"Incurables didn't pay attention to these women at all. If they made advances they turned away with disgust ....The ones who were to be discharged were once more given the possibility for homosexual relations but they refused the advances of the genuine homosexuals. There were, however, borderline cases who used both opportunities. Whether or not one can call them bisexual I can't judge. To be able to observe the life and habits of the homosexuals of all varieties, in connection with their incarceration, was highly informative for me."


While I, obviously, do not approve of the methods used by the Nazis to effect this change in sexual behavior it is nevertheless clear that some homosexual individuals can be motivated to abandon this "lifestyle." I sent the Höss information in a letter to the professor but he was apparently to busy to respond and seemed to follow the rule: My mind is made up, don't bother me with facts.

As mentioned earlier, like most everything else which involves human behavior there are gradations in the expression of a given trait and to deny those can only serve political purposes rather than lead to an understanding of the underlying condition. Numbers translate into votes and this is all that counts, never mind the facts. This attitude has also led to the medical absurdity that HIV-AIDS which is for all practical purposes, in this country, a preventable disease by simply abstaining from unhealthy practices, is actually the only politically protected infectious disease for which a cure must be found immediately. Since research money is limited this stance comes at the cost of removing valuable financial resources from other truly unavoidable and more common illnesses. Currently the AIDS epidemic in Africa is receiving a great deal of attention and the solution is also to be billions of dollars for research. But even in Africa the epidemic is caused by promiscuous sexual behavior. The plague could be eradicated worldwide by abstention from homosexual practices, by engaging in heterosexual intercourse with one partner only, and avoidance of intravenous illicit drug use. In contrast to nearly all other diseases AIDS (with few exceptions e.g. children of infected mothers, or recipients of tainted blood transfusions) is self-inflicted and preventable by adhering to a healthy life-style.

These verities are, of course, highly unpopular. Therefore, an attitude is fostered by the political and media establishments where even the use of the term homosexual is frowned upon and the word "gay" has been substituted. This is truly a perversion of language. Hardly any one of us, regardless of sexual orientation, is gay in the true meaning of the word for any length of time. Life has too many vicissitudes to allow us "gaiety" for more than short periods. To dignify sexual practices, which involve acts that are distasteful to the majority of people in our culture, with this euphemism is unconscionable. Homosexual activists may call themselves whatever they want but the much larger non-homosexual community should not be swayed by this misuse of language and call the behavior by its proper name.

Nevertheless even here a caveat is in order. To label somebody " a homosexual" as if this were the "be all and end all "of the individual's life, is just as uncalled for as using other potentially pejorative terms without some qualification. For instance, when I started my professional neurologic career it was common practice to talk about "the epileptic" or "the schizophrenic." I abolished these terms from my personal vocabulary because they are adjectives and should not be used as nouns. Instead I talked and wrote about patients (by the way, even this term has lost its meaning, because nowadays physicians, just like lawyers, tend to have "clients") with epilepsy or schizophrenia, or whatever the condition was. This retains the personhood of the individual and allows for a change in the condition, which can and does occur at times. I had to disagree with one of my professors early on whose favorite dictum was "once an epileptic always an epileptic." The statement was not only pejorative but simply factually wrong. I am glad indeed that my terminology, which was news in the fifties and sixties, has now been generally adopted by my colleagues.

This brings me to one of the major pitfalls in the thought processes of the human race and is clearly illustrated by the two mentioned newspaper articles. It is the inappropriate use of the "all or nothing," principle as it is called in neurophysiology. The law refers to the propagation of the electrical activity in a nerve. Once an impulse is strong enough to be propagated, the size of the response, and the speed of its conduction will be independent of the intensity of the original stimulus. Once fired up the nerve gives its all. This is how the peripheral nervous system works. But we also have a central nervous system which allows us to give graded responses before we put our nerves into action. In the present context for Mr. Thomas there are apparently only monolithic Palestinians who have to be expelled and for the professor of educational psychology there are only homosexuals who are incapable of changing. This is the same type of thinking which declared "the Jews" enemies of the German people, and which condemned "the Germans" as "the Nazis" when in fact only a small subgroup in these categories had engaged in undesirable or even outright criminal activities. Unless we stop thinking in terms of classes of people and hold only individuals responsible for their actions there will be no end to hatred in this world with concomitant injustices.

Since the purpose of these entries is to provide contemporary documentation of American life or Zeitgeschichte, as it would be called in German, you are being treated in this installment not only to opinions on current events but also to some personal information.

In order to escape from the incessant war- and scare-mongering of the national media my wife Martha and I decided to heed the President's advice, go on with our lives and stimulate the economy. Since flying and cruising is somewhat cheaper right now we thought it a good idea to take a long postponed cruise through the Hawaiian Islands on the good ship Independence of American Hawaiian Cruises.

We booked our flight tickets separately (to get the cheapest fares) and paid for the ship with my credit card. One week before going came the call from the travel agency that the company had fallen victim to bin-Ladin's efficiency and declared bankruptcy. An immediate call to Merrill Lynch brought the good news that the $2435 had not yet been cashed and the transaction was red-flagged so that no money would be paid out. This left us, however, with the discounted airline tickets which were, of course, non-refundable. Instead of writing off the six hundred dollars we thought we might as well spend the money, Osama had saved us, on a hotel in Maui, where we could enjoy nature and converse with the birds and fish. The Kaanapali Beach Hotel fit the budget with $1200 for the two of us for one week, which left the other $1200 for food, drink and excursions. When all was said and done we actually came out ahead by about $300.

The hallmark of airline travel was that, although Delta provided us with excellent steaks coming and going across the Pacific, the safety considerations demanded that we had to eat with plastic knives and forks. Trying to cut a steak with a terrorist-prove small knife which bends in all directions is a feat which Martha was unable to accomplish with finger joints ravaged by age, so she had to return to the ways of our ancestors; simply wrap up the thing and eat it from her hand. About 500+ years of civilization was gone for reasons of "security." To enhance our security even further we had, obviously, to be at the airport two hours earlier but fortunately Salt Lake City and Maui as well as Honolulu still had curbside check-in, which avoided interminable lines. Contrary to our media pundits’ opinions people are still fond of flying and the planes were full.

On the return trip we would have to have left the hotel at 4 30 in the morning to make a 7 55 flight from Maui to Honolulu in order to catch the 10 a.m. flight to LAX. Since this did not correspond to my idea of a vacation we opted to take a noon flight from Maui to Honolulu one day earlier (I wanted to see Waikiki beach and Diamond Head anyway) and leaving the hotel at 7 30 am would have given us ample time for catching our plane to LA. This was not to be. The hotel to the airport shuttle people insisted that we have to leave at 7 a.m. in spite of the fact that the trip takes only 25 minutes. We had to submit to the rules and when we got to the airport 20 minutes later we found people patiently and uncomplainingly waiting in line to go through inspection for plant and animal material one might have wanted to bring along as souvenirs. Surprisingly enough there was no movement of that line and inquiry revealed that they don't open this inspection counter until 8 a.m. Such are the joys of today's travel. The civilized ways of former days are gone for good in our "Do it yourself" society which is strictly geared to the young and vigorous.

Mind you I am not complaining, I am simply stating a fact that we are going backwards in our civilization rather than forwards. On the other hand Maui was charming and one of my colleagues who had told me before going "you won't want to come back" was absolutely correct. Sitting on the beach looking out on the Lahaina Roads (stretch of water between Maui and the island of Lanai) watching the surf come in, visiting with the tropical fish and turtles on Black Rock beach, and eventually seeing the sun set behind Lanai more than made up for the follies we are currently being subjected to by the people who control our fate.

The contrast between the beauties of nature and human behavior was magnified when we turned on CNN after dinner and were treated to a daily dose of bombing Kabul, Taliban positions and anthrax scares. One asks oneself where is Homo sapiens - man the wise - when one sees conduct which is strictly contrary to all good sense. In September when President Bush was quoted as having said that he wouldn't send a million dollar cruise missile to hit a mud hut and kick a camel in the butt, I applauded him for his foresight. Media and other pressures made passion prevail over reason and we are now doing what he said we wouldn't.

Our Media hounds - and I really have no other word for them - constantly tell us what the "American people" want. Well, I am one of the American people and I don't want to bomb mud huts and camels. I also don't want our commandoes to go on ill defined missions with no adequate information on where the supposed targets, be they Osama or Mullah Omar, are really hiding. Our boys are sent into potential death traps and they deserve better. Some media commentators were surprised that the Taliban are fighting well. What's the surprise? It's their country and they have been doing nothing else but fight for decades, if not centuries. The arrogance, as well as ignorance, of some of these pundits is staggering. The British fought two wars in Afghanistan during the nineteenth century and left both times with a bloody nose, the Russians tried it recently and got out after ten years with the Soviet Union in shambles. For that I am grateful because I had no use for their system of government. But why in all the world should we be more successful? Because we are a high-tech superpower? Have we forgotten that the ridiculed black pajama-clad boys with a minimum amount of equipment, no air power but an indomitable will to succeed, kicked us out of Viet Nam? Does anybody really believe that Afghans will be any easier to defeat when we come to introduce our ideas of how the country should be run?

The American people I talk to are not particularly keen on this war either, but nobody asks them. I haven't found anybody who has been subjected to one of the famous public opinion polls. I miss especially a poll which would ask all of the 5000 or so families who have lost one or more of their members in the tragic events of September 11 whether or not they want a war with Afghanistan. They are the ones who have suffered and they should be heard. Fragmentary and anecdotal information seems to suggest that they don't want an eye for an eye. Gandhi has been credited for saying that the policy of "an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" and that is also the truth.

What are we dropping bombs for? Ostensibly to get rid of the Taliban and with their demise Osama would have no place to hide, except possibly Iraq, Libya and other assorted "rogue states" whom we would bomb thereafter. The world would then be safe from terrorism and in the words of the fairy tales "everybody would live happily forever after." This is so naive that I cannot believe anybody in government really believes this. I was born a European, have lived under Goebbels, and became American by choice. I am, therefore, sufficiently skeptical of propaganda and even a cursory knowledge of history shows that most wars and revolutions had ulterior motives. This gets me back to Hawaii. The revolution in 1893 was fomented by American sugarcane growers who saw their profits disappear unless the islands were annexed by America. The official reason was, of course, the undemocratic behavior of the Queen who threatened the lives of the American settlers. The Spanish-American war in 1898 was ostensibly to rid Cuba of cruel Spanish dictatorship; to extract revenge for the sinking of the Maine and to bring Christianity to the forsaken natives in the Philippines. The fact that the Filipinos had been Christians for centuries was disregarded. Also disregarded was the fact that the Spanish had absolutely no interest in fighting America and, in all probability, had nothing to do with the Maine disaster. The Spanish had to be driven out, not only from the Western Hemisphere but also the Pacific, because after Hawaii had been digested it was America's Manifest Destiny to bring good government to most everybody in the Pacific. In 1917 along came President Wilson who believed, with religious fervor, that the world must be made safe for democracy which could only be achieved by entering the war on the Allied side. The fact that the Allies were deeply in debt to America for all the arms they had to buy and that this debt could never be collected if the Central Powers had won the war, was obviously irrelevant. That the world did not become safe for democracy, as Wilson had so devoutly hoped and prayed for, and that instead another war, even more horrible than the first one, resulted from it, is ignored. So is the fact that the current Arab-Israeli turmoil also goes back to WWI and the subsequent division of the spoils among the victorious Allies. That the British promised, at that time, the same piece of real estate to the Arabs as well as the Jews nobody wants to be reminded of either.

When Arabs resist the values of Western culture and are feeling left out from the benefits which globalism is supposed to bring, when they see that the poor get poorer and the rich richer they cannot be expected to become enchanted forever with the carrot which is being dangled before their noses. If they try to assert themselves they get the stick in form of bombs or rockets as Saddam Hussein has found out. Increasing social unhappiness by the masses is bound to lead to unrest and there will always be educated people to provide leaders. Let us not forget that the leadership of the proletarian revolutions during the nineteenth and twentieth century was never in the hands of the working class but in those of intellectuals (Marx, Engels, Lassale, Liebknecht, Lenin, Trotsky, Adler to name just a few) who took pity on the downtrodden and promised them the blue from the sky in form of a socialist utopia. After the demise of the Soviet Union, socialist dreams have temporarily lost some steam and in its breach stepped religion which has always been useful to mask imperial aspirations.

Deny it as we might the current war against "terrorism" is indeed a religious war of ideas and, as mentioned repeatedly, it cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops in Afghanistan, Iraq or other places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be defeated and a pro-Western government installed in Kabul, fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla warfare, accompanied by terrorist tactics, would continue ad infinitum. It pains me to say so but Osama bin-Ladin has so far succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A $200.000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped anyway by selling assets on the stock market before its expected crash) has produced, and continues to produce, billions of dollars of losses to the American economy, fear is being spread by the media and if we are to believe our politicians we are engaged in an Afghan war with a projected duration of several years. Even if we kill bin-Ladin now he will be a martyr (which is what he wants anyway) who goes to paradise and his image will spur on other fanatics to continue with his work of creating hatred for America in the Islamic world.

Even we in America are apparently fighting for religious principles because we have been told that this is a war of good against evil. Jesus' words: "Whoever is not against us is with us" have been turned into: "Who is not with us is against us!" There can be no neutrals now we are told; the world has to be strictly polarized. This is what the "Judeo-Christian tradition" apparently means. That Christianity and Judaism are supposed to operate on different premises can no longer be openly acknowledged. Jesus was a Jew we are told and, therefore, adhered to the Jewish religion to the bitter end. The fact that he changed Judaism fundamentally the moment he told the parable of the Good Samaritan in answer to the question: "who is my neighbor?" is not taken into account. This question of the scribe, as reported by Luke, was not rhetorical because Jews did distinguish very carefully between themselves and others. Jews were to help each other but they were to shun contact with foreigners. When Jesus told the scribe that your neighbor is anyone in need of help, even a despised Samaritan, he violated one of the most sacred taboos. In addition he had the audacity to tell the Jewish religious leaders that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; to eat with "sinners," thereby abrogating the sanctity of the dietary laws; and ultimately going after temple money by overthrowing the tables of the money changers. This clearly put him beyond the pale of Jewish religious authorities and required a death sentence. We are now told by some that Jesus was a fanatical zealot and that is why the Romans crucified him. But this is only an attempt to exonerate the Jewish ruling circles of Jerusalem at that time and to foster harmony between Christians and Jews. But a harmony which is based on a wrong premise can never be lasting.

We must openly admit to the differences between the Jewish and Christian religion before we can agree on common principles. Judaism was and for true believers still is, essentially tribal in its nature. This may sound harsh but the disapproval of intermarriage, the insistence by rabbinical authorities on separateness and fear of assimilation are facts of life which cannot be denied. Careful reading of the sayings by the prophets makes it also undeniably clear that they were nationalists. The redemption of this world was to be brought about by Jews and the Law, to which all nations will have to subscribe, will come from Zion. The famous beating of swords into plowshares in Is. 2:4 is preceded by "people going up to the mountains of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law; and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge the nations and shall rebuke many people." While Christians may read this symbolically, fundamentalist Jews tend to think in terms of the here and now. It is the earthly, rather than the heavenly Jerusalem, to which all nations will have to flow and it will be the God of Jacob rather than the Heavenly Father of Jesus who will lay down the law! These statements may come as a surprise to those who believe that "Jews are just a quirky Protestant sect" as Stephen Feldman has put it in Please, Don't wish me a Merry Christmas. But while that book is clearly polemical, the one by Rabbi Neusner Jews and Christians. The Myth of a Common Tradition is scholarly, well reasoned and ought to be required reading for evan