"But You Did Not Come Back," Marceline Loridan-Ivens - A Review

When I hear and read of the anti-Semitism that has become rampant in the U.S., but perhaps more particularly in Europe, I cringe. When I hear U.S. politicians condemn Israel for genocide I wonder, what has he or she been smoking? Do they understand the harm they do, the ignorance they show of history? Certainly, there is room for political differences, but these accusations and attacks go beyond what is fair or decent. In seventy-eight years of existence, Israel – a nation poor in natural resources – has created a country with the second highest GDP per capita in the Middle East, second to Qatar, a nation with massive offshore petroleum reserves. It is also the freest and most democratic. 

 

This book, really a memoir, is a reminder that the past is never the past.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

But You Did Not Come Back, Marceline Loridan-Ivens

June 26, 2026

 

“Writing to you has helped me. When I talk to you, I don’t 

feel consoled. But I release what is clasped tightly in my heart.”

                                                                                                                         Marceline Loridan-Ivens

                                                                                                                          But You Did Not Come Back, 2015

                                                                                                                          Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018)

 

Around 1950, my father, five years back from having served in the Italian theater with the 10^thMountain Division, admonished me to never forget what the Nazis had done to the Jewish people. And I never have. While there are specific excuses for the rise of Nazism in the 1920s – the humiliation of defeat in the Great War and the subsequent demand for reparations under the Treaty of Versailles – we should not forget that these state-sanctioned atrocities were committed by a country that had produced Beethoven and Bach, Goethe and Schiller, Dürer and Friedrich, Kant and Hegel. Nazism rose not from the barbarism of a tribal people but from the universities, churches and theaters of a civilized nation. The potential for cruelty lies within all of us. We must all be guardians.

 

Marceline Loridan-Ivens story is a reminder that France, another civilized country and the birthplace of Debussy, Hugo, Renoir and Descartes, conspired with Nazi Germany to send Marceline and her father, along with thousands more, to the French internment camp of Drancy. From there she was sent to Birkenau and he to Auschwitz, where he perished. In 1935 Sinclair Lewis published his dystopian novel, It Can’t Happen Here. It can, and it will – if we lose sight of the past, and if we ignore the responsibility we each bear to continue and pass on the civilization we have inherited. 

 

In February 1944 when they were arrested at their chateau in southern France, she was fifteen and he was forty-three. Yet he suspected what was to come. Her book is a letter to her father, a response to a note he smuggled to her (since lost, but which began “To my darling little girl...”), and to his telling her when they were arrested by French police: “You might come back, because you’re young, but I will not come back.” Marceline’s short (100 pages), haunting story makes clear why memories of the Holocaust should never fade. She writes: “If you only knew, all of you, how the camp remains permanently within us. It remains in all our minds, and will until we die.”

 

Anti-Semitism has been rising in Europe and in the United States, often masked as anti-Zionism to make it acceptable. Marceline’s memoir is testimony that evil is ever-present. French Jews fared better than, for example, those in Germany or Poland. Even so, according to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, about 76,000 French Jews were arrested by French police and sent to extermination Camps between 1942 and 1944. Only 2,500 survived.. Millions of Jews, from more than a dozen European countries, were sent to mass extermination camps in Germany, Poland, Croatia, Belarus and Serbia. It is estimated that between six and seven million Jews, approximately 70% of Europe’s pre-War population, were killed. Like many of you, I have read several books on the Holocaust. But You Did Not Come Back is perhaps the most moving.

"Polarization - Political Theater?"

 

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Polarization – Political Theater?”

June 14, 2026

 

“Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the

most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party,

generally...of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge.”

                                                                             George Washington (1732-1799)

                                                                             Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

 

In his 1983 book Modern Times, Paul Johnson wrote that Otto von Bismarck, who led the unification of Germany in the 1870s, was, like George Washington, concerned about the negative influences of political parties – that they would prove divisive, that it would mean that political parties would never produce “...a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following.”

 

But has that been the case in the United States? Republican President Ronald Reagan worked closely with Democrat Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, and Democrat President Bill Clinton was able to find common ground with Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Despite the partisanship that has spread so widely and dug so deeply into our politics today, would having a dozen political parties better serve our 174 million registered voters? And would a consensus be found to govern Congress with multiple parties represented? Politics is not about finding perfection, but about getting the most of what one wants. As President Reagan once said: “Politics is the art of the possible.” 

 

It is not uncommon to believe we live through the worst of times. Yet we get up every day, go to work or school, and life goes on. When one looks back at our history and compares our lives today with that of those who lived earlier, the vast majority live well. While we complain, most of us are happily resigned to the government we have. Of course, whether it is the mercurial President Trump, the cognitively-challenged President Biden, or the ethically-challenged Ken Paxton in Texas or Graham Platner in Maine, we don’t always elevate the most desirable candidates. But we never have. Thieves, scoundrels, racists, misogynists and homophobes have sat in Congress, representing both parties. Yet, despite these challenges the United States has progressed, demonstrating that the wisdom of the Founders was far greater than the inanities offered by TV commentators, or “influencers,” especially as it is possible for any nut to use the bullhorn of social media to promote any cause no matter how extreme. A government “of the people” is superior to a government of “elites.”

 

Nevertheless, polarization is real. Egged on by social media, we see our neighbors as either “Woke” or “MAGA” – we believe the center as gone. Yet, a Washington Post survey in January found that 86% of the population does not fall into the category of “extreme right” or “extreme left.” Politicians in Washington and in many state capitals and large cities put party interests above what is good or right for the country. And the media feeds the partisan divide. For example, TV news is either anti-Trump or adoring of him. 

 

But, while these blowhards appeal to a small – albeit noisy – percentage of the population, the typical voter appears more settled. According to Gallup, over the past fifty years, Independents have been increasing their share of registered voters, from 28% in 1977 to 45% today, reflecting dissatisfaction with the two parties. That number, in my opinion, would be higher if states like Connecticut and fifteen others, allowed registered Independents to participate in either Congressional or Presidential primaries.

 

In 2016 Paul Taylor and Pew Research Center published a book, The Next America. In it, Mr. Taylor wrote: “There’s no evidence from decades of Pew Research surveys that public opinion, in the aggregate, is more extreme than in the past.” Certainly, sectional partisanship was far more extreme in 1860, and even in the late 19^th Century when “free silver” advocates battled monied easterners, and during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War era. Partisanship certainly exists today, but among the bulk of American voters it seems limited to extremists. Nevertheless, in the interest of party unity – of maintaining or taking control of Congress, many “mainstream” politicians ignore the frailties of their party’s candidates – to win at any cost. 

 

Like many Americans, over the past sixty-four years, I have been a Democrat, a Republican and an Independent. While I like to think I have always been guided by a north star of conservative principles, favoring limited government, free markets, rule of law and individual freedom, in my youth – heavy on idealism and light on common sense – I was a Democrat. I felt that government should play a bigger hand in promoting equality of outcomes and dispensing social justice. While I am now registered as a Republican, I would prefer to be Unaffiliated, but registering as such would deny me participating in primaries.

 

Simply put, the most significant difference between the two parties is that Republicans favor smaller government and Democrats prefer larger government. But there are gradations, both in the beliefs of voters and in the policies preferred by politicians, which is why the willingness to compromise is important. 

 

I don’t pretend to have an answer to this pressing problem of polarization. Sadly, it is more than simply political theater. Identity politics has worsened the situation. But a good education would help – familiarity with the history of our country, in contrast to that of other nations; knowledge of different political systems, from monarchies and fascism to socialism and communism; and a basic understanding of economics, including comparisons of Karl Marx and Adam Smith. In the absence of a better educated electorate, I fear that political partisanship – pervasive among the political and media classes – will spread, leading to worsening times. 

 

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What is a problem, but one ignored by politicians on both ends of the political spectrum (and a subject for another day), is the looming debt crisis.

"History Mattters" by David McCullough - A Review

 As an historian, David McCullough would be certain to remember that this day is the 82^ndanniversary of D-Day. On that morning, while all hoped for success, no one involved could know the outcome. Fifty thousand highly trained German troops manned defensive positions, overlooking the beaches at Normandy. Approximately 155,000 allied soldiers, including airborne troops, landed in France that day. A little over 4,000 were killed and about 6,000 were wounded.

 

From the perspective of time, we know what a success the operation was, but of course none of the men involved could see the future. What we now know is that we – the West and all those alive then and born since – are the beneficiaries of the courage and skill of those men. We cannot know the fear those soldiers and sailors felt, but we should appreciate the principles for which they sacrificed so much. Our debt of gratitude can never be fully re-paid, but we should never forget what they did on the beaches and fields in northern France that June day, eighty-two years ago.   

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

History Matters, David McCullough

June 6, 2026

 

“The marvelous thing about the past is whenever

you reach down into it, all you find is life.”

                                                                                                                David McCullough

                                                                                                                Address, National Preservation Conference

                                                                                                                San Francisco, 1991

 

David McCullough, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Price and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died at 89 in 2022. Even in death we are recipients of his wisdom. His daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and his researcher Michael Hill gathered a selection of unpublished essays, speeches, tributes and interviews. History Matters is for those with a love for history and an appetite for learning. 

 

The book is short (168 pages) and divided into four parts. David McCullough was a polymath; he has offered us a potpourri, ranging from history and books to writing, art and literature. A few samples:

 

In an address to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1991, he said: “...but what I really think draws us to history, the pull of the past, is change. It is what is new, not what is old. And change is the essence of life.” In a 1995 talk at the Library of Congress: “The characters in Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War and War and Remembrance are real because they are in our hearts.” And at Dartmouth College in 2012, he told the audience: “Write to make music. Don’t just pound out notes.” In 1985, Mr. McCullough hosted a documentary on the artist Thomas Eakins, for which he wrote an essay: “Eakins...was painting not for the moment, or even for his own generation...He saw his paintings as an enduring historical record.” At the National Book Festival in 2002, he mentioned a number of his favorite books: A Death in the Family by James Agee, My Antonia by Willa Cather, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It is a list that most of us would gain from reading, or re-reading.

 

While readers of McCullough are accustomed to his histories of the Panama Canal, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Johnstown Flood and biographies of John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman, readers of this book are presented with a collection of short essays, including synopses on George Washington, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Paul Horgan.

 

The Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Jon Meacham wrote the foreword. He cites McCullough’s belief that history is “a story, an unfolding drama in which the men and women of a given moment could not know how everything turned out – whether the waters would recede, or whether the plane would fly, or whether the battle would be won.” It is that sense of almost childish wonder that permeates David McCullough’s published works, and which fills us with joy in this collection.