Beware of God by Shalom Auslander Read Free Book Online Page A

children.
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    Before Hitler killed himself, he killed his dog Blondie because he didn’t want her to suffer.
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    In a 1943 Gallup poll, 30 percent of people dismissed the news that 2 million Jews had been killed in Europe as a rumor.
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    Karl Brandt was a Nazi doctor. They hung him for war crimes. “It is no shame to stand on this scaffold,” he said.
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    During the Holocaust, a Nazi doctor named Klaus Schilling infected a thousand Jews with malaria. “Please,” he said at the Nuremberg trials, “let me finish my experiments.”
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    A German officer once went to the Passover Seder of a local rabbi. The Seder service was very long, and the German officer was getting very hungry. Finally, the rabbi’s wife brought out a tray full of food. The German took one bite and spat it out. “What a stupid people!” he shouted. “Waiting all this time, just to eat bitter herbs!” The German officer walked angrily out the door. “What a fool,” said the rabbi. “If only he had waited a moment more, the bitter herbs would have been followed by a delicious meal.”
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    â€œAnd that,” says Rabbi Brier, “is the whole history of the Jews.”
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    Our families will come to Miami, too, if they haven’t all been murdered in the camps. Then we’ll buy a big house with a tennis court and a pool and a car that’s not a Mercedes or a Ford, and maybe if Kevin isn’t a Nazi he can come visit us and we can ride bikes on the beach or something.
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    Seven years after the Holocaust, 400,000 Russian Jews were sent to labor camps in Siberia.
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    Today, Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the Middle East.

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    Most of the time, Houdini had the keys.
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    Most of Game of Death where Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wasn’t really Bruce Lee. He was already dead.

    T IPS FOR HITCHHIKING :

Make a big sign.
Stand at the entrance to a highway.
Smile.
Stand where there’s space for a car to pull over.
If you can, bring a girl along, like Deena.
    Florida is 6,600 miles from Israel. We’ll probably go to Jerusalem and stay in the King David Hotel. Deena goes there every Passover with her family. They have a tennis court and a pool.

Waiting for Joe
    I N the beginning, he was always on time. But it had been a long time since the beginning, longer than either Doughnut or Danish could remember.
    â€œI don’t get it,” complained Danish. “Isn’t it time?”
    â€œIt’s time,” answered Doughnut.
    â€œIt feels like it’s time.”
    â€œIt’s time.”
    Danish paced anxiously back and forth. Of course it was time! He knew it was time! He didn’t need Doughnut to tell him that it was time!
    â€œSo where is he then?” asked Danish. “If it’s time, then where is he? I don’t understand. Either he knows that it’s time or he doesn’t. Does he know thatit’s time?”
    Doughnut sat curled up inside their cold, empty feeding bowl, focused intently on the doorknob of the apartment front door, believing with all of his heart that at any moment the doorknob would turn, the door would open and Joe would appear.
    â€œWe cannot pretend to think that we know what Joe knows and what Joe doesn’t know,” pronounced Doughnut with a sharp twitch of his nose, “we must only believe with all of our heart that Joe knows.”
    â€œI bet he doesn’t know!” said Danish. He rose upon his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass walls until he became exhausted. Breathing heavily, he lumbered over to the water bottle that hung in the far corner and drew a few drops into his mouth.
    â€œYou nonbelievers are all the same,” scoffed Doughnut. He pushed some dry cedar chips into a small, comfortable mound and settled down upon it. “As if you were the first hamster to ever doubt him!” he said. “The first rodent to ever think , really. Who