Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

  Miep Geis Shines A Small Light is a riveting intensely emotional dramatic telling of the Anne Frank story focused on the moral courage of the Viennese-born Miep Geis who helped hide and support the Frank family and four other Jews in an annex above the offices where Miep worked for Otto Frank. A Small Light is an eight-episode series. In the beginning, Miep is 24 and living with the Dutch family who adopted when she was a sick child. The family encourages her to marry Cas. The parents are serious. Cas is her nonbiological gay brother. Miep goes in search of employment, which is hard to come by in 1930s Amsterdam, nevertheless, Otto Frank takes a chance on her lack of experience and hires her as a secretary for Opekta, which produces pectin for making jam. Otto Frank had moved his family to Amsterdam from Germany to escape Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. When the Nazis arrive, Otto Frank, his wife Edith, two daughters Margot and Anne and four others hide above the business. Mi

  Code Name: Lise:  The True Story of the Spy Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Woman By Larry Loftis Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton Lise was the code name for Odette Samson. She's living in Somerset England with her children at the outset of World War II. Her husband is off at war. Because she was raised in France, her language and experience make her a potential candidate to help the resistance organised by Britain's War Office referred to as SOE (Special Operations Executive). The story moves quickly from training to deployment. Relying on a trove of records that include interviews and official communications, Loftis creates a vivid thriller of a determined young woman focused on carrying out her risky responsibilities as a courier under threat of the Nazi boot. As the story progresses, she falls in love with her commanding officer, Peter Churchill. Despite many thrilling escapes, she and Peter are eventually captured by Hugo, Germany's master spy catcher. Disg

THE NAZI DOCTORS Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide   By  Robert Jay Lifton Reviewed by   Geoffrey W. Sutton Lifton peers into the lives of physicians who killed millions. He examines the beliefs and practices of Nazi culture, which provided a biomedical context for ridding Germany of disease by exterminating those targeted as responsible for such disease. In an evil irony, healers frame killing in an expanding narrative that ultimately reaches the level of genocide. In addition to records, Lifton included interviews with surviving Nazi physicians and some prisoner doctors who served as their underlings in Auschwitz. Lifton discloses his perspective, which is that of a an American psychiatrist, a Jew, with a psychoanalytic perspective informed in part by the ideas of Otto Rank. In the Introduction, Lifton informs us of key elements of his psychological model. People seek to deal with mortality by seeking immortality in various life projects. Many als