair
with phoniness and meanness, that we’ve come to know.

In-history you’ve heard it before. Hypocrisy rolls on and on.
Money, power, political-hacks. They’re never really gone.

Just an old fascist love song.
Coming forth from backroom bargaining.
Just an old fascist love song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.

Boosting ratings but failing to question the song.
Just, an old song, coming forth.
Just (just) an old song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.

Just an old fascist love song.
Coming forth from backroom bargaining.
Just an old fascist love song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.

Anyway, read the book to learn of the author’s adventures (which included serious hardships, although he avoided getting shot, drowned, bitten by a shark, or killed by a typhoon) during his quest for a better life.

Slow Noodles

The Book of the Week is “Slow Noodles, A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss and Family Recipes” by Chantha Nguon, published in 2024. Born around 1961, the author endured the hunger, hard manual labor, bullying from the authorities and other aspects of her decades-long survival struggles through fantasizing about the food her mother cooked for her. Cooking became a life-saving skill later in her life.

In March 1970, Cambodia underwent a regime change. Lon Nol replaced Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and got a lot of financial aid from the U.S. for claiming he was anti-Communist. The new dictator also got military help in the form of American B-52s’ indiscriminately killing people in the countryside. The goal was to rid Cambodia of Vietnamese and non-Buddhist people. The author’s mother was Vietnamese, so the author was considered genetically Vietnamese, too. They were eventually forced to flee to Saigon.

All through the 1970’s, the region of Southeast Asia was particularly hard-hit by genocide, atrocities and torturous practices perpetrated by war criminals who obeyed their respective dictators. As an adolescent, Nguon was subjected to personal hardships, including the deaths of her older sister (who served as her surrogate mother until her mother arrived in Saigon) and her mother.

Nguon, like countless, anonymous hundreds of thousands of other refugees, could have died of disease, starvation, bombings, guerrillas’ bullets, pirates, or land mines, or a combination thereof. On rebuilding Cambodia after Pol Pot’s reign, she wrote, “The big foreign aid groups did their best, but they had no idea how to reshape a civilization from nothing. Who does? Donors, NGOs, and politicians want speedy tangible progress. The natural bias is ‘Hurry up and heal. We have other emergencies to attend to.’ “

Read the book to learn about the kinds of assistance the author provided to her fellow Cambodians, and much more about her food, life and times.

Butterfly

The Book of the Week is “Butterfly, From Refugee to Olympian– My Story of Rescue, Hope, and Triumph” by Yusra Mardini, published in 2018.

The author was born in March 1998 in a southern suburb of Damascus, Syria. Since her father was a swimming coach, she took up the sport with a passion.

In 2011, people expressed anti-government sentiments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in what became known as the Arab spring. During that year, Syria caught the bug. By summer 2012, armed soldiers and operators of heavy artillery and tanks, harassed protestors on the streets of the southern districts of Damascus.

By 2015, any Damascus residents who had yet to flee the violence, could die any day at any time from a fire, a bomb, shrapnel, a bullet, or a rocket-propelled grenade, aside from the more common ways life can end. Conscription into the Syrian military began at age eighteen, so early on, numerous teenage boys had already left for Lebanon, Turkey or European countries.

The author and her older sister finally decided to leave in 2015. Since they were from a middle-class family and they had been raised in a capitalist environment, they had resources that increased their likelihood of survival more than ever before in world history.

Western Union allowed them access to cash sent from their father (who had gotten a job in the country of Jordan). They had smartphones all during their journey. They and their traveling companions used the internet and its GPS feature to find hotels, eateries, train stations, and the precise dividing lines of countries’ borders. They heard cautionary tales that taught them what to do and what not to do, through not only face-to-face gossip, but also online information-sharing.

At one point, the evacuation process became like a game: “That night, we sit in Burger King [in Budapest] as the square grows dark, posting selfies on Instagram and chatting online with friends back home.”

Nevertheless, psychologists in the U.S. would probably diagnose the author with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, given what she wrote of how she behaved and what she was thinking. Her lifelong dream was to be an Olympian swimmer. But after resuming her athletic training, she felt helpless to solve the various life-and-death issues involving the war in Syria, and affect the fates of the flood of refugees in the world.

Read the book to learn numerous additional details of Mardini’s suspenseful story, and how she was able to make a difference, despite her doubts and individual powerlessness.

A Man of Two Superpowers

The Book of the Week is “A Man of Two Superpowers, From Russia With Hope” by Yakov Grinshpun, published in 2022. This short, sloppily edited volume explained how and why the author came to the United States, and how he adjusted to living here.

Grinshpun was born in January 1944 in a part of Ukraine that became Romanian territory during WWII. The Russians “liberated” his shtetl in March 1944. He was brainwashed from birth into the Russian Communist system, with its extreme nationalism, “meetings, salutes, slogans, parades and uniforms.” He was taught that the Americans were evil. Imperialism and capitalism became conflated in his mind.

Grinshpun was branded as having Jewish nationality due to his ancestry, even though he had been born in Ukraine– a territory claimed by the Russians. His birth certificate and passport both said as much. This made him the target of discrimination in most major aspects of his life in the then-Soviet Union.

In February 1962, at age eighteen, the author had finally become eligible to vote for his country’s leader. Actually, voting was legally required! Even so, there was only one name on the ballot: Khrushchev’s.

At university, as a Jew, he was barred from studying medicine or law. The few jobs open to him involved mathematics or engineering. However, Grinshpun did get free tuition in exchange for three years’ worth of working for the State in the job chosen for him– physics teacher.

Even into his forties, the author had such limited knowledge about the collective mood of the people in his homeland. He wrote, “The Soviet Union endured for about seventy years, and as far as I could tell in [summer] 1989 would for many more years with its draconian policies.”

Most of the world was gobsmacked by the events of the next few months. Grinshpun explained the reason for his ignorance: infantilism imposed on him by the Soviet government: “… we were never responsible for much. We had a secure job and a place to live– both all but for life.” In exchange for having no worries, the people were conditioned to be blindly obedient to authority, and to lack critical thinking.

Nonetheless, there were a few independent thinkers such as Ayn Rand, who knew years in advance that Communism in the Soviet Union would eventually collapse. Even now, there are very few people in the world who have Rand’s kind of insight.

Instantaneous, global communications is actually part of the problem. It provides too much noise. Grinshpun was provided with too few perspectives and resources to see the big picture, given his time and place. Acquiring the ability to zero in on the correct signals takes decades of life-experience, reading nonfiction books, and for the most part, ignoring the idiot box and the media’s pronouncements.

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Grinshpun’s life experiences.

ENDNOTE: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

“I told my husband if we have to go to the White House, okay, I will go, but I’m going as myself. It’s too late to change my pattern and if they don’t like it, then they’ll just have to throw me out.”

-Betty Ford on the TV show 60 Minutes, aired August 10, 1975– a year after Nixon’s resignation, and a year into Gerald Ford’s presidency.

Here’s a ditty on why things stay the same.

HISTORY REWRITER

sung to the tune of “Paperback Writer” with apologies to The Beatles and whomever else the rights may concern.

History rewriter.

Dear loyal voter,
Don’t you read Trump’s books.
They took decades to spin, full of gobbledygook.
They’re bragfests involving his ex-contacts.

He needs a job, so he’s BEEN a history rewriter.
History rewriter.

It’s lots of dirty stories of a dirty man and his former wives didn’t understand.
His kids were sucked into his daily World.
They got steady jobs, but he’s BEEN a history rewriter.
History rewriter.

History rewriter. Rewriter.

Yet there’re millions of pages in legal truth.
There’ll be millions more in a week or two.

He’s lasted longer because he’s mastered the style. He keeps changing it round.
And he’s BEEN a history rewriter.

History rewriter.

With free speech he owns the Right. But he needs the billionaires’ oversight.

You’ll want to LOOK at transcripts.
You can’t SEE them here.
But Trump needs a break. And he’s BEEN a history rewriter.
History rewriter. History rewriter.
Rewriter. Rewriter.

History rewriter. History rewriter…

My American Dream

The Book of the Week is “My American Dream, My True Story As An Undocumented Immigrant Who Became A Wall Street Executive” by Julissa Arce, published in 2016.

The author was born in 1983 in Taxco, Mexico. In 1994, she moved with her parents to San Antonio, Texas on a tourist visa. Because she was going to school (a private one) she was actually living in the U.S. illegally. Her parents (who were legal immigrants) didn’t understand the implications of such a situation. They simply wanted her to get a good education. Americans’ tax dollars weren’t even paying for it.

The upshot, though, was that Arce never got a Social Security Number, and couldn’t get any kinds of government or financial services: healthcare, a driver’s license, a bank account, or financial aid when she applied to go to college.

By living in the United States, Arce’s foreign status became her single biggest life-problem, especially when she was in her late teens. That problem led to others. If she moved back to Mexico, she most likely would be unable to return to the United States for at least ten years, unless laws changed.

Arce needed to earn “off the books” money to support her family, and pay her mother’s medical bills. On top of that, she had a drunk, abusive father. She was accepted to a college at the last minute, based on academic and student-participatory merit, and thanks to a new Texas state law. As is well known, many students are accepted to schools based on “legacy” or alumni-bribery practices, or on athletic rather than academic merits.

After many more hardships, the author got a job in the real world. She initially omitted the inconvenient fact that fake identity papers would allow her to work at the job only until she got caught for having a fraudulent Social Security Number. It appears that both her employer and the IRS turned a blind eye to her situation, as the former was able to pay her less than it would a non-foreign employee. BUT her employer was still withholding taxes from her paycheck. So why should her employer fire her? She was a model worker. She had to be– she was under the constant threat of deportation. She had to try harder than everyone else to please everyone.

Fortunately, several people in Arce’s life gave her good advice:

get the best education she could;
always strive do be the best at whatever she did– regardless of what it was;
be persistent;
associate with the appropriate people;
be professional at all times; and
continually socially network.

Arce was actually a shameless social climber, but she also showed she was a team player– unselfish with her time and talents. When the author achieved the pinnacle of what she perceived to be success, she wrote, “I felt normal– just another drunk Wall Street analyst on Stone Street on a Friday night.” And yet, she realized she still wasn’t truly happy.

Read the book to learn much, much more about Arce’s life experiences, and additional (true!!!) information (not emotionally-charged political propaganda) about immigrants in America.

The Night Trump WAS Defied – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

…And the exciting conclusion of the “Hush Money” Trial, produced by and starring Donald Trump, written by lawyers and decided by, THE JURY:

The Night Trump WAS Defied

sung to the tune of “The Night Chicago Died” with apologies to Paper Lace.

(Trump was STOPPED, in a court in New York City,
back in the USA, back in the Biden days.)

In the heat of a late spring night
where the land is a lawsuit mill.
The night Trump was defIED.
For him it was a bitter pill.

About-WITCH-hunts he’d bitch-and-moan.
But the GOP, he did OWN.
“It’s a disGRACE,” we-hear-him SAY,
while others FINally yell, “Hooray!”

I’d heard a MILlion lies.
I’d heard-the-crimes the night Trump WAS defied.
People, what a night the lawyers saw;
people, what a fight the lawyers saw.
Could it be?

And the propagandists sang, that a jury turned the tide,
but Trump’s current legal gang, could apPEAL and save-his-hide.
There was shouting and infinite TWEETS,
saying progress like this is SWEET.

But other people SAID, this is good for states of red.

I’d heard a MILlion lies.
I’d heard-the-crimes the night Trump WAS defied.
People, what a night the lawyers saw;
people, what a fight the lawyers saw.
Do my-eyes-deceive me?

And Trump still had the gall, to keep trashing one and all.
And the Right’s wallets opened wide,
and his slaves rushed to his side,
and they kissed his big, fat ass,
and they brushed his tears away.

The night Trump WAS defied.
hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah.
The night Trump WAS defied.
People, what a night the lawyers saw;
people, what a fight the lawyers saw.
Holy GOP!

The night Trump WAS defied.
hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah.
The night Trump WAS defied.
People, what a night the lawyers saw…

The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, A True Tale of three gamblers, the Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel” by Mark Paul, published in 2020.

Sidenote: Speaking of gambling, in May 1988, Paul Laxalt, a Republican from Nevada, and in June 1992, H. Ross Perot, an Independent from Texas: jumped into the race for president. The latter exceeded many people’s expectations.

Anyway, the author described the American horse-race gambling environment of the late 1980’s. At that time, off-track betting was putting smaller racetracks out of business, because gamblers could watch the races on which they bet, live– simulcast on video screens at racetracks and casinos; in other words, wherever gambling was legal. They did not need to be physically present at the racetrack.

Through the decades, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) got wise and cracked down on gamblers’ financial crimes such as tax evasion and money laundering. The author described one guy at the racetrack who illegally paid cash to winning bettors who wanted their money immediately, who were willing to pay a twenty percent fee to him rather than to the IRS.

The suspenseful part of the author’s story began when he and his best friend identified a talented filly– a female horse– that was running in major races. Practically all horse races had previously featured colts because on the whole, they were bigger and stronger and so more likely to win races, and were worth more money because they could be hired out to breed more race horses like themselves at a much higher volume than could females.

The author and his friend took what turned out to be a life-threatening risk by driving down from California to a casino in Tijuana, Mexico, to place a bet months in advance, on the said filly that was to run in the Kentucky Derby. He explained that by placing bets on events to take place far into the future, gamblers get tremendously advantageous odds; for instance, 50 to 1 odds three months in advance, rather than, say, 2 to 1 odds on race day, on a horse to win– because that horse has become the favorite. However, if the horse doesn’t run in the race, regardless of the reason, the gamblers will lose all of the money they bet.

Read the book to learn of the gamblers’ activities before, during and after their fateful bet on their favorite horse in the Kentucky Derby.

On Both Sides of the Wall

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The Book of the Week is “On Both Sides of the Wall” by Vladka Meed, originally published in 1948. This book detailed the (Jewish) author’s and others’ wartime traumas of people inside and outside the Warsaw Ghetto (around which a wall was built by the German government) and the various groups who tried to minimize their death toll. The Jews were confined inside, and were required to wear white armbands (equivalent to yellow stars in other European locales). The Aryans outside were Polish people free to live their lives.

In July 1942, the Nazis began to deport the aforementioned Jews in vans that went to cattle cars that ended up at concentration camps. The local German authority, called the Judenrat, enlisted Jews– who became members of local law enforcement– to help them do so.

Bureaucratic rules dictated who got deported. Unemployed or sick Jews were the first to go to their deaths. The able-bodied were the last to be deported because they were needed for slave labor in munitions factories and workshops that made necessities (such as uniforms) for the war effort. Working Jews were issued employment cards. Of course, a black market sprung up in the cards, so the Nazis deemed the cards invalid in about a week.

Personal social ties with sympathetic non-Jews became priceless for Jews who went into hiding to escape deportation. Firstly, it was a death-defying feat to leave the ghetto; possibly by bribing guards at one of the wall’s transit-gates, or blending into a labor group leaving for work.

However, German officials inspected the identity papers of, and interrogated, every individual passing through. The officials arbitrarily engaged in beatings, atrocities and on-the-spot murders, or simply muggings or robberies (including of clothing!) of any Jew whose papers weren’t in order.

Further, there were Poles who walked the streets in groups looking for “Jews” (simply people whom they perceived to have Jewish facial features) to victimize and bully. And then there were Jews who joined the aforesaid local police force, who outed their fellow religionists so save their own skins.

The author was very fortunate that she had Aryan facial features. She took off her white armband and was able to get past the ghetto wall unharmed various times during the war years. But she constantly had to look for black-market housing and almost starved to death. Obviously, the fact that she lived to tell her story in this book spoke to her superior survival skills and great good luck. One way she significantly increased her chances of survival was that she joined the Resistance movement. Brilliant acting talent was the most crucial survival skill in that time and place.

In January 1943, a group of Jews finally (!) fought back against their deportations, via mostly hand-to-hand combat. The Jews by that time knew where the cattle cars were going. In April 1943, a Jewish group called the Fighting Organization and others began an offensive called the Warsaw Uprising. They fought against Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Poles who were gathered around the ghetto wall to carry out the last deportation roundup. At the time, the author happened to be among Aryans, outside the ghetto. But she possessed the experience to stay alive.

In August 1944, everyone in Warsaw— Poles, Jews, militias, etc.– cooperated in fighting against the Germans, in the Warsaw Rebellion. They were all sick of the years of oppression. Even so, the Poles committed evil acts against their fellow fighters who were Jews, and against the Jews forced out of hiding. The Germans ruthlessly destroyed Warsaw with weapons and arson, just to get back at their enemies.

Anyway, read the book to learn a lot more about the author’s trials and tribulations.

Moondrop to Gascony

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The Book of the Week is “Moondrop to Gascony” by Anne-Marie Walters, originally published in 1946.

The author was born around 1920 in England. Already fluent in French, in summer 1943, she received training in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in order to work for the French Resistance in southwestern France. She learned how to: decipher Morse code and ciphers, use firearms, pick locks, do parachute jumps, etc. Six months later, she, along with 22 men, jumped from a plane to go on their first mission. The ultimate goal of course, was to hinder the German war machine.

When the author’s unit left London, it was told it would get any resources it requested. That was a lie. Best laid plans usually went awry, as the group depended on supplies delivered via parachute to the French countryside. Problems arose with: the weather, plane shortages, or other Resistance cells in more dire need of food.

Everything had to be kept top secret, as German soldiers roamed around the railways and rural areas, demanding identity papers, harassing and shooting anyone perceived to be the enemy, on the spot. There were various times the author heard about the fates of her fellow cell members who had been tortured and then executed.

Certain peasant farmers collaborated with the Germans, and tattled on Resistance fighters. Some families allowed the fighters to sleep in the barn or shed or on their property, risking the wrath of the Nazis. One time, one such family agreed to help the Resistance but they chickened out. A family member failed to show up with lights to signal a parachuted-supplies drop, so the plane wasted a trip flying over the area and didn’t drop the sorely needed supplies.

In summer 1944, twelve hundred Germans killed every last one of eighty Resistance fighters. The former had some 13mm machine guns and mortars while the latter had a few Bren guns, and a cache full of ammunition which was hit by a mortar shell. About 4am, the few escapees, hiding in cornfields and vegetation, fought valiantly to the last man.

The Germans set fire to the fighters’ safe-houses in the region and used hand grenades to turn the burned-out structures to ashes. Six members of a peasant family who helped the enemy were also subjected to sadistic massacre and destruction of their home. All those war crimes took about four hours, after which, the Germans laughed about it.

In late summer 1944, the author was assigned to personally deliver a report to London. To get there, she crossed the Pyrenees on foot into Spain along with six other fighters. They were the lucky survivors who risked their lives amid deprivation and hardships. She wrote that they were gluttons for punishment because they formed intensely close bonds and took pride in sacrificing for their respective homelands.

Read the book to learn numerous other details of the anti-German underground’s adventures.