I’m watching the documentary “The Decent One” about Heinrich Himmler.<\/p>\n
Variety reviews<\/a>:<\/p>\n On a basic level, \u201cThe Decent One\u201d is a biographical documentary. Lapa traces the roots of Himmler\u2019s anti-Semitism to his days at college, a period when the future Nazi zealot routinely discussed \u201cthe Jewish question\u201d with fraternity brothers, and felt simultaneously attracted and repelled by \u201cslutty but stunning Jewish girls\u201d he encountered in taverns and elsewhere. Himmler later courted and eventually married Margarete, a woman seven years his senior, who lovingly nicknamed him \u201cHeinie,\u201d swapped playfully flirtatious letters with him, and complained only whenever a \u201cnaughty\u201d movement \u2014 National Socialism \u2014 kept them apart.<\/p>\n Evidently, truth really can be stranger, and more darkly comical, than fiction. At one point, Marga (as Himmler calls her) writes: \u201cWhy are you going to a Hitler rally when you know what he will say?\u201d Himmler patiently replies: \u201cI must go to Hitler rallies, because I organize them and am jointly responsible for them.\u201d Later, he pointedly reminds her: \u201cI can\u2019t always be as \u2018good\u2019 as you want me to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Even as Marga insists she knows \u201cso little about politics,\u201d despite her own casual anti-Semitism, Himmler continues his methodical evildoing as one of Hitler\u2019s most enthusiastic lackeys. He writes of visiting the first concentration camp in Dachau, \u201cthe new home for 5,000 Communist and Social Democrat nuisances,\u201d and remains ever receptive to suggestions for more efficient ways to eliminate Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other undesirables on a massive scale.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I hate to confess it, but Himmler’s attitude to homosexuality, apparently, mirrors Judaism’s. He says in the doc: “All sexual matters…are no longer private. They are a matter of life and death for the nation. I’ll give a real life example. Department Head X is homosexual and is looking for an assistant from the young clerks. He won’t choose someone based on his merits. He won’t look for the best legal mind. He will select another homosexual. These people can recognize their own kind from across a room. Homosexuality undermines the state’s achievements and destroys its foundations. Sadly, we don’t have it as easy as our forefathers. They only had to deal with a few cases of perversion.”<\/p>\n * I have an Orthodox therapist friend who during graduate school was asked to read anti-Semitic literature (I don’t know which kind) for a week and she reported to me that within an hour or two of studying it, it all started making sense. That frightened her to death and when the experiment was over, she never went back to that stuff but powered on with her Judaism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m watching the documentary “The Decent One” about Heinrich Himmler. Variety reviews: On a basic level, \u201cThe Decent One\u201d is a biographical documentary. Lapa traces the roots of Himmler\u2019s anti-Semitism to his days at college, a period when the future … Continue reading