GRGR Re: German sadism

[Doug Millison]

At 3:48 PM +0200 4/11/00, Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote:
>when you take a look at the
>     labor market data, you'll see that there was probably less structural
>     discrimination against jews in germany than in the usa or in gb. that's
>     also true for academia.

It remains true that the U.S. and the U.K. did not move from discrimination
against Jews to a Final Solution as Germany did.

Which is not to say that people outside Germany remain free of complicity
in the Holocaust. Through the kinds of interlocking boards of directors,
investment, etc. that Pynchon illustrates in GR, international Capital
benefited from Holocaust slave labor and Nazi crimes. I believe that's one
of the points that GR makes rather forcefully if  indirectly.

Putting the Holocaust in that sort of context doesn't stop Pynchon from
putting Holocaust crimes -- of the ugliest sort, right out of the
documentary films that were widely played for school kids and on TV as late
as  the early '60s when I was in elementary school --  in the center of GR
(physically, the book falls open at Pokler's story, and in terms of the
story's action and metaphor, the A4 rocket leads inexorably to Dora), nor
does it stop Pynchon from linking these crimes directly to a German citizen
just doing his job, Pokler.  While Pynchon does a lot of things in GR, this
is not least among them.

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