Scrapbook
Scrapbook Joe Rosenthal, 1911-2006 THE SCRAPBOOK'S week began on a melancholy note, with news of the death of Joe Rosenthal. Mr. Rosenthal, a photographer who worked for the Associated Press and...
...You were a soldier in the 10th SS Panzer Division Frund-berg...
...But between the pony and the horse, between the stirrup and the ground, there stood (and stands) a calculating opportunist...
...Among these men, there is no discrimination...
...In the New York Sun, Daniel Johnson assails the author for (among other things) his condemnation of Reagan's visit to the Bitburg cemetery: "You joined in the denunciation of Reagan and Kohl for appearing to pay tribute to the dead of the SS...
...At the dedication of the Marine cem etery on Iwo Jima, Rabbi Roland Git telsohn—who had served in the battle and who was the first Jewish Marin chaplain—delivered a eulogy that ha acquired a certain fame as well: Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores...
...Joe Rosenthal's shot served as the model for the Marine Corps Memorial outside Washington, and may well be the best-known, and most admired, depiction of Americans in uniform defending our freedom...
...Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed...
...The date: February 23, 1945...
...Of somt 22,000 Japanese defenders of the island only a few hundred were taken prisone by the time the island was secured on March 26...
...A planet is now defined as a "celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a...
...Theirs is the highest and purest democracy...
...O]ne was never able to suppress the slight feeling that the author of The Tin Drum was something of a bigmouth and a fraud, and also something of a hypocrite," writes Christopher Hitchens in Slate...
...Think of all the famous pictures taken during 1941-45—the destruction at Pearl Harbor, General Eisenhower talking to paratroopers before D-Day, GIs marching down the Champs-Elysées—and none captures so well, so plainly and eloquently, the spirit of pride, determination, and sacrifice that won the war against fascism in Europe and Asia...
...What Planet Are You On?_ Frankly, THE SCRAPBOOK is furious at the decision of the International Astronomical Union last week in Prague to strip Pluto of its planetary status...
...Rosenthal: He happened to be in the right place at the right moment...
...This is not just a rebuke to the thousands of boys and girls who annually memorize the names of the nine planets—taking particular delight in our little icebound brother at the far reaches of the solar system—but appears to be a calculated, ad hominen, insult to Pluto as well...
...Although Grass insists he neither volunteered for the job nor fired a single shot, critics have been quick to condemn him for his sixty years of silence while badgering others because of their past...
...No hatred...
...The word "iconic" has been largely rendered null and void by overuse, but it certainly applies to this extraordinary image of American fighting men in the Pacific during World War II...
...Let us be clear: The Waffen-SS did not run the death camps, but its troops—some 900,000 of them by the end—were deeply implicated in the Holocaust and responsible for many of the worst atrocities of the war...
...The Marines suffered 26,00( casualties—more than one-third of th invasion force—of whom 6,821 wert killed...
...Somehow, though, it didn't occur to you to say that you could easily have been one of them...
...No prejudice...
...Grass, is that you were one of the last-ditch defenders of the Third Reich...
...The second judgment is that you are not as important to German or to literary history as you think you are...
...Rosenthal, a photographer who worked for the Associated Press and the San Francisco Chronicle, lived to the great age of 94, and, by all accounts, led a happy existence...
...It's almost as if the telescope jockeys at the IAU tailored this one with Pluto specifically in mind, since its orbit is oblong, not round, and overlaps Neptune's...
...We will refrain from joining this chorus of outrage—but are more than happy to let others speak for us...
...Nor was the flag-raising staged for Mr...
...He was one of those whom Gore Vidal might have had in mind when he referred to the high horse, always tethered conveniently nearby, which the writer/rider could mount at any moment...
...As for Grass's defense—that he wished to be a submariner and inadvertently wound up with the Waffen-SS—Johnson doesn't buy it...
...For that matter, of the six mei depicted in the photograph, three per ished in the subsequent battle...
...After Grass said, "Let those who want to judge, pass judgment," Hitchens takes up the challenge: "The first judgment is that you kept quiet about your past until you could win the Nobel Prize for literature...
...For example, the photo was actually not taken at the end of the month-long battle for Iwo Jima, but toward the beginning: Mount Suriba-chi was the highest point on the island, and the Marines wanted their fellow Marines to see what they had achieved...
...Putting the SS in Grass What more can be said about Günter Grass, Germany's sanctimonious author, who recently admitted to having served in the Waffen-SS during World War II...
...Hitchens reminds us of Grass's opposition to German reunification in 1989, calling it an Anschluss of the "German Democratic Republic...
...As often happens to photographers, however, his long life's work was overshadowed by a single picture...
...nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit...
...By contrast, scrappy Pluto is one sleek, swift, austere ball of ice, and a complement to any solar system worth the name...
...They did not take just anyone...
...You, once considered the greatest postwar German writer, nearly died trying to save Hitler...
...Inspiring as the picture may be, it is also emblematic of the terrible cost o the war against Imperial Japan...
...In our view, if insults to celestial bodies are the order of the day, then how about that raucous slag heap of gas and molten silicate called Mercury, or the lumbering, oafish Jupiter, with its freeze-dried helium and unsightly red spot...
...But what a picture it was: Five Marines, and one Navy corpsman, raising the Stars and Stripes atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima...
...The truth that now emerges, Mr...
...The media spectacle, the national soul-searching that you must have known would be unleashed, had one overriding purpose: to make sure that your latest—very possibly your last— book would be a best seller...
...Seldom did Grass miss a chance to be lofty and morally stern...
...Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color...
...Over the years, more than a few myths have attached themselves to the picture, despite all efforts to correct the record...
...Why Grass decided to come out now with this personal revelation, Johnson speculates: "You had an autobiography to sell...
...The third judgment is that you will be remembered neither as a war criminal nor as an anti-Nazi hero, but more as a bit of a bloody fool...
...A lot, it turns out...
Vol. 11 • September 2006 • No. 47
