Feldman's Faves: August 12, 2024

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

Kudos to the Olympic Committee and to Paris. This year’s Olympics were truly epic. The USA dominated as expected but Canada did an amazing job and we should be very proud.

Our new articling students have their first week under their belt. If you haven’t had a chance to meet them yet, please join us at Bagel Breakfast this morning. Come regardless, we have bagels….

No theme this week – just topics of interest.

THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ By: Heather Morris –  I have been wanting to read The Tattooist of Auschwitz for a long time but like all books of this genre it requires you to be in a state of mind that can handle the very awful and harsh realities of the situation being described.  This book that is a novel based on real events and people, does a “great” job of describing the conditions that the prisoners of Auschwitz experienced during WWII. To say it was miserable would be an extreme understatement. What is special about this book (and many like it) is how it shows the ranges of human behaviour in an extreme way. The abject cruelty of the Nazis is contrasted by the bravery and love that we see from the protagonists – Lale and Gita.  We also learn about some of the difficult moral dilemmas people, as prisoners, needed to face in order to survive, which were truly horrifying and which we could never really be in a position to judge. As one reviewer describes the story, “An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp. Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen. The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.”  The Tattooist of Auschwitz is  not an easy read – from an emotional perspective - but the story is compelling and reminder what a life force love can be in even the awful and heinous circumstances.  Here’s a good review from The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/may/02/the-tattooist-of-auschwitz-review-proof-that-the-holocaust-cannot-be-entertainment

How I Built This with Guy Raz  - Specialized Bicycle Components: Mike Sinyard -  I love riding my bike. For years (like 15…) I rode a crappy hybrid bike that embarrassed all the fancy people I rode with since they loved their expensive bikes and gear and clothes, etc. I had a fanny pack, which they also didn’t like. One day, as fate would have it, my beloved bike fell off the bike wrack and got run over by a truck so I was forced to buy a new bike.  With the help of some friends who are way more knowledgeable about this stuff than me I ended up buying myself a semi-fancy bike made by a competitor of Specialized. I must admit that while I had never cared about the bike I rode, once I tried this machine I realized what I had been missing. I love the bike and am so happy I got it (still haven’t parted with the fanny pack though…).  This PODCAST tells the story of Mike Sinyard and how he built his incredible company. It is quite a story.  Here’s an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “Mike Sinyard helped put mountain biking on the map. In the 1970’s, he founded Specialized Bicycle Components to do exactly what the name suggests: sell high-quality bike parts. He eventually decided to make his own models, becoming a pioneer in the industry by designing the first mass-produced mountain bikes. By the 1990’s, Specialized was pulling in tens of millions of dollars in revenue, and Mike brought in outside experts to help grow the business. That turned out to be a huge mistake; Mike spent the next few years recovering from bad business decisions, and recalibrating the company after near bankruptcy. Today, Specialized has regained its reputation as an industry leader, and does around $500 million in sales per year.” https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?i=1000662759755

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation. And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon