#mit

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

All I ever wanted really, and continue to want out of life, is to give 100 percent to whatever I'm doing and to be committed to whatever I'm doing and then let the results speak for themselves. Also to never take myself or people for granted and always be thankful and grateful to the people who helped me. ↗

— Jackie Joyner-Kersee

#also #always #be thankful #committed #continue

Managers today have to do more with less, and get better results from limited resources, more than ever before. ↗

— Brian Tracy

#better #ever #get #less #limited

My decision to look seriously at elected office is grounded in a deep commitment to public service and my experience - both my own and that of my family - in finding just, practical, and bipartisan solutions to difficult challenges. ↗

— Joseph P. Kennedy III

#both #challenges #commitment #decision #deep

There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation. ↗

— Brian Ferneyhough

#art #becomes #beyond #boundaries #breaking

Any actor who is being honest will admit there's always a small or large part of the real you in every character. It's impossible not to have that. ↗

— Jerry Ferrara

#admit #always #any #being #being honest

If I am confirmed, I will commit to show Heller and the principles articulated in it the full measure of respect that is due to all constitution decisions of the court. ↗

— Elena Kagan

#articulated #commit #confirmed #constitution #court

In fact, corporate and union moneys go overwhelmingly to incumbents, so limiting that money, as Congress did in the campaign finance law, may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done. ↗

— Elena Kagan

#campaign finance #congress #corporate #did #done

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people. ↗

— Elena Kagan

#american #american people #bounds #choices #course

I know that elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. ↗

— Meir Kahane

#auschwitz #bring #deadly #elections #enemy