I first heard the name Tadeusz Borowski as an undergraduate student in Amherst. At that time, I had rather sophomoric ideas of the horrors authored by the Third Reich and of its henchmen, and was scarcely aware of the songs of its survivors. Of course, I’d heard of Levi, Spiegelman and Wiesel. And I’d read Plath’s “Daddy” as a teenager.…
Tag: suicide
Shooting wooden stars
On a recent trip to Canada, I heard a startling fact on public radio: 349 American service members committed suicide in 2012 (to put that in perspective, that’s 54 more than were killed in Afghanistan that same year). I was shocked. disheartened. and ashamed. The broadcast went on to share the story of a 31-year-old Marine. He’d been in Afghanistan. …
