Thanks Murray, I'll keep it in mind. But it was not representing any 
romantic notion. Nor was there the idea of human-ness returned by the nazi. 
What struck me that, once the guard was addressed in a totally different 
frame of reference, he fell apart, But the whole incident only lasted a 
second, after which 'normal' camplife returned. Greetings from Holland where 
we remembered the Holocaust just a few days ago! Francina
Pien Valk
[log in to unmask]
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Murray Schwartz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:14 PM
Subject: Re: An impossible question


> Dear Francina,
>
> I haven't heard this story before, and I read very many accounts of 
> Holocaust experience.  I have two misgivings about it: (1) It sounds false 
> and sentimental, and would have to be carefully verified before I would 
> lend it credibility, and (2) If it does turn out to be historically valid 
> in some form, it should not be used to misrepresent the extent or 
> character of Nazi and German brutality by implying that "human gestures" 
> had any meaningful effect on the horror.  There are similar stories that 
> have been verified, such as the camp guard who fell in love with a woman 
> who used his infatuation to help save many children, but all such stories 
> taken together play a miniscule role in the full history of Holocaust 
> experience.
>
> Warm regards, Murray
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion Group for Psychology and the Arts [[log in to unmask]] 
> On Behalf Of Francina Valk [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 4:48 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: An impossible question
>
> Dear list members,
> as  a faithful, but in the last few years, passive, 'reading only' member, 
> now engaged in the pangs of finishing a dissertation, I dare to bother you 
> with an impossible question. A few years ago I read about some one , I 
> think he was some high official with a south-american sounding name - 
> writing about a most striking incident in one of the European 
> concentration camps. What his story boiled down to was that by addressing 
> one of the nazi-camp-guards and pointing to a lovely spring-greening tree 
> in the dreary camp surroundings: 'Look, how beautiful!' he totally upset 
> the guard by ignoring the whole deathly entourage that the latter 
> represented and of which he was part. The clou was that, once drawn out of 
> that inhuman entourage by a human gesture 'look how beautiful! the guard 
> was visibly, totally, at a loss how to act!  This incident, and its power 
> to break through the unquestionable, dreary and oppressive fixity of 
> camprelations fascinated me , and I want to use it in my dissertati
> Pien Valk
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>