>>>>Meaning, by only mentioning the Jews, the others are ignored?
>>>
>>>Yes.
>>
>>Do people really believe that? Well, I guess if there are idiots out there who believe no Jews were killed, then I guess there are idiots out there who believe they were the only ones killed.
>
>Look what the kids learn at school. WWII==Holocaust plus Pearl Harbour plus D Day. Not much more. For instance, how many times have you heard that the communists were just as likely residents of concentration camps as the Jews? Or that in Jasenovac (never heard of that one, huh?) the Jews, Roma and Serbs were gathered and shot together.


One of John Irving's best novels, written when he was about 23 (just cut off my fingertips now), was "Setting Free the Bears". Part of it was a flashback set in what later became Yugoslavia, during WWII. The book said every time a German soldier was killed by a sniper the Nazis retaliated by killing 100 Croatians, and the Croatians in turn retaliated by killing 100 Serbs for eech of those. The end result, Irving wrote, was a heck of a lot of dead Serbs. In a memorable scene one character comes across a raft on the river piled with the skulls of victims of the latest massacre. It said someone had arranged the skulls into a perfect pyramid, except one skull near the top had tumbled and been caught by the hair between skulls down below and was swinging back and forth. "Some skulls watched it swing in the river wind, while others looked away." Brilliant!

I recently reread the book that made him famous, "The World According To Garp", and was similarly wowed by his imagination. The "undertoad," the Jenny Fieldsians, the impassioned weirdos. Wacky things happen left and right but Irving never loses control of his narrative. The chapter following "Walt Catches Cold" -- a powerhouse in its own right -- is one of almost unbearable suspense. The question in all our minds is "What happened to Walt?!" He waits and waits and waits before telling us. He is a born storyteller and even his misfires (of which "Garp" is surely not one) are packed with enough imagination for 50 novels.