World War II books

[jedusor]

We're up to the 1940s in my history class, and thinking about the subject of the Holocaust inspired me to get to the library yesterday and take out Anne Frank's diary, which I've somehow never read. I'm about two-thirds through it now, and it's creepy how much Anne's personality reminds me of my own. I wish I'd read this a long time ago. The parts about the holidays are especially poignant- they celebrated Christmas, while they were in hiding for being Jewish.

While I was at the library, I also located a copy of "Dr. Seuss Goes to War," a collection of political cartoons drawn by Theodor Geisel during WWII. Some of them are good, but the ones depicting Japanese people are scary. People keep saying that it's okay because everyone hated Japanese people back then, but it's not. I don't put up with people who hate Muslims because of 9/11; this is the same thing. And he was so adamant about equality between blacks and whites, too. It's like Japanese people weren't even people to him.

Mom is talking about a trip to St. Louis in May, after finals are over. I'd definitely like to go see the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center there.

Comments

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Jews celebrating Christmas isn't all that odd - there used to be advertisemts in Yiddish newspapers in New York City in the 1800s for Christmas trees. It's moved beyond a religious holiday into a cultural one.

I've seen some of those cartoons. Maybe the Japanese weren't people to him; maybe they weren't. I haven't read his views on the subject so I can't say. I do know that the cartoons he did were propaganda pieces, which are supposed to affect the masses by using such radical images.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

It's not necessarily odd for Jews to celebrate Christmas, but it strikes me as unusual that Jews who were trapped in a small space for years because of their religion would do so. I would expect them to embrace their own religion. I guess they were being persecuted more because of the culture than the religion itself, though.

Yes, the cartoons were propaganda, and that's even scarier. Dr. Seuss creating propaganda against a community in order to rally together his own community sounds a lot like what Hitler himself was doing.