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Jan. 25th, 2006 10:32 pmI watched the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are this evening. I don't watch a whole lot of TV these days because most of it is remorselessly moronic dreck, and I don't usually make a point of watching this show either, which features some witless C-Lister exploring the depths of their family tree. Tonight however, I made an exception, because I like Stephen Fry enormously. And Stephen Fry is of course the quintessential Englishman and certain to be very funny.
It wasn't exactly a funny programme. And it turns out Stephen Fry isn't exactly English, either. The maternal side of the family originated in a small town of no consequence in modern-day Slovakia, about halfway between Bratislava and Budapest. This town is notable only for its sugar factory, which employed most of the town's population, including Stephen's grandfather, whose name was Neumann.
Quite by chance, in the mid-1920s, Neumann was invited to help supervise the British sugar industry and construct a new processing plant in Bury St Edmunds. He duly moved a thousand miles across Europe, dragging his wife and young daughter with him, and in doing so he inadvertantly saved their lives. Neumann's family who remained were murdered in Auschwitz.
It's so fucking upsetting and so fucking depressing and it enrages me beyond belief, it enrages me to the point of incoherency and the point of tears.
This Friday will be the sixty-first anniversary, if one can begin to contemplate calling it an 'anniversary', of the day Soviet troops arrived in Auschwitz and Birkenau, or Holocaust Memorial Day here, Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus in Germany, and Dzień Pamięci Ofiar Nazizmu in Poland.
People don't seem angry about this any more. That's a shame. They fucking well should do.
It wasn't exactly a funny programme. And it turns out Stephen Fry isn't exactly English, either. The maternal side of the family originated in a small town of no consequence in modern-day Slovakia, about halfway between Bratislava and Budapest. This town is notable only for its sugar factory, which employed most of the town's population, including Stephen's grandfather, whose name was Neumann.
Quite by chance, in the mid-1920s, Neumann was invited to help supervise the British sugar industry and construct a new processing plant in Bury St Edmunds. He duly moved a thousand miles across Europe, dragging his wife and young daughter with him, and in doing so he inadvertantly saved their lives. Neumann's family who remained were murdered in Auschwitz.
It's so fucking upsetting and so fucking depressing and it enrages me beyond belief, it enrages me to the point of incoherency and the point of tears.
This Friday will be the sixty-first anniversary, if one can begin to contemplate calling it an 'anniversary', of the day Soviet troops arrived in Auschwitz and Birkenau, or Holocaust Memorial Day here, Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus in Germany, and Dzień Pamięci Ofiar Nazizmu in Poland.
People don't seem angry about this any more. That's a shame. They fucking well should do.
