16. How French...

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... is my neighborhood?

Very French. Here are some photos:

Rue Lepic <2 blocks away but I've never been there. Most of these restaurants are "serious" French restaurants with very little if anything for a Veggie. Rue Lepic had a great reputation, changed hands, and now I don't know.

Jeanne D'Arc is really old school French. I've never even been in the hotel. Not even sure where the restaurant is hidden away inside. <1 block away.

They keep trying new things here. The Tunnel Top bar next door is very popular but this space is very small and, until recent years, there was little happening on the hill part of Bush in the way of good food.

Behind the Catholic church is a French language school, with the same name, from pre-school (the most adorable uniforms) through high school. The French Consulate used to be in this block but they moved. 1 block away.

Now we come to the culinary heart of French SF: 

Cafe de la Presse -- I would guess -- is the most important single establishment when it comes to helping expatriates maintain a connection with their roots. <2 blocks.

Le Central is famous locally as the place where people like Herb Caen and former Mayor Willie Brown would hang-out regularly. 

Claud Place is Belden Place's little, and exclusively French, cousin. 2 blocks away.

Belden features two French places along with a mix of many other cuisines. Ploof is seafood and, again, has nothing for me. Bastille is the place I actually eat. There are not that many veggie items on their menu, but what there is is really good. There's also a basement dining room that is wonderful on a rainy night in SF. Belden is the far end of the French zone and is <3 blocks from me. 

The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, continued

I'm now reading the second part of the book which consists of other people reacting to the dilemma Wiesenthal presented, Should, or could, a Jew in the middle of the Holocaust forgive the actions of a repentant member of he SS? I almost thought I'd said everything that needed to be said about this when I first wrote, but of course I was mistaken. There's always more to think and say.

As presented, "Karl" the Hitler Youth turned SS sinner, can also be viewed as another victim of the Nazi regime, and in a way very similar to the way individuals in the camps helped run those camps (something Viktor Frankl described in Man's Search For Meaning). One especially vile aspect of the Nazi system was to take everyone, German superman or Jewish subhuman, and make them a little (or a lot) worse than they would otherwise have been. The -- possibly relatively few -- people who totally believed in the final solution and Nazi racial ideas -- found endless ways to share the guilt for their crimes with everyone else. Karl, as he is presented to us, seems to be a great example of this.

Assume Karl wasn't antisemitic before he joined the Hitler Youth (we don't and really can't know this, but let's say it's true). In his eagerness to belong to this exciting new group he acquiesced in their racial ideas and was eventually compelled to enforce them. This reality was as shocking to him as the reality of Dresden or Hamburg or Tokyo or Hiroshima might have been to an otherwise patriotic American serviceman. 

If you accept Karl as one of the victims, as well as one of the criminals, then I think while you can't meaningfully forgive him or absolve him of his guilt, you can understand his very human position.

Another thing that struck me while reflecting on the tale Wiesenthal told, is that I'm pretty sure there was more written about the sins of the Poles than of the Germans. 

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