Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Bill Leebens on April 20, 2000 at 19:44:45:

In Reply to: Re: sounds like... posted by Victor Khomenko on April 18, 2000 at 14:48:03:

My dad was in WW2--ship's dentist on the USS Indianapolis--yes, the ship Quint talks about in Jaws. My father-in-law was in WW2--signal corps in Europe; he was in the group that first entered Auschwitz.

My point is that I BELIEVE WW2 happened, it has a contextual reality for me. My generation (I'm 43) is probably the last with a direct connection to that awful war. I remember Collier's Illustrated History of WW2, seeing those pictures of bodies stacked like cordwood,when I was 6 of 7. How many growing up today believe in the scale of such horrors? We hear of aberrant rage every day in the schools and on the highways, but hearing, in today's world of CNN and the net, of WW2, the idea of such a massive bureaucracy of genocide seems laughable.

Victor's disgust is palpable, and I think, justified. Stalag 17 (and its seeming offspring, the even sicker Hogan's Heroes) and even The Great Escape presented a whitewashed war, one reduced to Little Rascals-like hijinks. My father's generation was not well served by films such as these which, curiously, were usually made by them. I don't understand it, didn't even in my rebellious teen years (but then, I started reading the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when I was eight). Just another of life's mysteries.

Cheers, Bill.