Holocaust Encyclopedia: How Hitler Came to Power
Hitler transformed Germany by manipulating the democratic political system. Hitler and other Nazi leaders used existing laws to destroy German democracy and create a dictatorship.
John Guzlowski: Two poems about my mother
My mother still remembers
The long train to Magdeburg
the box cars
bleached gray
by Baltic winters
John Guzlowski: Fear
You could hear the fear in my mom’s voice. She feared everything, the sky in the morning, a drink of water, a sparrow singing in a dream, me whistling some stupid little Mickey Mouse Club tune I picked up on TV.
Audio: Call Me Antifa
Inspired by the spirit of the Greatest Generation who fought fascism in World War II, this song celebrates love over hate, peace over violence, and liberty over authoritarianism.
Video: Let There Be Light (John Huston’s 1946 documentary about PTSD)
The film was intended to educate the public about post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment among returning veterans, but its unscripted presentation of mental disability caused the U.S. government to suppress the film.
John Guzlowski: Hope Is Our Mother
A question I get often about my Polish parents is what kept them going during the war and after the war.
Mike Schneider: Appreciating Charles Simic (1938-2023)
In the distance our great leader
Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,
Or was it a great actor
Impersonating our great leader?
Mike Schneider: Three Hats
When Oddjob flings his bowler
in Goldfinger, it leaps from his hand
& sails like a frisbee across a meadow
& hovers, or seems to, as in a dream
Langston Hughes | Beaumont to Detroit: 1943
You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
from the ku klux klan.
David Kirby: Two Poems
Let us be like my friend Rick’s grandma,
who Rick remembers trotting alongside the car as his dad
drove him and his brother down the long driveway from
her house, tapping on a window until one of the boys
rolled it down so she could ask, “Did you get enough pie?
William Trowbridge: Gun Crazy, 1955
My father, despite the possibility of a court martial, plus a ban against shipping firearms from overseas, managed to get his service pistol and an assortment of souvenir German firearms shipped to our home in his Army foot locker
Adam Patric Miller: Labyrinth
in the yellow light of that narrow
carpeted hallway that led to my parents’
bedroom. there was a photo of
my great-grandfather Nestor Dreyfus
whose face escaped into my mother’s face
Michael T. Young: The Need to Believe | The Poetry of Lisel Mueller
This is the power we need in a post-truth world, where political forces claim the right to manipulate our perceptions through distortions of language.
David Kirby: Inexhaustible
You’ve seen the photo: the marine
on the right straining like the statue
of a Greek wrestler as he hauls the flag
into place, the five on the left pushing
from their side.
