[net.tv] PBS Frontline, May 7th, The Nazi dea

jimc@haddock.UUCP (05/13/85)

I concur with the author of this base note -- I have never seen television
like what was shown on *Frontline* last week.  I thought the images from
Bergen-Belsen and others made the films we see of the starving in Ethiopia
seem like a Walt Disney movie.  What most troubled me was the appearance
of the bodies -- starvation and disease had reduced what once was a human
being into this stiff, rickety manequin which did not seem at all human.
I imagine those who regularly were around the bodies had to develop
a distance from the situation to avoid hysteria, and perhaps they 
began to think of the bodies as merely objects and not former humans.
However, it was impossible for me to gain such distance in watching
this hour-long documentary, which is fine by me.  The program was
mortifyingly horrible;  it succeeded in convincing me further 
that Reagan made the worst mistake of his political career in going
to that German military cemetery.

					Jim Campbell
					..!harvard!ima!haddock!jimc