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MarcMerm

MarcMerm

West Hempstead, NY
April 2007

DEC 28, 2007 10:09 PM

ARTandWATER said:
"Reprogramming"? So, who does the programming? Who is the great, all knowing beingt who will "program" us correctly? Hmmmmm. Nazi propaganda was pretty good at programming an entire nation. Scientology is pretty good a programming celebrities. Fundamentalist anything is on a mission to reprogram people.



I can't even reprogram my VCR when the power goes out. I'm going to reprogram Hitler?

MarcMerm

MarcMerm

West Hempstead, NY
April 2007

DEC 28, 2007 10:12 PM

DownNeck said:
things i have learned because of will smith:

1) will smith can make a truly insightful philosophical statement
2) the jewish defense league is run by racist retards
3) every single person objecting to will smith's original statement is mentally deficient
4) will smith is a pussy for not using the words "fucking idiots" in direct description of every single person objecting to his comments



On the other hand, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) had no issue with Will Smith.

I, being Jewish and therefore able to speak for all Jews (sarc), saw this article on CNN, read what Smith was responding to, and think the reporter asked a stupid question which led Smith to say this and I quite agree with it. No one's waking up in the morning looking to be evil. Who wakes up in the morning and says let me get drunk tonight and run over 10 babies? After the guy's drunk it may seem reasonable, but he didn't set out to do it. He was warped by alcohol. And Hitler was warped by the big, muscular Jews in the gym making fun of how scrawny he was (Family Guy reference)

MarcMerm

MarcMerm

West Hempstead, NY
April 2007

DEC 28, 2007 10:16 PM

fountainofdreams said:
No, the reason nobody likes black jellybeans is that they taste like ASS.



Did you ever think that maybe ass tastes like black jellybeans? Reminds me of the joke about Eve washing off after sex in the river and God complaining about getting the smell out of the fish. :-)

goatinamoat

goatinamoat

New York, NY
March 2006

DEC 28, 2007 10:16 PM

SleepyLady publishes an article implying the "official" Jewish position (as if there possibly could be one) on Will Smith is defined by the JDL??? Which of course leads to posts about Jews being overly concerned about anti-Semitism. Articles like this are commonly referred to as "talking trash". What next, we interview the KKK on when a black person says something mildly controversial about a white person? Thanks for the hate.

MarcMerm

MarcMerm

West Hempstead, NY
April 2007

DEC 28, 2007 10:18 PM

IDGAS said:

shapeshifter23 said:
Americans (Jews included) need to spend more time worrying about what their own government is doing and less about what Hollywood celebrities are saying.

and thinking!

Plus 1 (it was I was trying to say in my first point)



How dare you imply that my celebrities or politicians think!

MarcMerm

MarcMerm

West Hempstead, NY
April 2007

DEC 28, 2007 10:23 PM

goatinamoat said:
SleepyLady publishes an article implying the "official" Jewish position (as if there possibly could be one) on Will Smith is defined by the JDL??? Which of course leads to posts about Jews being overly concerned about anti-Semitism. Articles like this are commonly referred to as "talking trash". What next, we interview the KKK on when a black person says something mildly controversial about a white person? Thanks for the hate.



I guess she never heard the two Jews, three opinions...

r00kers

r00kers

Nederland, CO
February 2003

DEC 28, 2007 10:36 PM

I see his words as pretty thoughtful in one sense, and of course fairly impolitic.
The JDL's shrieking response is amazingly over the top.

defaultx

defaultx

I'm lost
February 2006

DEC 28, 2007 10:58 PM

Smith told Scotland's Daily Record: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today. I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was good. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming."


Auschwitz Slave Recalls Loading Corpses in Ovens, Murdered Baby

Interview by Adam L. Freeman

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Shlomo Venezia was a slave laborer in the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

For eight months in 1944, he loaded the corpses of his fellow Jews into the Nazi ovens -- 12 hours a day, seven days a week, cadaver after cadaver until it became a mechanical task, like feeding a heating furnace with cords of wood.

``Men are animals,'' Venezia says, recalling in a conversation in his Rome clothing shop how he hardened himself. ``They resist things you can't ever imagine.''

In his memoir, ``Sonderkommando Auschwitz,'' Venezia provides an unflinching account of the barbarous banality of the Nazi death machine. Originally published in French as an interview with a journalist, a new Italian version of Venezia's story is written as a continuous narrative, offering page after page of grim insights.

He recalls, for example, the day he met his father's emaciated cousin in an undressing room at the gas chambers. Venezia offered him the only solace possible, he writes -- some sardines and a lie that the Zyklon B would kill him quickly.

``It was just terrible to have to lie, but there was no way around it,'' Venezia explains. ``I tried in some way to make the horrible situation easier.''

The Sonderkommandos, as the prisoners working at the gas chambers were known, were privy to how the Nazis went about their butchery. Determined to keep their methods secret, the Nazis killed members of these units at regular intervals, making Venezia's memoir rare.

Mother Murdered

He was 20 years old at the time; he will turn 84 on Dec. 29. His own mother was murdered at the camp while he worked at the ovens -- one of more than 1 million Jews killed there.

As we talk over a table of ties in his one-room shop near the Trevi Fountain, Venezia remains almost motionless. His Hungarian-born wife, Marika, tends to shoppers entering through the glass door. At one point, she places a box of coffee-filled chocolates between us.

The descendant of an old Jewish family from Spain and Italy, Venezia was born in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, where he grew up fatherless and poor, speaking Greek, Italian and Ladino, a Spanish-Jewish dialect.

Poverty sharpened his wits, he says. Working the black market in Nazi-occupied Greece, Venezia learned some German, which may have saved his life. In the camp, he escaped beatings by understanding when guards shouted out the number tattooed on his arm: 182727.

Lifeless Mona Lisa

Cutting the hair off cadavers, pulling their gold teeth and dragging them to the furnaces became mechanical, Venezia says, because it was the only way to stay sane. The routine broke down only once, he recalls, when the prisoners were confronted with the lifeless body of a woman possessing ``the absolute beauty of an ancient statue.''

She looked like ``a woman in a painting,'' Venezia says, pausing for a moment in reflection. ``Like Mona Lisa.'' Yet there was nothing to do but cremate her.

Another day, his unit found a live baby trying to suck its dead mother's breast among a heap of corpses in a gas chamber. The prisoners watched without protest as a Nazi guard unloaded his pistol into the infant.

``There were so many terrible things that happened,'' he says. ``Every day it was something else.''

Suicide Saved, Gassed

Venezia also witnessed the sometimes absurd machinations of the Nazi bureaucracy. When one prisoner attempted suicide, he recalls, a doctor treated his self-inflicted wounds, making him fit to be gassed.

As the Soviet Army neared Auschwitz, confusion swept through the camp, allowing Sonderkommandos like Venezia and his brother to mix with other prisoners. German soldiers marched some 5,000 survivors for days through the freezing Polish winter until they were out of reach of Soviet troops. Then they herded the prisoners onto trains bound for Austria, where they were eventually freed by U.S. forces.

Venezia never talked about Auschwitz -- even with his wife and children -- until he visited the camp in 1992. At the time, Italy was experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism, and he decided to tell his story.

Since then, he has returned to Auschwitz 46 times, often accompanying groups. He gives talks at schools across Italy, and he spoke to Rome soccer team Lazio after striker Paolo Di Canio was suspended for making Fascist salutes.

Venezia's pain didn't bring tears, he says, until 1957, when he visited Israel to be reunited for the first time with his sister. He still has nightmares about the camp, and mundane things can bring the horrors rushing back, he says.

``If I pass a brick factory, it can remind me of the crematoriums,'' he says. ``In a restaurant, when people leave a meal half eaten, it brings back memories of when there was nothing to eat. These things will never leave me.''

``Sonderkommando Auschwitz: La Verita Sulle Camere a Gas'' (``The Truth About the Gas Chambers'') is published by Rizzoli (236 pages, 17.50 euros). Polity Press of Britain owns the global rights for an English version of the book, which is slated for release next year.

Zube

Zube

Boise, ID
April 2006

DEC 28, 2007 11:51 PM

defaultx said:
Smith told Scotland's Daily Record: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today. I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was good. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming."


Auschwitz Slave Recalls Loading Corpses in Ovens, Murdered Baby

Interview by Adam L. Freeman

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Shlomo Venezia was a slave laborer in the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

For eight months in 1944, he loaded the corpses of his fellow Jews into the Nazi ovens -- 12 hours a day, seven days a week, cadaver after cadaver until it became a mechanical task, like feeding a heating furnace with cords of wood.

``Men are animals,'' Venezia says, recalling in a conversation in his Rome clothing shop how he hardened himself. ``They resist things you can't ever imagine.''

In his memoir, ``Sonderkommando Auschwitz,'' Venezia provides an unflinching account of the barbarous banality of the Nazi death machine. Originally published in French as an interview with a journalist, a new Italian version of Venezia's story is written as a continuous narrative, offering page after page of grim insights.

He recalls, for example, the day he met his father's emaciated cousin in an undressing room at the gas chambers. Venezia offered him the only solace possible, he writes -- some sardines and a lie that the Zyklon B would kill him quickly.

``It was just terrible to have to lie, but there was no way around it,'' Venezia explains. ``I tried in some way to make the horrible situation easier.''

The Sonderkommandos, as the prisoners working at the gas chambers were known, were privy to how the Nazis went about their butchery. Determined to keep their methods secret, the Nazis killed members of these units at regular intervals, making Venezia's memoir rare.

Mother Murdered

He was 20 years old at the time; he will turn 84 on Dec. 29. His own mother was murdered at the camp while he worked at the ovens -- one of more than 1 million Jews killed there.

As we talk over a table of ties in his one-room shop near the Trevi Fountain, Venezia remains almost motionless. His Hungarian-born wife, Marika, tends to shoppers entering through the glass door. At one point, she places a box of coffee-filled chocolates between us.

The descendant of an old Jewish family from Spain and Italy, Venezia was born in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, where he grew up fatherless and poor, speaking Greek, Italian and Ladino, a Spanish-Jewish dialect.

Poverty sharpened his wits, he says. Working the black market in Nazi-occupied Greece, Venezia learned some German, which may have saved his life. In the camp, he escaped beatings by understanding when guards shouted out the number tattooed on his arm: 182727.

Lifeless Mona Lisa

Cutting the hair off cadavers, pulling their gold teeth and dragging them to the furnaces became mechanical, Venezia says, because it was the only way to stay sane. The routine broke down only once, he recalls, when the prisoners were confronted with the lifeless body of a woman possessing ``the absolute beauty of an ancient statue.''

She looked like ``a woman in a painting,'' Venezia says, pausing for a moment in reflection. ``Like Mona Lisa.'' Yet there was nothing to do but cremate her.

Another day, his unit found a live baby trying to suck its dead mother's breast among a heap of corpses in a gas chamber. The prisoners watched without protest as a Nazi guard unloaded his pistol into the infant.

``There were so many terrible things that happened,'' he says. ``Every day it was something else.''

Suicide Saved, Gassed

Venezia also witnessed the sometimes absurd machinations of the Nazi bureaucracy. When one prisoner attempted suicide, he recalls, a doctor treated his self-inflicted wounds, making him fit to be gassed.

As the Soviet Army neared Auschwitz, confusion swept through the camp, allowing Sonderkommandos like Venezia and his brother to mix with other prisoners. German soldiers marched some 5,000 survivors for days through the freezing Polish winter until they were out of reach of Soviet troops. Then they herded the prisoners onto trains bound for Austria, where they were eventually freed by U.S. forces.

Venezia never talked about Auschwitz -- even with his wife and children -- until he visited the camp in 1992. At the time, Italy was experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism, and he decided to tell his story.

Since then, he has returned to Auschwitz 46 times, often accompanying groups. He gives talks at schools across Italy, and he spoke to Rome soccer team Lazio after striker Paolo Di Canio was suspended for making Fascist salutes.

Venezia's pain didn't bring tears, he says, until 1957, when he visited Israel to be reunited for the first time with his sister. He still has nightmares about the camp, and mundane things can bring the horrors rushing back, he says.

``If I pass a brick factory, it can remind me of the crematoriums,'' he says. ``In a restaurant, when people leave a meal half eaten, it brings back memories of when there was nothing to eat. These things will never leave me.''

``Sonderkommando Auschwitz: La Verita Sulle Camere a Gas'' (``The Truth About the Gas Chambers'') is published by Rizzoli (236 pages, 17.50 euros). Polity Press of Britain owns the global rights for an English version of the book, which is slated for release next year.


Wow man, you really work hard at your forum trolling, don't you?

Zube

Zube

Boise, ID
April 2006

DEC 28, 2007 11:53 PM

GonzoChaote said:
Wow, calling on Obama to answer for Will Smith? That right there has to be more offensive than anything Smith actually said.


Is Obama even black enough to repudiate Will Smith's comments?

RumpusParable

RumpusParable

Augusta, GA
April 2003

DEC 29, 2007 12:12 AM

Poor Smith..

TedKoppel

TedKoppel

Glendale, AZ
March 2004

DEC 29, 2007 01:58 AM

thefreak said:
Both the JDL and the Anti-Defamation League have already accepted his clarification.

-TM


It didn't need clarification for anyone who isn't stupid. Which their members no doubt noticed. That JDL statement seems very political, inasmuch as it goes against everything they had said before, from, "If people do not understand how idiotic and insensitive it was to make such a comment, it is like a Jew saying that James Earl Ray, the assassin of Rev. Martin Luther King, was basically a good person who did a 'bad thing.'" to "the Jewish Defense League supports the Hollywood writers and hopes the strike is settled soon so that Smith, a very talented actor, can continue doing what he does so well." They overstepped their bounds and they got called on it. Proof: they totally ignored the fact that he described himself as "incensed and infuriated" that he even had to make the clarification.

Unrelated, I really resented the implication that by saying that he doesn't have a problem with Scientology, Will Smith is a Scientologist in training. And I say this as a person with big problems with Scientology. But fuck - being friends with Tom Cruise and trotting out the old, "I believe in a virgin birth, so who am I to judge?" doesn't warrant all these accusations. Frankly, it reads like some paranoid person from the McCarthy era talking about them Commies.

Add to this that the main thrust of this article was, as far as I could tell, about the Hitler comment, and you noticeably went to pains to make the comments about Scientology a part of the story, which they weren't. It really comes across as jumping at shadows.

Mankarlen

Mankarlen

Columbia City, OR
June 2006

DEC 29, 2007 04:48 AM

eeek

wereduck

wereduck

I'm lost
July 2007

DEC 29, 2007 06:00 AM

defaultx said:
Smith told Scotland's Daily Record: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today. I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was good. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming."


Auschwitz Slave Recalls Loading Corpses in Ovens, Murdered Baby

Interview by Adam L. Freeman

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Shlomo Venezia was a slave laborer in the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

For eight months in 1944, he loaded the corpses of his fellow Jews into the Nazi ovens -- 12 hours a day, seven days a week, cadaver after cadaver until it became a mechanical task, like feeding a heating furnace with cords of wood.

``Men are animals,'' Venezia says, recalling in a conversation in his Rome clothing shop how he hardened himself. ``They resist things you can't ever imagine.''

In his memoir, ``Sonderkommando Auschwitz,'' Venezia provides an unflinching account of the barbarous banality of the Nazi death machine. Originally published in French as an interview with a journalist, a new Italian version of Venezia's story is written as a continuous narrative, offering page after page of grim insights.

He recalls, for example, the day he met his father's emaciated cousin in an undressing room at the gas chambers. Venezia offered him the only solace possible, he writes -- some sardines and a lie that the Zyklon B would kill him quickly.

``It was just terrible to have to lie, but there was no way around it,'' Venezia explains. ``I tried in some way to make the horrible situation easier.''

The Sonderkommandos, as the prisoners working at the gas chambers were known, were privy to how the Nazis went about their butchery. Determined to keep their methods secret, the Nazis killed members of these units at regular intervals, making Venezia's memoir rare.

Mother Murdered

He was 20 years old at the time; he will turn 84 on Dec. 29. His own mother was murdered at the camp while he worked at the ovens -- one of more than 1 million Jews killed there.

As we talk over a table of ties in his one-room shop near the Trevi Fountain, Venezia remains almost motionless. His Hungarian-born wife, Marika, tends to shoppers entering through the glass door. At one point, she places a box of coffee-filled chocolates between us.

The descendant of an old Jewish family from Spain and Italy, Venezia was born in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, where he grew up fatherless and poor, speaking Greek, Italian and Ladino, a Spanish-Jewish dialect.

Poverty sharpened his wits, he says. Working the black market in Nazi-occupied Greece, Venezia learned some German, which may have saved his life. In the camp, he escaped beatings by understanding when guards shouted out the number tattooed on his arm: 182727.

Lifeless Mona Lisa

Cutting the hair off cadavers, pulling their gold teeth and dragging them to the furnaces became mechanical, Venezia says, because it was the only way to stay sane. The routine broke down only once, he recalls, when the prisoners were confronted with the lifeless body of a woman possessing ``the absolute beauty of an ancient statue.''

She looked like ``a woman in a painting,'' Venezia says, pausing for a moment in reflection. ``Like Mona Lisa.'' Yet there was nothing to do but cremate her.

Another day, his unit found a live baby trying to suck its dead mother's breast among a heap of corpses in a gas chamber. The prisoners watched without protest as a Nazi guard unloaded his pistol into the infant.

``There were so many terrible things that happened,'' he says. ``Every day it was something else.''

Suicide Saved, Gassed

Venezia also witnessed the sometimes absurd machinations of the Nazi bureaucracy. When one prisoner attempted suicide, he recalls, a doctor treated his self-inflicted wounds, making him fit to be gassed.

As the Soviet Army neared Auschwitz, confusion swept through the camp, allowing Sonderkommandos like Venezia and his brother to mix with other prisoners. German soldiers marched some 5,000 survivors for days through the freezing Polish winter until they were out of reach of Soviet troops. Then they herded the prisoners onto trains bound for Austria, where they were eventually freed by U.S. forces.

Venezia never talked about Auschwitz -- even with his wife and children -- until he visited the camp in 1992. At the time, Italy was experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism, and he decided to tell his story.

Since then, he has returned to Auschwitz 46 times, often accompanying groups. He gives talks at schools across Italy, and he spoke to Rome soccer team Lazio after striker Paolo Di Canio was suspended for making Fascist salutes.

Venezia's pain didn't bring tears, he says, until 1957, when he visited Israel to be reunited for the first time with his sister. He still has nightmares about the camp, and mundane things can bring the horrors rushing back, he says.

``If I pass a brick factory, it can remind me of the crematoriums,'' he says. ``In a restaurant, when people leave a meal half eaten, it brings back memories of when there was nothing to eat. These things will never leave me.''

``Sonderkommando Auschwitz: La Verita Sulle Camere a Gas'' (``The Truth About the Gas Chambers'') is published by Rizzoli (236 pages, 17.50 euros). Polity Press of Britain owns the global rights for an English version of the book, which is slated for release next year.



Was there even a point here?

IDGAS

IDGAS

Jackson Heights, NY
March 2004

DEC 29, 2007 06:13 AM

MarcMerm said:

IDGAS said:

shapeshifter23 said:
Americans (Jews included) need to spend more time worrying about what their own government is doing and less about what Hollywood celebrities are saying.

and thinking!

Plus 1 (it was I was trying to say in my first point)



How dare you imply that my celebrities or politicians think!


:indignant: I never claimed politicians thought

Toku666

Toku666

Columbus, OH
May 2004

DEC 29, 2007 07:49 AM

So, regardless of the fact that I hope it doesn't matter now (and, hell, I may even be on "ignore") but I liked this piece a lot. It may be my rabid anti-Scientology streak, but I think you knocked one out of the park this time.

Kudos, please keep it up.

BlastProcessing

BlastProcessing

Knoxville, TN
OLD SKOOL

DEC 29, 2007 08:48 AM

defaultx said:



If there's a way to Godwin a discussion that's already about Hitler, you're going to find it, aren't you.

goodpoltergeist

goodpoltergeist

Auburn, AL
January 2007

DEC 29, 2007 09:18 AM

He's right. Hitler was just trying to do what he thought would bring about German superiority, he didn't "wake up going 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.'"

It can be said about just about every "evil" person in history. Will Smith was really just trying to say that Hitler wasn't evil because he was trying to be, he was evil because of what he did, which he may or may not have realized was an atrocious thing to do. (Or maybe he really did wake up one day and say to himself "I'm going to kill 11 million people, and be remembered as the most horrific and gruesome human being in history.")

rocky03032003

rocky03032003

United Kingdom
November 2006

DEC 29, 2007 10:09 AM

This all smacks of a political smear campaign, but as SL says WTF is he doing talking about shit like this and therefore giving people rope to hang him.

Rather naive in view of his political affiliation, even if what he said is probably completely accurate!!

JunkyardAngel

JunkyardAngel

San Gabriel, CA
February 2006

DEC 29, 2007 01:53 PM

goatinamoat said:
SleepyLady publishes an article implying the "official" Jewish position (as if there possibly could be one) on Will Smith is defined by the JDL???



I don't think quoting the JDL implies that they stand for all Jews. Maybe you need to get out of your moat more often? shocked

BlastProcessing

BlastProcessing

Knoxville, TN
OLD SKOOL

DEC 29, 2007 01:59 PM

rocky03032003 said:
This all smacks of a political smear campaign, but as SL says WTF is he doing talking about shit like this and therefore giving people rope to hang him.

Rather naive in view of his political affiliation, even if what he said is probably completely accurate!!



Do you realize how using a lynching metaphor to criticize Will Smith for comments which can be misconstrued as racially insensitive makes you look?

JunkyardAngel

JunkyardAngel

San Gabriel, CA
February 2006

DEC 29, 2007 02:22 PM

Oh brother. puke

BlastProcessing

BlastProcessing

Knoxville, TN
OLD SKOOL

DEC 29, 2007 02:40 PM

JunkyardAngel said:
Oh brother. puke



Yeah, okay!

PantherNesmith

PantherNesmith

Gloucester, VA
June 2006

DEC 29, 2007 03:00 PM

BlastProcessing said:

rocky03032003 said:
This all smacks of a political smear campaign, but as SL says WTF is he doing talking about shit like this and therefore giving people rope to hang him.

Rather naive in view of his political affiliation, even if what he said is probably completely accurate!!



Do you realize how using a lynching metaphor to criticize Will Smith for comments which can be misconstrued as racially insensitive makes you look?



owwww.

I didn't even catch that.

Ferretbite

Ferretbite

Mexico
September 2006

DEC 29, 2007 05:21 PM

defaultx said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Smith told Scotland's Daily Record: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today. I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was good. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming."


Auschwitz Slave Recalls Loading Corpses in Ovens, Murdered Baby

Interview by Adam L. Freeman

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Shlomo Venezia was a slave laborer in the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

For eight months in 1944, he loaded the corpses of his fellow Jews into the Nazi ovens -- 12 hours a day, seven days a week, cadaver after cadaver until it became a mechanical task, like feeding a heating furnace with cords of wood.

``Men are animals,'' Venezia says, recalling in a conversation in his Rome clothing shop how he hardened himself. ``They resist things you can't ever imagine.''

In his memoir, ``Sonderkommando Auschwitz,'' Venezia provides an unflinching account of the barbarous banality of the Nazi death machine. Originally published in French as an interview with a journalist, a new Italian version of Venezia's story is written as a continuous narrative, offering page after page of grim insights.

He recalls, for example, the day he met his father's emaciated cousin in an undressing room at the gas chambers. Venezia offered him the only solace possible, he writes -- some sardines and a lie that the Zyklon B would kill him quickly.

``It was just terrible to have to lie, but there was no way around it,'' Venezia explains. ``I tried in some way to make the horrible situation easier.''

The Sonderkommandos, as the prisoners working at the gas chambers were known, were privy to how the Nazis went about their butchery. Determined to keep their methods secret, the Nazis killed members of these units at regular intervals, making Venezia's memoir rare.

Mother Murdered

He was 20 years old at the time; he will turn 84 on Dec. 29. His own mother was murdered at the camp while he worked at the ovens -- one of more than 1 million Jews killed there.

As we talk over a table of ties in his one-room shop near the Trevi Fountain, Venezia remains almost motionless. His Hungarian-born wife, Marika, tends to shoppers entering through the glass door. At one point, she places a box of coffee-filled chocolates between us.

The descendant of an old Jewish family from Spain and Italy, Venezia was born in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, where he grew up fatherless and poor, speaking Greek, Italian and Ladino, a Spanish-Jewish dialect.

Poverty sharpened his wits, he says. Working the black market in Nazi-occupied Greece, Venezia learned some German, which may have saved his life. In the camp, he escaped beatings by understanding when guards shouted out the number tattooed on his arm: 182727.

Lifeless Mona Lisa

Cutting the hair off cadavers, pulling their gold teeth and dragging them to the furnaces became mechanical, Venezia says, because it was the only way to stay sane. The routine broke down only once, he recalls, when the prisoners were confronted with the lifeless body of a woman possessing ``the absolute beauty of an ancient statue.''

She looked like ``a woman in a painting,'' Venezia says, pausing for a moment in reflection. ``Like Mona Lisa.'' Yet there was nothing to do but cremate her.

Another day, his unit found a live baby trying to suck its dead mother's breast among a heap of corpses in a gas chamber. The prisoners watched without protest as a Nazi guard unloaded his pistol into the infant.

``There were so many terrible things that happened,'' he says. ``Every day it was something else.''

Suicide Saved, Gassed

Venezia also witnessed the sometimes absurd machinations of the Nazi bureaucracy. When one prisoner attempted suicide, he recalls, a doctor treated his self-inflicted wounds, making him fit to be gassed.

As the Soviet Army neared Auschwitz, confusion swept through the camp, allowing Sonderkommandos like Venezia and his brother to mix with other prisoners. German soldiers marched some 5,000 survivors for days through the freezing Polish winter until they were out of reach of Soviet troops. Then they herded the prisoners onto trains bound for Austria, where they were eventually freed by U.S. forces.

Venezia never talked about Auschwitz -- even with his wife and children -- until he visited the camp in 1992. At the time, Italy was experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism, and he decided to tell his story.

Since then, he has returned to Auschwitz 46 times, often accompanying groups. He gives talks at schools across Italy, and he spoke to Rome soccer team Lazio after striker Paolo Di Canio was suspended for making Fascist salutes.

Venezia's pain didn't bring tears, he says, until 1957, when he visited Israel to be reunited for the first time with his sister. He still has nightmares about the camp, and mundane things can bring the horrors rushing back, he says.

``If I pass a brick factory, it can remind me of the crematoriums,'' he says. ``In a restaurant, when people leave a meal half eaten, it brings back memories of when there was nothing to eat. These things will never leave me.''

``Sonderkommando Auschwitz: La Verita Sulle Camere a Gas'' (``The Truth About the Gas Chambers'') is published by Rizzoli (236 pages, 17.50 euros). Polity Press of Britain owns the global rights for an English version of the book, which is slated for release next year.




confused

I'm not entirely sure what your goal was with all that. It doesn't prove anything other than war is and will always be atrocious, even more so when you see it through the eyes of those affected by it. It's not even related to the Smith quote you cited, which, by the way is not far from right in the first place. It's not like Hitler was some cartoon villain who woke up, drank his evil tea on his evil cup while reading the evil newspaper then cackled all his way down to a meeting with the Legion of Doom. surreal

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