Berlin And Beyond. Broken Promised Lands
BERLIN IN LATE APRIL, SUNNY IN A wintry way, a spritz of rain, a South African Australian wrestling with a lifetime’s demons: sweetly, many of the particularities of my Cape Town childhood are there – the milk-rice my mother made my German father as a treat, for example, was echoed in the supermarket, milchreis, milchreis everywhere, and the men’s manicure sets he was partial to and kept in his bedside table were there, at the Sunday neighbourhood flea market. But at the flea market too, were some people of a certain age (I found myself doing the calculations all the time) selling antique jewellery, and I wondered where it came from. Contradictions, loving the language of the émigré who bought their salt pretzels from the German bakery in Cape Town, but shuddering still at its associations.
On arrival, my friend who picked me up (who had confessed some time ago, in sunny Sydney, that his parents were Nazis) drove straight to the Olympic Stadium where Herr Hitler had held his rallies. From there, since I expressed no preference and had never heard of it, it was off to Gleis 17, the train platform from whence Jews were sent to Auschwitz and other camps, and from there it’s a blur of monument after monument for the rest of the week. And still I didn’t see them all: the restored synagogues, the infamous bunker, and all those pavements with embedded name plaques of their one-time Jewish residents.
Denne historien er fra June 2018-utgaven av Noseweek.
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Denne historien er fra June 2018-utgaven av Noseweek.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.