THE NEIGHBOR FROM HELL

by Bob Walsh

A couple of days ago I dropped in to my locan Barnes & Nobel to get a couple more E-Books for my Nook. On my way towards the door I noticed a small hardback book with 20 significant SCOTUS decisions. It was only $8 and a couple of them I was totally unfamiliar with so I bought it. On my way to the register I noticfed a current (12-15-17) copy of Newsweek. Generally speaking I regard Newsweek as a hopeless, left-wing fish wrapper, but the cover story seemed to be about the Gun Culture in the U. S. I thought it might be amusing to see their take on it so I bought it, even after I found out it cost $9 for 48 pages printed on second-rate paper. However, that isn't the real story here.

There was a really interesting book review in it. So I guess this is a review of a review. The book is called HITLER, MY NEIGHBOR: MEMORIES FROM A JEWISH CHILDHOOD and was written by Edgar Feuchtwanger, now 93. While he was a young man, up until about the age of 14, he lived across the street from Adolph Hitler. He may be the only person still living who had any significant direct, personal contact with Hitler.

Young Edgar was a Jew. His family were prominent in the publishing world. His dad was shipped to Dachau but was later released. (That did happen but was rare. That train ride was usually one way.) When Edgar was 14, in 1939, he was sent to England to live.

The review draws some interesting (and expected) parallels between Hitler and Trump. It goes into the idea that NOBODY thought Hitler could get elected, until he did. Nobody thought Trump could get elected, until he did. Hitler was scary to a lot of people. Trump is scary to a lot of people (though many of those people are snowflakes, idiots and assholes).

At any event if you are interested in the history of that time and place it may very well be worth the read. Not many people said HELLO to the devil face to face on the street and are still around to tell the tale.