Classics Considered

In his memoir Open Heart , Elie Wiesel takes us through his experiences surrounding his 2011 open heart surgery.  Wiesel is famous for his Night trilogy, and here some of the same themes come back in short, fleeting chapters - the dark memories of life in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, as well as the perennial question: why does God allow His children to suffer evil?  What should a Jewish person's response be in times of persecution or pain?  Question marks abound in this short work, underlining the great despair we may sometimes feel when evil touches our lives. One reason I picked up this book was to understand something of what a patient experiences during this medical procedure.  My grandma has faced a myriad of health issues, including two heart surgeries; she endured them with grace even while she was in terrible pain.  What could she have been feeling?  I have never asked her, choosing instead (as with other personal questions) to seek another avenue of ...

In The Sea and Poison , we find one Japanese author's perspective on the horrific human experimentation carried out by Unit 731 "doctors" in World War II. A small addendum to my comment in this episode, that there were "no Nuremberg trials, to speak of."  The Soviets actually staged their own show trials for some of the Unit 731 personnel.  However, sources indicate that the sentences were light and may also have been exchanged for data.  To me, this is hardly the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials, where several nations (not only the USSR) took part in the trial and the sentences included 12 executions and seven imprisonments. Sources / Further Reading: "Unmasking Horror -- A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity" - NYT article, 1995 "Unit 731: Japan's biological force" - BBC article, 2002 "Japanese veteran admits vivisection tests on PoWs" - Guardian article, (2006) "Department of ...