Furniture, new website chapters & some world affairs

Hello subscribers!

This week the latest of the themed posts from our most recent poll went up on the DT Blog, on Thursday, namely “Dark tourism & furniture”. It featured 17 photos, including the one above, which shows a recreation of a typical late 1970s or early 1980s living room in East Germany (the GDR). It’s a walk-in exhibit at the “DDR-Museum” in Berlin with original pieces of furniture from the time. Note the hideous wallpaper, the lampshade in matching brown-and-yellow colours and the “Schrankwand”, literally ‘cupboard wall’, those very German (also in the West!) wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling systems of cabinets, drawers, bookcases and TV. And the table I presume is what in GDR parlance was called a “MuFuTi”, short for “Multifunktionstisch”, i.e. a multifunctional table, meaning one you can make smaller or bigger and adjust the height of. Apparently they were the pride of many a GDR living room.

Other furniture featured in the latest Blog post included office furniture of communist biggies, Nazis and the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, as well a prison cell, concentration camp bunk beds and a number of sofas, from Chernobyl to Vienna and also Napoleon’s deathbed at Longwood House on St Helena. And the flourish at the end of the post was a photo of two benches from the Nuremberg Trials, namely those on which the Nazi arses of the defendants sat during the trials, in which most were sentenced to death or long prison terms.

The next theme post will be “Dark tourism & reflections”.
  

On my main website two more Poland chapters have been uploaded, a new and expanded one for Izbica, a completely new stand-alone one for Lublin, plus the entry for Majdanek has been substantially updated.

I am now working on entries covering a dark chapter in American history, namely the Japanese American “Relocation Centers” in which around 120,000 people of Japanese descent (a good third of them US citizens!) from the Pacific coast (mostly California) were incarcerated in what were essentially concentration camps during WWII. There were ten of these camps, mostly located in desolate places with an extreme climate. I’ve so far finished and uploaded a base text about the “relocation camps” in general, and four chapters about specific ones. This came about because I was contacted by an American guy a while ago who had written and given a presentation about one of those camps, namely Amache. And I remember I was first alerted to another one of these places, which are now being better commemorated and commodified, a couple of years ago, so I also wrote up a chapter for that one: Topaz. The other two covered so far are Manzanar and Rohwer (the latter was the camp that George Takei – the actor famous for his role as Mr Sulu in Star Trek – was incarcerated in as a young boy). I'll add more chapters about yet more of these camps soon.
  

What else … In the media there’ve been some disturbing reports about developments in Ethiopia, which has now expelled seven UN officials. And you have to wonder what they don’t want the UN to witness … see this article. Ethiopia was the last overseas country I visited before the pandemic began and developments since last year’s outbreak of civil war in the Tigray region and its neighbours have featured on the DT Blog a couple of times before (see this, this as well as this post). I wonder where the country is heading …
  

Also worrying is the air-force muscle-flexing and continued hard rhetoric coming out of China with regard to Taiwan (see e.g. this article): A “reunification” with the mainland, as is the stated goal of China’s president Xi, would in reality mean a military invasion and annexation of a de facto independent country, which it has been since 1949. And a takeover of Taiwan by force would definitely also mean an end to its democracy (see Hong Kong!). Moreover, there is the risk that the USA, Australia and perhaps also Japan (and maybe even the UK) could be drawn into a military conflict with China if they come to Taiwan’s defence (which the recent formation of the “Aukus” alliance seems to indicate might happen). If such a conflict were to escalate there’s even a risk of nuclear war – just what a world already in existential crisis needs! Excuse the dark sarcasm …
  

And back to Poland: quite disturbing news from there too, although more in a purely political-diplomatic way. Apparently a Polish high court has ruled that some EU laws allegedly go against the Polish Constitution. This follows the targeted appointment of judges loyal to the ruling PiS party and could be a first step towards a “Polexit”. Tensions between the EU and Poland had already been high because of recent increasingly nationalist moves and undermining of an independent rule of law together with an erosion of women’s rights and discrimination against homosexuals. If these tensions escalate into an actual “Polexit” then this could have repercussions for dark tourism too. I’m glad I’ve been to Poland so many times without any problems, as Poland is in the Schengen agreement. If that changes it could get more complicated to travel there. But it could also cost Poland dearly, as it receives plenty of subsidies from Brussels.
  

Speaking of exit costs, we’re seeing this in Brexit-Britain too at the moment, even though nobody in the UK seems to dare mention the dirty ”B-word” any more, now that it is supposedly “done” (but as I said back then: it’ll take years, if not decades, for that to actually be the case).
  

On a more positive note, my wife and I have now booked flights to go to Britain over Christmas – first time since 2018. It’s my wife’s family’s overdue turn to be visited for Christmas and it would be nice. But of course as we head into winter with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic we will have to see whether this visit will actually be possible. At least our flights are re-bookable for free in case we have to postpone.

But that’s it for this newsletter.

Have a good week and, as always, stay safe.

Best

Peter