Sunday, September 22, 2013 – The Barber
There
are days I question my reading and viewing list.
OK, so I know why I picked up “Stalin’s Barber” by Paul Levitt. It had a very cool looking cover and I thought it would be like Jonas Jonasson’s “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.”
Nyet.
This book is spell-binding for sure but the one who casts the spell – Stalin - is the embodiment of evil. Those folks who don’t believe that evil has a personal face just need to read up a little on Uncle Joe.
“Stalin’s Barber” is a little bit like “Life is Beautiful.” It is humorous at the same time as it is horrific. Director Roberto Benigni has been accused of being a holocaust denier. I don’t think so, though I think he could be called a minimizer. But where does one start? How much is enough?
There is a scene in “Stalin’s Barber” where the protagonist – a Jewish man by the name of Avraham Bahar - rides a train through a train station in the Ukraine. It is a small scene, and it is so appalling that I truly thought I would vomit. I cannot say that broader coverage would have done more to shake up the reader.
Whenever I read a novel worth reading (and I try to alternate between “worth reading” and brain candy,) I like to read up on the situation that caused to writer to pour his or her heart, mind, soul, and guts onto paper. So I watched a short film on the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, which was engineered by Stalin. Gah! I think we in the West cannot fully acknowledge the Ukrainian holocaust of 10 million people because we were allied with Russia against Hitler.
And what were our other options?
I probably shouldn’t watch such barbaric footage and read horrific descriptions just before going to bed. (And I wonder why I get insomnia.) But I do believe there is something called “bearing witness.”
But I don’t know to what end. I cannot change what happened in the Ukraine during the terror of Stalin. I cannot stop the history that is repeating itself in North Korea and in parts of Africa, and so many other places.
There are days I would love to have a job – paying or volunteer – where I could make a real difference. Certainly my hubs and I financially support missions that bring soya milk to orphans in Korea and education to street kids in the Ukraine. But it feels very many steps removed.
And for that I think I just need to be very grateful.
OK, so I know why I picked up “Stalin’s Barber” by Paul Levitt. It had a very cool looking cover and I thought it would be like Jonas Jonasson’s “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.”
Nyet.
This book is spell-binding for sure but the one who casts the spell – Stalin - is the embodiment of evil. Those folks who don’t believe that evil has a personal face just need to read up a little on Uncle Joe.
“Stalin’s Barber” is a little bit like “Life is Beautiful.” It is humorous at the same time as it is horrific. Director Roberto Benigni has been accused of being a holocaust denier. I don’t think so, though I think he could be called a minimizer. But where does one start? How much is enough?
There is a scene in “Stalin’s Barber” where the protagonist – a Jewish man by the name of Avraham Bahar - rides a train through a train station in the Ukraine. It is a small scene, and it is so appalling that I truly thought I would vomit. I cannot say that broader coverage would have done more to shake up the reader.
Whenever I read a novel worth reading (and I try to alternate between “worth reading” and brain candy,) I like to read up on the situation that caused to writer to pour his or her heart, mind, soul, and guts onto paper. So I watched a short film on the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, which was engineered by Stalin. Gah! I think we in the West cannot fully acknowledge the Ukrainian holocaust of 10 million people because we were allied with Russia against Hitler.
And what were our other options?
I probably shouldn’t watch such barbaric footage and read horrific descriptions just before going to bed. (And I wonder why I get insomnia.) But I do believe there is something called “bearing witness.”
But I don’t know to what end. I cannot change what happened in the Ukraine during the terror of Stalin. I cannot stop the history that is repeating itself in North Korea and in parts of Africa, and so many other places.
There are days I would love to have a job – paying or volunteer – where I could make a real difference. Certainly my hubs and I financially support missions that bring soya milk to orphans in Korea and education to street kids in the Ukraine. But it feels very many steps removed.
And for that I think I just need to be very grateful.