“(…) Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator in New York City’s McGraw-Hill building for forty-one hours. Here is a condensed look at White’s ordeal, as captured by the building’s security cameras.” (video)

Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker, Up and Down. The lives of elevators:

“The longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999. White, a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week, working late on a special supplement, had just watched the Braves beat the Mets on a television in the office pantry. Now he wanted a cigarette. He told a colleague he’d be right back and, leaving behind his jacket, headed downstairs.

The magazine’s offices were on the forty-third floor of the McGraw-Hill Building, an unadorned tower added to Rockefeller Center in 1972. When White finished his cigarette, he returned to the lobby and, waved along by a janitor buffing the terrazzo floors, got into Car No. 30 and pressed the button marked 43. The car accelerated. It was an express elevator, with no stops below the thirty-ninth floor, and the building was deserted. But after a moment White felt a jolt. The lights went out and immediately flashed on again. And then the elevator stopped.”

‘Davos, Palace Hotel, im Krieg: Gräfin Margit von Batthyány, ihr Ehemann Ivan und Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza’ (FAZ)

“When I was researching my book about his family, Baron “Heini” Thyssen-Bornemisza, self-styled “Swiss” industrialist and legendary art collector, always insisted that Margit, his vivacious older sister, was in fact shy and retiring, while his family’s castle at Rechnitz had been entirely destroyed by the Russians during the war.

I first suspected he may have been lying when Josi Groh, his Hungarian lawyer, told me that far from being shy and retiring Margit had a “voracious sexual appetite” and that she had remained in residence at the Thyssens’ castle throughout the war, enjoying the attention of the SS officers sent there for rest and recreation. But it was his insistence that the castle, or what remained of it, hid a terrible secret that encouraged me to visit Rechnitz.

In this quiet castle town in the foothills of the Alps, I learnt that in the last days of the Second World War, Margit hosted a party for SS officers, Gestapo leaders and local collaborators during which 200 Jews were slaughtered, as entertainment. Ever since, the Thyssens have not accepted involvement and have played down their Nazi past. ‘”

David R.L. Litchfield, The killer countess: The dark past of Baron Heinrich Thyssen’s daughter

442nd: Storming the Vosges. Japanese-American soldiers of the 442nd RCT advance up a steep hillside in France. November 4, 1944.

The War is een 7-delige oorlogsdocumentaire van Ken Burns in september en oktober 2007 uitgezonden door PBS. (Metacritic – 8.2.)

THE WAR | Extended Preview op YouTube.

Waarschijnlijk zijn deze 14 uur aan oorspronkelijke beelden en verhalen over de impact van de Tweede Wereldoorlog op 4 Amerikaanse steden en hun bevolking alleen op een Nederlands televisietoestel te zien als je de documentaire downloadt via bittorrent. Wat is aanbevolen.

TED Talks: Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence:

“In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence. We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we’ve come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.”

“In a war that has left more than 25,000 wounded, ALIVE DAY MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ looks at a new generation of veterans. Executive Producer James Gandolfini interviews ten Soldiers and Marines who reveal their feelings on their future, their severe disabilities and their devotion to America. The documentary surveys the physical and emotional cost of war through memories of their “alive day,” the day they narrowly escaped death in Iraq.”

“There is an unquestionable need for clear thinking about suicide bombing. But thinking is muddied by the powerful emotions of horror and repulsion it properly stirs. Suicide bombing, as anthropologist Talal Asad notes, is not the most deadly weapon even in conflicts where it is endemic. Rather, the suicide attack is among the most effective ways of attaining another goal: the production of terror though the prospect of uncontrolled and indiscriminate violence. Reckoning with suicide bombing, therefore, means not just taking account of the tactic itself, but also the reactions it purposefully provokes.”

The American Prospect: Explosive Reactions

Gisèle en haar onderduikers Bijzondere expositie in het NIOD over het ‘huis aan de overkant’

Zie ook Wikipedia: Svalbard Global Seed Vault.