Archive for antisemitism
entre ici, Marc Bloch!
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, University life with tags Alsace, André Malraux, Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, antisemitism, Dunkerque, Franc-Tireurs et Partisans, France, French history, French resistance, Gestapo, historian, L’Étrange Défaite, medieval historian, Panthéon, Sorbonne, Troisième République, Vichy régime, WW I, WW II on June 24, 2026 by xi'an
bébés Trump…
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags antisemitism, apology of war crimes, baby Trump, French government, French politics, Gaza, Gaza war, genocide, Israel, Lille, Middle East, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Palestine, Palestinian refugees, Science Po', Stand Up To Trump, UNRWA on August 7, 2025 by xi'an
the amazing adventures of Kavalier & Clay [book review]
Posted in Books, Kids, Travel with tags Antarctica, antisemitism, Aryan ideology, Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, book review, Citizen Kane, comics, Czechoslovakia, Eleanor Roosevelt, emigration, Empire State building, Germany, golem, homophobia, Houdini, integration, Jotunheimen, Kefauver Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, Nazis, New York city, New York Society Library Book Award, New York World’s Fair, Orson Welles, Pearl Harbour, Prague, Pullitzer Prize for Fiction, Queen Maud, Rosa Luxemburg, Salvador Dali, super heroes, U-boats, United States of America, Will Eisner, World War II, WW II, Yiddish on August 2, 2024 by xi'an
After reading the (pretty good) Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, I found out this earlier book had won a Pullitzer prize for fiction and decided to give it a go. Which lasted for weeks as I found the book very slow paced, to the point of always falling asleep within a few pages. The pace sort of accelerated in the second half, sort of coïnciding with Pearl Harbour and the formal entry of the United States of America into the war. At the beginning it felt too much like a transposition of my former read and despite the multiple covariates with a positive coefficient (comics, Prague, the golem, Rosa Luxemburg, New York City, the silliness of the superhero concept, esp. when repeated week after week, the ambivalence of the very notion as well, when considering the closeness between Supermen and Hitler’s Übermensch), I had a hard time engaging with the story. Maybe due to the lengthy sentences and descriptions which, as I read later in a review, were intended to supplement the absence of visual representations that (obviously) come with a graphical novel. Maybe due to the millefeuille of literary styles and fields and of parallel stories with a myriad of characters and places.
“Besotted with language and brimming with pop culture, political relevance and bravura storytelling…” The New York Times
I clearly am a minority in enjoying the book so little. The Guardian put it within its 100 best books of the 21st Century. If in the second half. And so did the New York Times. In its 16th position. There is even a (inactive) website on the book! Actually, the massive injection within the actual history of America and Europa at these most tragic times makes the novel an epic, helped with a witty and mostly understated humour. There are indeed lots of actual facts and characters, the book deeply digs into the history of the time. While indirect snapshots of the unrolling Holocaust are ghastly, Both the sinking of the orphan boat (presumably inspired by the all too real attack on the City of Benares) and the Antarctica part during WW II are sheer fiction (despite a long-going myth of Nazi bases there). But a compelling part of the novel, paradoxically.
Entre ici Missak Manouchian avec ton terrible cortège
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags 21 février 1944, André Malraux, antisemitism, aux grands hommes la Patrie reconnaissante, collaboration, communist party, French history, FTP-MOI, Jean Moulin, L'Affiche Rouge, L'Armée du Crime, Main d’œuvre immigrée, Mélinée Manouchian, Missak Manouchian, Mont Valérien, Nazi occupation, Panthéon, Parti Communiste Français, Résistance, Spanish Civil War, Vichy régime, WW II on February 21, 2024 by xi'an
the elephant in the biography
Posted in Books with tags amnesty, antisemitism, Céline, collaboration, Denmark, extradition, Gallimard, Guerre, Liberation, Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, Nazis, Norway, Pétain, Sigmarinen, Vichy régime, war, WW II on July 14, 2022 by xi'anAs I was buying Guerre, the long lost novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline that was recently published, I noticed that Gallimard had included a biography of the author with a massive elephant in the room!
Namely the loud silence about his antisemitic writings and collaborationist activities under the Vichy regime, which made him flee to Sigmarinen with the core French collaborators (incl. Pétain and Laval), and then flee again to German-occupied Denmark when Allied troups were approching, where he was later jailed for two years as the Libération French government had requested Céline’s extradition from the new Norwegian goverment. He only returned to France after an amnesty was granted for his disabled war veteran status.
