Peter mentioned a couple of things that I want to emphasize. Loot, the Nazi's wanted what they thought of as Jewish wealth. In France, they looted the art museums and even to this day there are still lawsuits trying to get the paintings that were owned by Jewish art gallery owners, back from where they are all over now French museums, under the word anonymous. If you know anything about the history of art and art in paintings and museums, that's a giveaway that they were stolen. Great paintings come with a genealogy, how you got them, so that's still ongoing. You'll hear about court cases in the papers. Other kinds of plunder. The dames watered the flowers and took care of the apartments, but throughout Europe the Jews were thrown out of houses, people moved into those houses, remember we ran into this in the Hama texts. Right at the beginning of the readings that we've been doing. They return and they visit friends, they see their dishes being used for dinner, and the joke about the Jewish refugee who says to his Polish ex friend. The only thing I have left are my clothes that you're wearing. So, that was part of the gigantic biological and social experiment. Peter said that I regard him as lazy. On the contrary, one of the reasons he doesn't write anything down, is he's deep into his own- >> World. >> thinking through of that material and he's doing it in at least three languages. >> [LAUGH] >> And this is all about languages. And it's all about a continent's geography that he's taking us through, right. I thought he should have had a map, of you could see how close Denmark is to Sweden and of Norway, but remember, by 1940 at the battle of Dunkirk, the Nazi's control Europe. All of Europe. So this is part of the gigantic biological and social experiment, Primo Levi says, of the Nazi's, and it involves remaking not only the map of Europe, but the population of Europe and who lives where and who does what, and getting ride of the Jews, the Judenrein, policy. But, I have a different critique of Peter. He is taking us through the Nazi logic of what they were doing in remaking the map, and there's logic here, and you'll see that in the Wannsee, and this logic is evident in all kinds of little bits. And just like other logical situations, the Nazi commanders in France and in Paris, made decisions to follow or not to follow certain things. So they said, Paris is too beautiful to destroy, Prague is too beautiful to destroy. But they were so angry at the dames who had active resistance that when they left Copenhagen, they destroyed a whole area of Copenhagen called the Tivoli, just outside the old city gates, they blew it up. Not because it was strategic, but because they wanted revenge on these dames who had not been cooperating in the Nazi redrawing of the map of Europe, but I want to go back to logic. Many of you have studied, or will study logic, and you know that syllogisms work very strongly, but you also know that one of the things that people have commented about logic, is if it's not in the original premises, It's excluded. The Nazi logic was part of what they thought of as rational. Peter talks about insanity. >> Lunacy is my favorite word. >> Lunacy. >> [LAUGH] >> He remembers that it comes from the word for the moon. Lunacy, insanity. Primo Levi called this the gigantic biological and social experiment! The question is, you have a raving lunatic writing Mein Kampf, and that becomes part of a logical structure. I suggest you read parts of Mein Kampf, and think of it not as a madman, but as somebody who is going to make this quote unquote lunacy, into bureaucratic logic. And I have to ask you, do you believe the world is rational? Do you believe the world is civilized where everybody is like the Danes? It seems to me that this course is there to ask you that question. And to ask you that question across the cultures and the languages and the geographies that Peter and I have been discussing. And you're all in a multicultural world, and we're all in a world of negotiations between governments. Are these negotiations with governments that are rational? Are we going to force them to become rational? And people are now saying American ideas of rationality involve economic rationality. But surely there are other kinds of belief systems that in many ways undo economic rationality, and people refuse economic rationality for other values. Go and ask your roommates.
