Erich Maria Remarque

Cafe Society
1

I have mentioned before that I am rereading “All Quiet On The Western Front.” I decided to research the author a little further.

He had a life you would expect for the time but I was taken aback - but not surprised by the Nazi persecution of him.
Very chilling was this part I found in Wiki:

In 1943 the Nazis arrested his sister Elfriede, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a short trial she was found guilty of ‘undermining morality’. The verdict states verbatim that she is convicted, “as her brother is beyond our reach at this moment”. Elfriede was decapitated with an axe on December 16, 1943.

2

He also wrote the book that was horribly mangled into Bobby Deerfield.

I love the book, but damn the movie sucks. Seems to have totally missed the point of the book.

3

It’s things like this that people conveniently forget when they are absolutely certain that they would have resisted.

4

Googling around a bit I found that the charge against Elfriede Scholz née Remark was Wehrkraftzersetzung (i.e. undermining morale not morality), and that the offense was remarking to a customer (she was a dressmaker) that the war was lost.

5

Read ‘Spark of life’.