Inglorious

I watched the film Inglorious Basterds with my two smartest cats Laura Earle (L) and Max early today, seeing it for the second time. It took a beating from critics when it first came out, being a revenge-fantasy showing Jews slaughtering Nazis in WW2 France. It was slammed as "moral pornography." I thought it was weak for a Tarantino film but not too bad.

But this time I'm in the middle of the book Judgement Before Nuremberg by Gregg Dawson, which is about the Nazi crimes in the Ukraine by the Einsatzgruppen. He mentions General Sherman in American Civil War Georgia, who is still notorious but mild by comparison to the Ukraine story. Also brought to mind were my own visits to the martyred French villages Maille and Oradour-sur-Glane. The scene in the burning theater brings Oradour's church to mind rather eaxactly. The story of the Bielski Jews is another saga that I was thinking of.

The verdict, both from me and the cats: It's not crap after all. Inglorious Basterds responds to the Nazis and their crimes in a way that meets the challenge of examining a thing that not only staggers our understanding but also is beyond anything else that is known to have ever happened. The upshot is that people who react to the Einsatzgruppen story with a sense of civilization and humanity simply have it wrong.

That's my blip for today, which really should have links in it. But tomorrow I have an exciting trip to New York and I must be this brief.