Lech Walesa Reacts to Poland's Presidential Election

 

Putin's Russia Celebrates Stalin

 Putin's Russia has erected numerous statues of Joseph Stalin, arrested and imprisoned those who uncover Stalinist crimes, and suppresses any dissent. 

How bad was Stalin? A good, brief article is here, "Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?" by Cynthia Haven about the book Stalin's Genocides  by scholar Norman Naimark. 

Link to New York Times article about the new Stalin monument is here.

Maus Author Art Spiegelman Insulted Trump; Got Censored

 Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, a racist comic book that depicts Polish people as pigs, has been censored -- because he insulted Trump. Trump has power; Poles and Polonians do not exercise power; so the anti Trump insult had to go, but the Polish-people-as-pigs garbage earns a Pulitzer. Full story here

Thunderbolts* Movie Review. Slavic Stereotyping But I Still Liked the Movie

 

Thunderbolts*

A Marvel movie even Martin Scorsese might love

 

On May 2, 2025, Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released Thunderbolts*. Thunderbolts* is a superhero movie advertised as "Pure cinema," featuring "Not heroes. Not super. Not giving up." In Thunderbolts*, a ragtag group of flawed characters cooperate, in spite of their self-loathing and mutual antipathy. They dismantle a deadly secret program, save Manhattan from Bob, a rampaging monster, and help Bob defeat his own demons. They thus redeem themselves.

 

Internet scuttlebutt insisted that Thunderbolts* addresses important issues in today's society through real characters that develop through real changes, and that audiences were actually tearing up.

 

This time fandom did not over hype. Not only did the characters in Thunderbolts* change. I changed. I am now willing to give Marvel movies another chance.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them"

I am heartbroken that I live in a country where Jews are murdered just for being Jews. 

 

At Home with the Holocaust by Lucas F. W. Wilson. Book Review.

 

At Home with the Holocaust
A scholarly exploration of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors

 

On March 11, 2025, Rutgers University Press released At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives by Lucas F. W. Wilson, PhD. At Home is 188 pages long, inclusive of an index, end notes, and a bibliography. The book's goal is to analyze how children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are traumatized by their parents' and grandparents' experiences. The book focuses on how homes – that is, houses and geographic locations – can transmit trauma from one generation to the next.

 

In an online biography, author Wilson says, "I am the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary." On a University of Calgary page, Wilson follows his name with "Pronouns: he/him/his." In an interview, Wilson says, "My work has largely centered on the Holocaust, but given the rise in anti-queer and anti-trans violence, public policy, and legislation, I redirected my attention on a main catalyst of homophobia and transphobia today: white Christian nationalism …  Both the Holocaust and conversion therapy are inextricably connected to Christianity … The Christian scriptures and Christian theology laid the seedbed for the Holocaust … Christianity has so easily lent itself to such hatred." Christians have "genocidal intentions" toward GLBT people, Jews, and "Indigenous folks in North America."

 

Wilson, though young, is an exceptionally successful scholar, enjoying a degree of financial support and accolades that most scholars can only dream of. "I have received several fellowships and awards for my work." An incomplete list of his honors: The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi's Dissertation Fellowship; a European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Fellowship; The Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman Memorial Fellowship from the American Jewish Archives; a Regent Scholarship, two Edwin L. Stockton, Jr., Graduate Scholarships from Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society, an Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellowship, and a Zaglembier Society Scholarship awarded by The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.

 

At Home with the Holocaust has received high praise. Scholar and author Victoria Aarons says that the book "makes a vital contribution to the research on second and third-generation Holocaust descendants and the complex ways in which traumatic memory is passed along intergenerationally." Alan L. Berger, the Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University, says that At Home "breaks new ground."

 

I can see how At Home with the Holocaust meets the needs of a reader happily immersed and unquestioningly invested in academic trends in writing styles, thought processes, ideology, and ethics. I am not that reader. This book exemplifies serious problems in contemporary academia, as I will detail in the review, below. First, a word on why I care about this topic.

 

As soon as I saw the Rutgers University Press ad for this new book, I was eager to read it. I have been swimming in the water of post-World-War-Two trauma for my entire life. I'm a baby boomer, a drop in the post-World-War-II demographic surge. I didn't give it much thought in my childhood, but I was surrounded by post-war trauma.

 

On August 14, 1945, Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured "V-J Day in Times Square." A sailor is kissing a young woman wearing a medical uniform – white dress, white stockings, white shoes. The photo expertly captures the ecstatic jubilation of the end of worldwide horror and atrocity.

Habemus Papem. Oremus.