Month: March 2018

BIBLIOTHERAPY is the practice, dating back to the Ancient Greeks, of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. After the First World War, traumatized (“shell-shocked”) soldiers returning home were often prescribed a course of reading to help them readjust to civilian life. In the U.S., the American Library Association distributed a list of recommended books while the novels of Jane Austen were advised in the U.K. Today, research on “mirror neurons” in the brain shows that reading literary fiction (but not popular fiction or literary nonfiction) improves empathy, i.e., the ability to experience what others go through as if you had gone through it yourself. Learn more about bibliotherapy in an article at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/can-reading-make-you-happier. To find a book for what ails you, check out The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies (Berthoud & Elderkin, 2016). See what literary novels were popular in the years ending and after the Great War in BEHIND THE STORY. Read more about traumatized WWI veterans in On the Shore (see NOVELS). What novels would you recommend for our shell-shocked country today?

In honor of Women’s History Month (March) – World War One boosted the cause of women’s suffrage when they were employed to replace the men fighting overseas. Women worked in the “land army” (farming), munitions factories, public transport, local law enforcement, and the postal service. By war’s end, women were also recruited into the armed forces as cooks, clerks, telephone operators, electricians, and code experts. These vital roles increased their economic, social, and political power. Parades and rallies enhanced their visibility. Using the rhetoric of the progressive era to demand the right of self-government, the suffrage movement pressured a reluctant President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 to approve a constitutional change and in 1920 the 19th amendment nationalized women’s right to vote. Read more about women’s involvement in the suffrage and labor movements during this era in On the Shore (see NOVELS).

In April 1945, the United National Relief and Rehabilitation administration (UNRRA) entered the American zone of Germany and registered between 6,000 and 7,000 displaced children. Both Jews and non-Jews, they included survivors of concentration camps, forced child laborers, and children whose parents were sent to forced labor camps. In July, not far from the Dachau death camp, UNRRA created an international pilot program in Kloster Indersdorf, a former monastery closed by the Nazis. Between 1945 and 1948, it became home to more than 1,000 refugee youth. Led by a disciple of Anna Freud, the institute served as a model for five other centers in Europe. Groups of 12-15 orphans were organized into surrogate families led by an adult parent figure. Said one staff member, “The first thing was to give them plenty of food, clothing, and listen to their stories, days and nights. It had to come out. Sometimes it took hours. You could not interrupt.” Photos of the children were posted in hopes that relatives, if alive, would recognize and claim them. In a few cases this happened, but for most of the Jewish children, “their dark suspicion grew gradually into the horrible certainty, that from now on each was all alone in the world.” Read more in BEHIND THE STORY.

 

In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8) – Many suffragettes were also prohibitionists, defending women against drunken husbands who abused them and protecting children from fathers who spent food and rent money on alcohol. Men were opposed to both movements and the liquor industry was a powerful anti-women’s rights force. Temperance proponents like Susan B. Anthony and Frances Willard took up the cause of women’s suffrage to enact laws against alcohol. Read more about early women activists in On the Shore (see NOVELS).

Researching the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II for my novel-in-progress, One Person’s Loss, I discovered that many famous people worked as agents — that is, spies — for the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Among them was chef Julia (McWilliams) Child; supreme court justice Arthur Goldberg, film director John Ford, Hollywood actors Sterling Hayden and Marlene Dietrich, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ralph Bunche (who was paid $5,600 a year). They were primarily recruited for their “intellectual sweat.” The 35,000 OSS personnel files in the National Archives were not released to the public until August 2008, more than sixty years after the agency ceased wartime operations.