July 21, 2004
OUT OF HIDING, OUT OF HELL:
Surviving the most dangerous game: a review of Hiding in Plain Sight: The Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager's Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland by Betty Lauer (Steven Martinovich, July 19, 2004, Enter Stage Right)
During his trial in 1961 Adolph Eichmann famously declared that Nazi Germany was a state that had legalized crime. That reality was only fully known by its victims, the millions of people who perished in the death camps that dotted the Third Reich. Their very existence was a crime and the full resources of the state and the willing compliance of their fellow citizens were employed against them.And yet some managed to survive that hell thanks to their determination to live. Betty Lauer was one of those fortunate few, a compelling story she relates in Hiding in Plain Sight: The Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager's Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland.
She's a great lady and hers is an amazing/terrible story. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 21, 2004 3:05 PM
Saying that the Nazis legalized crime doesn't do that regime justice, and is another of Eichmann's elegant understatements.
The Nazis didn't just legalize crime. They converted crime into civic virtue, elevated it to grand aesthetic principle, and inculcated it as social necessity.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at July 22, 2004 2:32 AM