Holocaust Survivor on a Kibbutz in 1960, having to deal with Sabras making fun of him for what a sheep he was for not fighting against his capture. One day he finally has enough at a central committee meeting, explodes and beats them all, even with their soldier training. Later he is sent out to deal with a person who sells farm equipment. The salesman explodes in Yiddish while the survivor gets defensive, which is only seen by a group of teenagers, but they don't speak Yiddish so they have no idea what was said. So while he's out in the fields they break into his home, where they find pictures of him as an Olympic boxer in Poland. One of the group refuses to break in and refuses to talk to them for a few days. Turns out the kid speaks Yiddish, and he says the salesman recognized him as a Judischer Ordungsdiest (Jewish Ghetto Police) in Warsaw who beat his brother to paralysis. He's summoned before the central committee and given a hearing: he defends himself by saying 'you have no idea what it was like. We who survived did everything we had to to make it.' He is cleared of charges, goes back to his job. "Nobody spoke to him anymore but he was never made fun of again."
Wittgenstein and Hitler in the same gymnasium class. Wittgenstein continually humiliates Hitler.
Early Nazi party meetings. It starts as politics and devolves into discussions of art and literature in great nuance during which they discuss the artists they later ban at length and in great detail. At the next meeting they resolve to bring their instruments so they can play chamber music together.
The Adventures of the Einsatzgruppen: educated intelligent man with a PhD, constant access to methamphetamines, seeing his fellow members killing, burning, raping, fucking each other, cannibalizing and mutilating their way through Eastern Europe. At first perhaps he views it with horror, but as the drugs take over he decides it can be noble if he turns it into a science experiment. He decides to enact the most depraved things of which he can conceive as a series of experiments and record the results.
Eichmann goes to Israel in 1937 with Herbert Hagen. He meets with Ben-Gurion and the Grand Mufti about the possibility of resettling Jews in Israel. The Mufti insists that he will simply repatriate the Jews to Nazi territory or form a final solution. Then meets with Ben-Gurion, who insists on speaking German to Eichmann, Eichmann insists on speaking Yiddish to Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion says that of course the Mufti said that he would either deport Jews back to the Nazis or he will kill them. Hagen says that the Jewish state clearly has ears everywhere if they know what the Mufti said. Ben-Gurion says that's nonsense, everyone knows what the Mufti would do. Eichmann says that perhaps if Ben-Gurion did confidence building measures to appease the Mufti and forswore a state perhaps the Mufti would let Jews in, to which Ben-Gurion blows up and accuses Eichmann of being the Mufti's propaganda stooge. 'And where would you put them?' 'Perhaps in camps until they can be resettled.' 'Resettled!? The Jews would never be resettled! They would be the majority of the population and would sit in those camps for a hundred years until the Palestinians finally annihilate them!' 'But I've spoken with the Mufti, he is not..' 'THE MUFTI IS JUST TRYING TO GET YOU ALL TO DO WHAT HE WANTS SOMEONE ELSE TO DO! YOU DON'T WANT THE JEWS, HE DOESN'T WANT THE JEWS, THE ONLY OPTION IS DEATH! I DARE YOU TO TRY! GO AHEAD! DO IT! KILL YOUR JEWS! I DARE YOU! I DARE YOU! YOU WOULD NOT SURVIVE THE CENSURE OF THE WORLD! YOU WOULD NOT SURVIVE CENSURE BEFORE GOD! THE THIRD REICH WOULD FALL BEFORE IT EVEN BEGAN AND BERLIN WOULD BE A CITY MORE BURNED THAN JERUSALEM!' Hagen and Eichmann leave Ben-Gurion's office in silence.
A day in the life of Auschwitz told from the point of view of Hurbinek: the silent three year old whom Primo Levi documents in Survival at Auschwitz. He speaks the 'divine tongue of infants' which no adult human understands. Prisoners take turns taking care of Hurbinek until each dies in turn. He has survived by staying silent. He does not cry, but he has not learned to speak. He talks of the transfer to Auschwitz in the cattle car, and how he saw a mother smother her child so the child would not have to endure what came next. Others on the cattle car make suicide pacts and stab each other. Others pray while others mock, one young couple has sex in front of the whole car, others laugh and tell jokes. Don't know yet about how to describe the work detail and the death marches and the barracks. It ends with Hurbinek taken to the gas chamber where a woman holds him like a mother and sings to him. She says to him 'don't let go. I'm here. I love you.' It turns out the woman is an angel, she drives Hurbinek in a chariot to heaven. It ends with him arriving: 'and there was mameh.'
The Nazi neighborhood in Buenos Aires.
Eichmann trial witnesses and their attempts to put their lives back together (need to watch trials...).
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