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Last spring, when the pandemic forced a global lockdown, Holocaust survivor Marion Ein Lewin wrote a moving piece for this newspaper, extolling the power of the human spirit and calling on everyone to summon their strength and resilience.
“Celebrating Passover during the COVID-19 pandemic brings back memories of Seders spent in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, starting when my twin brother and I were 6 years old,” began Lewin’s op-ed. “At 82, we are in all likelihood the last surviving twins of the Holocaust in any case, a shrinking remnant of the 5% of Jews from Holland who were deported to Nazi camps and returned.”
Book World: The real housewives of the Third Reich: Wealth, power and petty rivalries
Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, The Washington Post
Jan. 8, 2021
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Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler s Germany
By James Wyllie
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Who among us hasn t felt that schadenfreudian thrill of wondering, How on earth can she be married to him? (Apologies, Ms. Chao!) At once superior and voyeuristic, the question assumes that the woman is perfectly nice, even charming, while her husband is - by dint of affect, arrogance, offensive opinions or lack of appropriate social inhibition - actively repellent. The mystery of any marriage becomes more mysterious still when the character flaws of one half of the couple are so disproportionate to the apparent rectitude of the other. What brought them together? Why does she stay? Is he really a different and more appealing person than the one who is talking with his mouth full at dinner?