Denial

Finally finished watching Laurence Rees' series, Auschwitz:.... Two things stuck in my mind particularly. First, one of the guards there, who they showed at various points, came over as pretty obnoxious. But then they said he had decided to come forward to tell the truth and give the lie to the holocaust-deniers.

Second, a Jewish man returning to his fomer home in Poland: the man living there now was convinced he had come back to look for his hidden 'hoard'. When he went back again the next year, the house was uninhabitable. The current owner had torn it apart looking for the imagined treasure.

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Emmanuelle Béart, Ambassadrice de l'UNICEF (Photo: France Inter), interview on Question Directe, 5 Jul .

She played Gilberte in the film 'Time Regained', shown recently on BBC4. I bought a digital box just to see that. (Update (22 Jul): the FT's preview described John Malkovich as 'almost the ideal Charlus'. To my mind, he's too thin. I distinctly remember Proust describing him as having a paunch (embonpoint).  )

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I have commented on Food wars and Fighting back.
Bombs in London: overheard in the pub mention of 'the 100,000 the Americans killed in Iraq'.