The last several weeks have seen an uptick in my efforts to make my most recent book, Hitler’s Maladies and Their Impact on World War II, better known. These efforts have included a trip to Atlanta to speak before the large and well organized Atlanta Chapter of the World War II History Roundtable. Then this last weekend I served on a panel discussing D-day with two other authors at the Boerne Book Festival. Both experiences were fun and rewarding, and I met interesting people.
The experience in Atlanta has been planned for some time. My presentation was well received and prompted interesting discussion. Three World War II vets attended and while limited physically, remained interested and interactive. One of them had landed at Normandy. Wow, history alive.
Perhaps the most interesting and fortunate contact was meeting Robert Ratonyi, a Holocaust survivor. Bob Ratonyi was only a boy when the Nazis invaded Hungary, followed shortly by the Hungarian Holocaust. Bob’s family and friends kept moving him about to keep him out of harm’s way. Eventually they found a way to smuggle him out of the country and ultimately to the United States. Much of his family was not so fortunate. He has a slide in his presentation that he was kind enough to send me showing a large number of family members who were killed in the Holocaust simply because they were Jewish.
Bob Ratonyi became aware of how little the younger generation knew about those sad Holocaust days. He determined to contact high schools and make information available to the students. Bob also follows up with presentations and answers questions. What a wonderful service he provides. Bob also points out that there have been over 20 Holocausts in the twentieth and twentieth first centuries of which the WWII European Holocaust was only the third largest. I did not know that nearly so many tragic events had occurred.
Bob has studied the origins of these different Holocausts and has struggled to find how they can be prevented in the future. He believes education of the younger generations and making them aware of the circumstances that give rise to such genocidal behavior is a good first step.
In my limited inquiry, I’ve found striking ignorance among our youth regarding the Holocaust and the sacrifices made by the World War II generation. Recall the old saying attributed to George Santayana (The life of Reason, 1905), “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. My hat is off to Robert Ratonyi!
The event of this past weekend was the Boerne Book Fair. This event is in its 6th or 7th year and was well attended. Numerous tents were occupied by employees of various university presses, library information, and for author talks. I participated along with two other authors, James Fenelon who is a military historian and Sherri Steward (Bringing Davy Home) who has written a deeply personal book on her family’s challenges following service during WWII and Korea. The moderator was a delightful military and commercial pilot, Tammie Jo Shults who wrote Nerves of Steel: How I Followed My Dreams, Earned My Wings, And Faced My Greatest Challenge. Her book describes her heroic efforts as captain to land Southwest Flight 1380 despite overwhelming problems with the aircraft. She is a delightful lady, skilled pilot, and a true hero.
Economic pressures on publishing houses appear to have been responsible for the authors having to do more and more of the publicizing of their books. Online information has largely replaced book presentations in bookstores. Most authors I know did not write their books to make money, but rather because they had a story to tell that they felt simply had to be told.
If you have not had the chance to read my latest book, Hitler’s Maladies and Their Impact on World War II: A Behavioral Neurologist’s View (Texas Tech University Press), I invite you to do so. The book explores an important aspect of the Hitler story and World War II that has not previously been well studied. Many of Hitler’s catastrophic errors including the premature invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the slowness of German forces to counterattack at the Battle of Normandy in 1944, and the highly risky Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 into 1945, can be better understood, knowing the sizeable impact that Hitler’s physical and mental conditions had on these vital battles.
Views From Medicine Spirit Ranch 