Reiner Frommer was born in Berlin in 1938. After the severe bombing of the city in 1943, he spent his childhood in a village in Swabia before moving to Hesse, where his father owned a photographt business.
The wood artist Egon Schwarz, better known as Schnitzer Benni (Carver Benni) has made hundreds of masks.
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The Kremlin imposes Putin's version of history on Russian schools and mercenaries are coming into class to tell of their "heroic deeds" at the front.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has done everything it can to teach children the 'correct' story about the war. A story in which Ukraine as a nation has no right to exist, Russian soldiers act as 'liberators' of the oppressed and Russian history is full of heroic deeds.
The education policy serves a clear purpose. After all:
"wars are not won by generals, but by teachers and priests," Putin
quoted the words of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in his 2023 end-of-year
speech.
Since September 2022, Russian schoolchildren have started the week by singing the national anthem and raising the flag. That year, the subject of “Conversation about the Important” was also made mandatory, which aims to spread “Russian values.” In addition, the “Principles of Defense of the Fatherland” curriculum was introduced.
In some Russian regions, young people are taught how to use Kalashnikovs and hand grenades, how to dig trenches and what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. In view of the falling birth rate, schools must also place great emphasis on the family. At the end of 2023, “traditional” family values were legally enshrined in the school system.
Schools that refuse to follow the instructions risk government inspections, fines and even closure. The risk of being denounced by parents, colleagues or students leads to a culture of fear at schools and universities, according to teachers.
In recent years, patriotic youth organizations have also been springing up like mushrooms in Russia. In 2015, with funding from the Ministry of Defense, the 'Young Army' (Joenarmia) was founded, considered by many to be a modern version of the communist youth organization Komsomol. By becoming a member, the young cadets with their red berets hope to increase their career opportunities. The organization is estimated to have almost a hundred thousand members in Russia and neighboring countries such as Kazakhstan, Belarus and Azerbaijan. In 2022, the organization was put on the European sanctions list.
In 2016 I published a post on 'Goddamn this War!', by Jacques Tardi - still one of the best anti-war books ever, in my opinion.
French graphic novelist Jacques Tardi (1946) is often credited solely as Tardi.
In the English language, many of Tardi's books are published by Fantagraphics Books, edited and translated by Fantagraphics' co-founder Kim Thompson.
In 2013, Tardi was nominated as a Chevalier in France's Legion of Honour, the country's highest distinction. However, he turned down the distinction, citing that he will "remain a free man and not be held hostage by any political power whatsoever.
In 2012, he published ‘I, René Tardi, prisoner of war at Stalag II-B’, based on his father's memories of his captivity during the Second World War, followed by ‘My Return Home’ and ‘After the War’.
Léo Malet (1909–1996) was a French crime novelist and surrealist. He was known for creating the Parisian private eye Nestor Burma.
His books have been made into films and Nestor Buma has been created into a series of graphic novels by Tardi.
The Children's Train (Il treno dei bambini) is an Italian film co-written and directed by Cristina Comencini, based on the novel of the same name by Viola Ardone. It premiered at the 19th Rome Film Festival on 20 October 2024 and was released on Netflix on 4 December 2024.
In 1946, a Neapolitan boy travels to northern Italy to live with a host family as part of the treni della felicità (trains of happiness) initiative. It was part of a movement to transport poor southern Italian children to northern families who could support them in the years after World War II.
The real-life events inspiring the movie began once the Italian Communist Party took control of Italy following the nation’s collapse in World War II. Italy’s military and economic failures brought the nation to an all-time low as the war ended in their unconditional surrender, with many impoverished families dying from starvation or exposure to the elements. In order to curtail some of these unnecessary deaths and reform their nation, the Communist Party was forced to take extreme measures, including rounding up impoverished children in Italy’s poorest regions and shipping them North to be sponsored by wealthier families via train.
A dilemma: do I publish a post on Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died yesterday 7 January, 2025...
Needless to say, no glorification here, but since he did wear berets, be it mainly military, he deserves a place here.
Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928-2025), was a French far-right
politician who served as president of the National Front from 1972 to 2011 and
honorary president of the same party from 2011 to 2015.
Le Pen started his political career as president of the Association Corporative des étudiants en droit, an association of law students whose main occupation was to engage in street brawls against the "Cocos" (communists). He was excluded from this organisation in 1951.
After receiving his law degree, Le Pen enlisted in the Foreign Legion. He arrived in French Indochina after the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu. Le Pen voluntarily reengaged himself for two to three months in the Foreign Legion in 1957 and was then sent to Algeria (1957) as an intelligence officer. He was accused of having engaged in torture.
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| Jean-Marie Le Pen decorated by General Massu, at the Villa Sésini, in Algiers, at the end of March 1957 |
In 1972, Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party. His daughter Marine took the party’s leadership in 2011 and expelled him four years later, seeking -unsuccessfully- to distance the movement from his extremist reputation. The party has since been renamed the National Rally (RN).
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Manès Sperber (1905 –1984) was an Austrian-French novelist, essayist and psychologist. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Jan Heger and N.A. Menlos.
Sperber was born in Zabłotów, in Austrian Galicia (today Zabolotiv, Ukraine), where he grew up in the shtetl of Zabłotów in a Hasidic family.
In 1916 the family fled from war to Vienna, where Sperber who, having lost faith, at 13 had refused to do his bar mitzvah, joined the Jewish Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. There he met Alfred Adler, the founder of individual psychology, and became a student and co-worker. Adler broke with him in 1932 because of differences in opinion about the connection of individual psychology and Marxism.
In 1927 Sperber had moved to Berlin and joined the Communist Party. He lectured at the Berliner Gesellschaft für Individualpsychologie, an institute for individual psychology in Berlin.
After Hitler had taken power Sperber was taken to jail but was released after a few weeks on the grounds that he was an Austrian citizen. He emigrated first to Yugoslavia and then in 1934 to Paris where he worked for the Communist International.
In 1938 he left the party because of the Stalinist purges
within the party. In his writing he started to deal with totalitarianism and
the role of the individual within society (Zur Analyse der Tyrannis).
In 1939 Sperber volunteered for the French Army. After the defeat, he took refuge in Cagnes, in the so-called "zone libre" (free zone) of France, and had to flee with his family to Switzerland in 1942, when the deportation of Jews started in that zone too.
After the end of the war, in 1945, he returned to Paris, and worked as a writer and as a senior editor at the Calmann-Lévy publishing house.
"Rzut Beretem" is a Polish expression that literally means "throw of a beret", figuratively used to indicate something is "a stone's throw away", "not far".
