For much of his life, Axel Köster says, he has struggled with his legacy; his shame about being German; his love for relatives who perhaps supported atrocities.
\”Jews sometimes try to be the conscience of the legislature,\” says state Rep. Elaine Bloom of Miami Beach, one of the state\’s most durable Jewish politicians. \”But we\’re losing numbers. They\’ve changed the system.\”
Last Friday the Los Angeles Times published a Column One story on its front page with the headline: Danger in Denying Holocaust?
Billy Wilder made movies — not auteur films in the manner of Truffaut, not carefully composed scenes like Hitchcock, not \”cinema.\” But movies that were mostly witty and almost always entertaining.
From the introduction of Davis\’ book \”Whose Bar/Bat Mitzvah is it Anyway?\” \”You know the joke about how the child is supposed to say \’Today I am a man\’?\” Sandra asks. \”Yes.\” I nod tentatively. \”Well, for me it\’s going to be \’Today I am a basket case!\’\” she says, eyes welling with tears.
For those Angelenos looking for a respite from million-dollar hype and \”Happy Meal\” tie-ins to studio blockbusters, late autumn is also a time when a flurry of small, offbeat film festivals grace local movie screens.
Kim Murphy doesn\’t present the stakes in the Irving vs. Lipstadt libel case and she falls into the traps set by the deniers, hook, line and sinker.
\”To put it bluntly,\” Richard Rampton, who is defending Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt against David Irving, told the judge Tuesday, \”he is a liar.\”
To survivors and experts on the Holocaust, there is little doubt that the Los Angeles Times and reporter Kim Murphy gave credence to the lies of the deniers in the name of journalistic impartiality.
The first time I went over to Jon\’s apartment, I thought it was so sweet that he had a framed black and white picture of his dad on the nightstand, smiling somewhat ruggedly in a flannel shirt. Only it wasn\’t Jon\’s dad. It was Don Henley.
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