David Bennett

It’s 6:45pm on Sunday, the 11th February. I’m reading a book that was recommended to me by my neighbour when I was staying in Jerusalem recently. The book is Germany’s Stepchildren, originally published in 1944. It surveys 200 years of the experience of Jews in Germany as described through the stories of fifteen or so people who were prominent in their period.

And this is what I was reading – the beginning of the story of Ludvig Borne, born Loeb Baruch in Frankfurt in 1786 – when something happened on the street as I was reading.

When Loeb Baruch was born, the Jews the Frankfurt was still restricted in their residence to a single street the Judengasse, afterwards known as the Bornestrasse. In this narrow lane, the Jews were locked in after sunset on weekdays and as early as 4 o’clock on Sundays.

On certain holidays and festive public occasions, they often had to remain indoors during the day and were let out only in the evening. A strict watch was kept the ghetto gate. The boy Baruch is said to have remarked “I don’t go outside simply because the soldier over there is stronger than I am.” When high dignitaries passed through Frankfurt, arrangements were made so that their eyes would not be polluted by the sight of Jews. Thus, at the coronation of Emperor Leopold I, the Jewish leaders, who wished to pay homage to him, were arrested and kept under a police guard during the ceremonies.

And as I was reading this I got angry and upset because I was thinking that this about me. This is not about some other people that I’m reading about, this is about me.

Just at that moment there was a loud noise outside on the footpath that leads into town near our house – a group of people marching by and chanting – and they put a chill through me to think that at some time in some place there were people marching and chanting for the death of Jews.

So I went outside and I caught up with the marchers and asked what was going on. There were about 100 women and they were marching for Reclaim the Night – reclaim the night so they don’t have to be afraid of sexual violence when they go out after dark.

So nothing threatening – not today – but it reminded me, as I said, of antisemitism in Germany.

When Solomon Liptzin wrote Germany’s Stepchildren in 1944, how much did he know of what had happened to the Jews of Europe? The book was published by The Jewish Publication Society Of America, and Liptzin was head of the German Department at the College of The City Of New York.

I know that as early as the very beginning of the Einsatzgruppen death squads in Germany’s Russian campaign, word of the mass killings had got out and was known in the USA to those who wanted to listen.

And yet, many in the USA did not know. And I don’t really understand why. That’s another story, but as I read Germany’s Stepchildren, I keep wondering what Liptzin was aware of. Maybe he will say, later in the book.

What I see are people practising protesting for the big one. It’s just that the big one is an unknown, or not clearly seen, or unthinkable.

One thing that social media has done is to enable people to coordinate protests and protesters. There are plenty of things to protest about, of course. And there are many protests that make me think that people are begging for something to protest about.

Take what happened yesterday in London. People were protesting against a Winston Churchill themed cafe, encouraging customers to boycott the place because it glorifies Churchill, a man the protesters see as an imperialist and a racist.

I don’t criticise people for protesting about Winston Churchill. I know there are some things about him that don’t represent the best of humanity. But come on – did he not do anything worthy of more positive consideration?

The world is full of serious here-and-now issues worthy of protest. And each dubious protest clouds the issue for the issues that are worth protesting about.

The thing is though that I see it as people practising protesting for the big one. I think they are practising getting good at protesting. It’s not that they don’t think the things they protest about are significant or meaningful. It’s just that they are often or usually, not the big picture. They are scraps of something incompletely defined.

I imagine there will come a time when the big picture emerges and the protesters find themselves in a mass movement of protest.

As and when that time comes, the protesters will be quite good at protesting because they have been practising for quite a while.

Has somebody got it in for Boots the chemist?

There was a BBC investigatory programme a couple of weeks ago which tried to make out that Boots mixes up prescriptions horrendously.

In fact, as the programme showed and couldn’t help but show, Boots’ record of correct prescriptions versus wrong prescriptions is better than at any other pharmacy.

In fact, Boots make such a good job of it that the incidence of wrong prescriptions is tiny. It’s minute.

Of course, it is serious when a mistake is made. But is also serious when no mistakes are made.

And now on the BBC news today there is another incident at Boots which is given publicity that relates to a mixup in prescriptions.

Has somebody got it in for Boots?

In a different world, I wouldn’t think about it. But now, with the attempted destruction of the National Health Service – I am suspicious of a drive to smear Boots as a prelude to something else.

Is it an attempt to stop Boots filling NHS prescriptions?

Is it connected with the fact that Boots is now owned Walgreens, an American company?

Something is going on.

Daniel Burd was a Canadian High School student who in 2008 isolated two bacteria (Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas) that at the correct temperature ate almost half of a plastic sample within six weeks.

He won the first prize at the Canada Wide Science Fair and a $20,000 scholarship.

In an article in The Record (the article no longer there), Burd is quoted as saying:

The inputs are cheap, maintaining the required temperature takes little energy because microbes produce heat as they work, and the only outputs are water and tiny levels of carbon dioxide – each microbe produces only 0.01 per cent of its own infinitesimal weight in carbon dioxide.

I have googled repeatedly for Daniel Burd since then and haven’t found anything more.

Daniel Burd, where are you and what has become of your discovery?