Contest Winners, October 31, 2008
Holocaust Historiography Project is proud to announce the winners of the 5th Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge, which ended October 30, 2008.
Congratulations to each of our winners, and thanks to everyone who participated in our contest. Here are excerpts from our winning entries.
First Place — $200.00
Remy Hammer’s first-place entry has a bit of everything, and comes from that paragon of reserve and propriety, The Black Book: The Nazi Crime against the Jewish People. It’s a bit long to reproduce here, but it has its own page. To whet your appetite, it has many Halloween-appropriate descriptions of Nazi torture and medical experimentation.
Second Place — $50.00
Often wonder how so many Holocaust survivors come up with the macabre and unlikely stories of their prison time? Could they be hallucinating? That is certainly the case for “Ka-Tzetnik 135633,” the pen name for Yehiel De-Nur (AKA Dinur, whose pen name allegedly derived from his Auschwitz tattoo). In a detailed footnote on the “best documented event in world history” he relates the LSD treatments he underwent in 1976 under the supervision of a Dutch psychiatrist. Publishers Weekly dutifully reports that among De-Nur’s “memories” is one of a Dutch Jew being covered in marmalade by Nazis before being bitten to death by his fellow prisoners. It’s Elie-Wiesel approved!
Note: Our second-prize winner this year has asked that his prize money be sent to support Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle, who at this writing are in jail in Southern California awaiting a hearing on their request for political asylum. See the details here.
Honorable mentions
Greg Alan’s second-place entry is a ghoulishly delicious story of German authorities desecrating a grave to retrieve a Nazi flag. Why? Because these authorities felt that “displaying” a Nazi flag beneath the ground was “spreading Nazi doctrine.” No, really: Grave-robbers for anti-fascism! There’s a concept you can really get your brain around on Halloween.
You want scary? How about a money hungry lawyer, the most frightening thing this side of an undead German anti-fascist, going after billions in “reparations” for “Holocaust survivors?” What if we told you that he was trying to get the U.S. Congress to pass a bill in support of his efforts? Maybe you should put your head between your knees and try to breath deeply and calmly until the terror passes.