Tag: Gestapo

The Last Checkmate: A Novel Book Review

When we talk about the Holocaust, we sometimes forget The Righteous Among the Nations. These are non-Jews who put their lives and safety aside to save their Jewish neighbors.

The Last Checkmate: A Novel, by Gabriella Saab, was published last year. Maria Florkowska, a Polish-Catholic teenage girl, has been forced to grow up quickly. The only connection to her life before World War II is her love of chess. A member of the Polish underground, Maria, along with the rest of her family, is caught by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz.

After her parents and siblings are murdered, Maria is initially stuck in an emotional cycle of grief and anger. When one of the camp’s commanders notices that she plays chess well, he decides to use her skill to entertain the guards. This opens the door to doing everything she can to get him transferred to another camp. When they met again at the war’s end, Maria challenges him to one more game, not knowing the outcome.

I truly enjoyed this book. If nothing, Maria is proof that there are good people in this world. It also shows that when it seems darkest, there is always some spark to keep us going. I love Maria’s sass, I love her intelligence, and I love her fight to stay alive.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely?

The Last Checkmate: A Novel is available wherever books are sold.

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Republican Fuckery: MTG’s Gazpacho Comment & You Know Who’s Burning Documents

When it comes to the United States, we want to believe that the people who work at the highest levels of our government are good faith actors, even if we do not agree with them.

The last few years have proven us wrong.

Last week, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene misspoke when she referred to Capitol police as Gazpacho police. Gazpacho is a type of soup.

“Not only do we have the DC jail, which is the DC gulag, now we have Nancy Pelosi’s Gazpacho Police spying on members of Congress,”

https://giphy.com/gifs/seinfeld-soup-no-for-you-j2pOFyuTJqWj9S5qdE

What she meant to say was Gestapo. In Europe during World War II, they were the undercover arm of the police and were known for not being subtle or gentle in doing their job. I would love to laugh at her, knowing that this is not the first stupid comment she has made and it will likely not be the last. But I can’t. Once more the inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery is being used in a way that at best is misunderstood and at worst disrespectful.

In other news, he who shall not be named is accused of violating the Presidential Records Act. It requires all outgoing Presidential administrations to transfer all documentation to the National Archives. In a move that surprises no one, he is accused of taking boxes of classified documents to his home in Florida and destroying other paperwork along the way.

I don’t know about anyone else, this screams that he has something to hide. When someone is innocent of the crimes they are being accused of, they act in a certain manner. When they are guilty and know that they have done something wrong, they do anything and everything in their power to hide the evidence. The hypocrisy and silence from the right compared to the accusations leveled at Hillary Clinton during the last days of the 2016 Presidential election says it all.

Just another day of Republican fuckery in America.

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