Behind the Iron Curtain part 7 – Racism

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

In this particular case, much of what I know now I did not even remotely see or experience as a child and I only learned about it later on. Further, I must first state my bias.

My experiences with Romani people were overwhelmingly negative throughout my life, behind the Iron Curtain as well as afterward. I am in no way an objective and dispassionate observer on this matter.

First experience was at the age of approximately 10 years when the merry-go-rounds were in town. I have met a slightly younger Romani boy who was totally downcast because he did not have money for any of the attractions. I offered to lend him 10 crowns (which was a lot). We agreed that he will give me the money back one crown at a time whenever he gets pocket-money and we went on and had loads of fun together that day. He only returned the first crown and his mother has seen him doing so. I have seen her to tell him something very loudly afterwards, but I did not hear what it was. However, next time he only offered threats of violence. After he pulled out a knife on me, I stopped politely asking and avoided him altogether. It was first time someone has betrayed my trust and I could not make sense of it.

(That same boy has tried later to rob a newspaper stand, was caught by police and subsequently beaten by his mother. Allegedly not for trying to steal, but for being caught, which given my experience I unfortunately find believable. At the age around thirteen he attempted to rape a woman near a disco club who fended him off. I have no idea what became of him afterward, I have never heard about him since.)

Second instance was the age of twenty-five. Not having learned my lesson, when a Romani employee at the company I worked for asked me if I would be so kind as to lend him some money for he had run out and he needs to buy diapers for his children, I obliged. On payday, when he was due to give the money back as agreed, he offered me threats of violence.

Third instance, at the same employer, was a conflict with Romani fork-lift driver whom I caught drunk on the job. I tried to be nice and told him politely that he cannot drive fork-lift in this state and should go home to sleep it off. He started to get agitated, my attempts at de-escalating the situation totally failed and he assaulted me. Afterward I was being told that it was all my fault for not being nice enough to an aggressive drunkard. My today position is that I should have called police straightaway and not try to pussyfoot around someone breaking the law.

And there were the all too common instances of Romani people being drunk in public and having shouting matches that can be heard for hundred meters no matter the time of day.

To be clear, I have plenty of negative experiences with plenty of people of different nationalities too. I try my best to not leave these above mentioned experiences to cloud my judgement, but I am wary around Romani people. This has to be mentioned up front for the sake of honesty.

The only people of color present in any meaningful numbers in Czechoslovak Socialist Republic were Romani and Vietnamese. An average Czech only knows other people of color from TV. An average Czech was, and is, also unfortunately very racist, as is typical of people who grow up isolated from outside world. Which makes othering an easy thing to both being deliberately done by politicians and emerging amongst the people themselves.

The official stance was that everyone is equal and racism is bad. Case closed, right? No, of course not. The Romani people were widely disliked and there was a lot of casual racism towards them. Somehow I have managed to not meet this racism until fairly late age (thus my willingness to lend money to a Romani boy), but it was there and eventually I have seen it. The mentions that I was an idiot for lending money to a G∗y, to a N∗r. The mentions how their dark skin is dirty by default and that they are disgusting no matter how well washed. The mentions how they are inherently untrustworthy and treacherous.

The regime did actually try to address the problems on both sides, but did so completely wrong. As with many other things, the regime did not approach the issue by evaluating what the situation is and trying to devise the best way to deal with it. It approached it as many other things with having an answer up front and trying to force everyone into that answer.

Nobody asked Romani people what they want. Nobody asked them how they would like to live, what they have to offer and what their needs are. The regime had all the answers remember? In this case – the best thing to live is in urban settlements and working at a factory. Therefore Romani people have been forced to abandon their nomadic life-style and were forced to live in urban settlements and work in factories. And Czechs were told that from now on everything is hunky-dory and everyone will live together in a happy ever-after. Which of course did not work.

For a societal change of this magnitude to happen first it is necessary to change people’s minds. The attitudes then follow. That takes time and cannot be done by decree, an actual work needs to be done over decades, even generations. But that is not how totalitarian regimes function, so a decree was made and it was expected of everyone to obey.

So Romani people were forced to live in communities with which they had no experience living in, and a lifestyle they did not know how to live. They were not used to eight hours work days so their work morale was terrible. They did not know how to care for an apartment. They were not financially literate so they did not know how to manage a big income once a month instead of many small incomes throughout. The communities inevitably became ghettos in an abominable state of disrepair and skyrocketing crime rates. This in turn instead of weathering down the prejudice of Czechs strengthened them, because they only saw (and see) the Romani as leeches abusing the social safety net.

The regime also knew that an ideal family has only a few children. So some Romani women were sterilized without their knowledge and their consent. An inexcusable violation of bodily autonomy if I ever saw one.

The one thing where the regime had the best chance to get a good handle at things, it bungled it too completely. As it almost always is with such things, education is the key. But Romani people were denied that too, although allegedly not completely deliberately.

Part of the problem was that many Romani children did not learn Czech at home and were not sent to kindergarten. And because the ghettos were very isolated when the time came for them to go to school, they were not able to communicate with teachers and other children properly and were behind other children. Which was of course misconstrued as a lack of intelligence and therefore Romani children were overwhelmingly concentrated in special schools whose purpose on paper was to help to educate children with special needs (mentally and/or physically handicapped). So even in this regard the regime totally failed to break the self-reinforcing cycle that kept Romani people poorly educated and socially isolated. There are Romani individuals who manage to break that cycle for themselves, but they have to beat incredible odds working against them to do so – they get obstacles on both sides of the cultural barrier, with Romani communities not wanting to let them go and Czechs not wanting to accept them.

Unfortunately with the fall of the Iron curtain the situation did not get any better. If anything, it has gotten worse and I think it will not get better during my lifetime. Czechs have proven to be way too much racist and easily manipulated with racist fear mongering, and when Romani people ceased to be a convenient scapegoat, Muslim refugees took their place as convenient boogeyman. As with many other things, the most effective Iron Curtain runs through people’s brains, not through the countryside.

The Beautiful Town Idstein – Part 7 – Doors and Windows

There was a wide variety of doors and windows to be seen, some looking more authentic than others, some being very evidently modern. And of those modern ones some made a better job at concealing this than others.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I think that maybe the two doors at the castle gate (Alte Kanzlei) were truly authentic, or at least very old. Wood and iron can survive centuries when kept dry  and these both were good hidden from immediate reach of the elements. The one on the left was on the back side of the  building, the red one on the right on the inside of the gate arc.

 

What I found interesting however is the aforementioned mixture of authentic looking and modern. I am not very well informed on this problematic, but to the best of my knowldedge in CZ if someone owns an authentic historic building that is listed as such and is protected by law, then all repairs must be performed with technology authentic to the time the house was built – at least on the outside, or on the specific part that is being protected. Once I have talked with an old lady whose house had authentic wooden shingles on the roof and she complained about how difficult – not to mention expensive – it is to find somene to do repairs that are confirming with law.

It seems that in Idstein not all houses have such strict protection , although some perhaps do. There was definitively a visible hint of plastic here and there.

 

 

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

On Bigoted Use of the Word Nazi.

A few weeks ago I had a visitor at my lab from our other plant in Germany. We did not have too much work to do at that time so after i have shown him around we had some time to chat about this and that.

One of the things that transpired was that he is married to a woman who is of US American / German descend.  He said her Texan grandfather took it rather badly and commented it along the lines “I was fighting against Nazis in war, and my daughter and granddaughter both married one.”.

I looked at him after this and asked the first question that popped in my mind: “Is your grandfather in law per chance a Republican and did he vote for Trump?” To which his answer was yes on both accounts.

I was astounded at this blatant display of a lack of self-awareness.

I mean, it is not uncommon to hear something similar in CZ. Even some of my close friends sometimes ask me – and only half-jokingly – if I still work “for Nazis” or in “Naziland”. Even I said such things.  The German nation will in minds of many Czechs never ever get rid of the black stain the horrors of the WW2 have made on its reputation, not to mention previous thousands of years of mutual enmity between Slavic and Germanic nations and the two hundreds years long attempts at Germanization of Czechs. History cannot be denied or ignored, and its consequences do and will reach far into the future.

There is still also a lot of anti-slavic prejudice (not only) in Germany to this day. When Czech Republic entered in the EU, there was a lot of people near the borders who feared the influx of uncouth Czechs that would lead to a massive rise in crime-rate and stealing of jobs from proper Germans. Which of course did not happen.

It is therefore understandable that some Czechs view Germans as a whole with distrust and dislike, even though not justifying the over broad use of the term “Nazi” for anyone from Germany.

The current rise in nationalism spurred by anti-muslim sentiments, both in EU and in USA, seems to have led to a peculiar situation demonstrated by the Texan grandfather in law of my colleague’s. A lot of people seem to be putting an unqualified equal sign between the words “Nazi” (or “fascist”) and “German” in their minds whilst completely forgetting – or perhaps never even knowing – what this originally was about. And so subsequently they are voting for de-facto Nazis, who spout nazi rhetoric and try to propagate nazi policies, the whole package – unbridled racism and white supremacy, yearning for a golden age that never was, scapegoating and dehumanizing whole ethnic groups, wishing for concentration camps, firing squads and wars to beat opponents into submission (even the “traditional family values” and homophobia are in that package). All the while saying that “Nazis are bad” and thinking themselves opposing Nazis and nazism.

Yes, I know, one could quibble about whether the term Nazi really does fit Trump and the Republican party. One could discuss the minutiae endlessly and talk over differences in definitions and perspectives. There are differences. However I would argue that the term does indeed fit Republicans in general and Trump in particular much, much better than it does a typical German in these days, who most likely would feel ashamed and sorry for what Nazis have done and would despise them.

Lets not forget that not all (not even most) Germans are Nazis and not all Nazis are German. Lets not forget that first victims of first Nazis were Germans – German Jews, German communists, German mentally ill and handicapped and many just ordinary decent Germans. Using the term Nazi as a generic sneer against Germans is morphing into a form of bigotry of its own, an a dangerous one at that. Because as it usually is with such things, it shifts the focus from bad things people do on people who are perceived as bad whatever they do*.

  • I have not heard this yet, but I wonder if there is someone somewhere who dislikes Angela Merkel and accuses her of being a Nazi for accepting refugees? I know for sure there are people who accuse her of giving power to Nazis by doing it.

Anatomy Atlas Part 7 – Pelvis

This is the last drawing in the Anatomy atlas that is about skeleton.

Pelvis is most ingenous in many ways. Not only is the hip joint  bearing most of the weight, it is second most flexible joint in human body, with three axes of freedom just like the shoulder joint, only in lesser degree. Further the whole structure must be flexible enough to allow for birth.

Pelvis skeleton

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Today’s stories ar more sad than interesting and they are both about the skeleton we used for learning.

When teaching assistant brought the box with skeleton in the class her emphasised ” These are not casts, these are real bones. Please be aware that you are handling the remains of a real human being, so treat them with dignity. Memento mori – you too shall perish.”.

I was wondering why he feels the need to say that, we are all adults over twenty years of age, surely we need not be reminded of that like some adolescents? Well, not long after he has left the class one future gym teacher was showing off in front of a few of his laughing female classmates with a femur used as a microphone for pretend singing. My opinion of them all dropped significantly and I never forgot that sight. That was one of many proofs that in every social gathering will inevitably be someone who insist on being an asshole and someone who enables them in being an asshole.

Second story is about the dead man himself. He did not have completely fused os sacrum, with the top vertebra being free. And his whole pelvis was assymetrical and deformed on one side, with the openning for nervus ischiadicus being pinched and ground between that free vertebra and the fused rest. The teaching assistant told us that the man must have suffered from immense pain his whole life and that this was assumed to be the reason why he dies at relatively young age with probable cause of death being suicide by means of unknown poison. Whenever I remember that story I wish he had better options to deal with that problem.

The Beautiful Town Idstein – Part 6 – Die Fachwerkhäuser

Ein Fachwerkhaus is the German term for what could be considered a typical medieval building – a frame made of beams with the gaps filled with bricks and mortar. They are in many places in CZ, but it seems to me they are much, much more common in Germany. And Idstein is certainly full of them.

What I found most interesting is the fact that some houses were built from straight timber with precise symmetric angles and all the lines straight. And others had completely irregular beams incorporated in the frame, or they were slanted in different directions like they were drunk.

These all are beautiful buildings but I  would not like to live in one of them. The hotel at which we resided was not timber frame house, but it was a very old building. This means there were no right angles anywhere and all the floors were wavy and sloped in different directions. I would not mid the odd angles much but I found walking on sloped and uneven floor slightly disconcerting and uncomfortable.

Not to mention the huge amount of work that has to be invested in maintaining these buildings.

Fachhaus Fachhaus Fachhaus Fachhaus Fachhaus

Fachhaus

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Behind the Iron Curtain part 5 – Feminism

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

I grew up in a household where a lot of the work was shared between both parents. There was division of labor between them, but it was never presented to me as the “right” thing to do. So while my mother has done indeed most of the washing, cleaning and cooking and my father has done the repairs around the house and the gardening and husbandry, I was never discouraged from doing anything on the basis that it is “unmanly”. And it was not uncommon for my father to do the dishes or cooking. Especially since my mother had higher ranking and better paid job than my father, so mostly when I was sick it was my father who took care of me (which was a lot).

Neither do I remember any such thing from school.

That is not to say that patriarchal ideas were not present or prevalent. They were both. Most party officials were old men, with all the baggage that carries with it. Thousand years of history cannot be denied or ignored, so the ideas about things proper and improper for a woman were still propagated and confirmed to the old stereotypes. It was expected that a woman takes care of the household while the man takes care of most of the income. It was expected tha men will do most of the leading and women will be mostly lead. There were jobs that were considered to be for men and jobs that were generally considered to be for women.

But, even in retrospect, I think a progress was made, and the regime did not approach the issue altogether falsely.

Firstly women were not officially discouraged from any job, with perhaps the exception of the army. Unfortunately the gender pay gap was there (and got further exacerbated after the fall of the iron curtain), but it was not uncommon to see women in leadership positions. Women were officially recognized as a big potential working force. The official stance was to encourage women to take on any job they wish and the regime boasted this officially and a great pride was taken in having the first woman astronaut for example etc. This of course had to work against the aforementioned cultural drag.

Secondly in media there was an effort made at making movies and TV series that either were centered around women, or at least contained some gender parity in both heroes and villains. One of the most popular TV series from my childhood that I remember had the main protagonist and one of the main villains both women. But of course here too was hindered by the enormous cultural inertia.

But the things the regime I think got definitively right (that I knew of at the time) were these two: maternity leave and divorce.

At the time of my life maternity leave was nearly three years and the regime took great pride in that. The reasoning was that taking care of the children is an important work for the society as a whole and should be recognized as such. Low or unpaid maternity leave in some western countries was always presented as one of the most backwards things.
Divorce was also legal and available pretty much on demand, even if it was not swift and there were legal loops to go through. The reasoning here was that to keep a woman in a marriage she does not wish to be in is a form of slavery and as such does not belong in modern society.

In retrospect I think the Iron curtain stopping more progress being made on this front was more in people’s heads than in the regime’s ideology.

Making a Rondel Dagger – Part 6 – Polishing

The long pause was no pause at all. I worked on the blade every evening and but I could not give it more than half an hour to one hour a day, so the progress at this stage was very, very slow.

After the hardening came tempering, which is rather easy and dull process. I wanted the blade to be primarily tough, not overtly hard, so I gave it two half hour courses at 200 °C in the baking oven. This has removed a lot of the hardness and almost all of the brittleness. It should be easy to sharpen and maintain sharp but it should not snap when hitting something hard. With a kitchen knife I would lower the temperature to 150 °C or perhaps perform differential tempering.

Abrasive beltsNext step is polishing. This is by far the most time-consuming and dull part of making a knife. Here are all the belts on my belt hanger. Before hardening I went all the way from left where the  pink ceramics belts are (P40-P120) through middle blue-green zircon-corund (P120-P320). After hardening I gave it one more pass with zircon-corund P320. Very thorough pass, because the blade was slightly pitted from the failed hardening attempts. After that came the last third of the belts, which are Trizact belts (A65-A6, which is equivalent of P300 to P2500). There are six Trizact belts, and each took approximately one hour. Had I more experience I could perhaps speed it up by 30-40%, but it would still be a lot of time – I want the blade to be as near perfect as I am able to make it. So at each stage it is important to remove absolutely all scratches made by previous belt.

Dagger blade polishingOf course thick blue marker helps here as well, because otherwise I could get easily confused about which facet I am working on. As I learned when doing my previous dagger. To be able to see the marks from previous grind, one does alternate the angle – that is for this facet for example I was grinding diagonally with the point down, so next step will be with point up. Were the facets perfectly straight and not wobbly at all from the beginning, the process would be fast. Alas they were wobbly and I made them wobbly in the process in decreasing degree of wobbliness untill I reached nearly straight towards the end. What I learned here is that I really, really need speed control for my belt grinder, because during polishing slower speed of the belt would speed up the work – I would get better control of the blade and most importantly, the edges of the belt would not make divets and scratches so fast as they do. However even as it is it is working well, but requires a lot of skill that I do not yet have. A lot of eyeballing was involved.

Holder for sandpaperToday I finished on the grinder but I am still not done. For a mirror-finish more work is needed. Kitchen knife would get a few passes on a buffing wheel at this point and that would be it. That would give it nice mirror finish but the scratches from the trizact belts would still be somewhat visible. For this one though now comes  excessive use of elbow grease. I will work my way through a series of wet polishing papers P2500 all the way to P7000. For this I use my trusted gizmo that has seen me through multiple blades already. A piece of hardwood board held in a vice, with leather strap glued on it. On the leather I can lay a strip of sandpaper. Sometimes I rely on the adhesion between the wet leather and the sandpaper to hold it in place, sometimes I hold the paper in place with the help of two springs and something made from fence wire I cannot put a name to.

After that I will be done with this phase and I will be able to perform the last step in making a blade – signing it.

I still have not resolved how to do that. I used to have my own maker’s mark consisting of my stylized initials. It was very easy to etch or engrave and I would love to continue to use it. But by purest of coincidences that very same mark was a few years later independently designed as Bluetooth logo. We’ll see what I come up with.