![kolbe](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/kolbe-1.png)
Only Love is Creative
In the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941, 600 men of Block 14 stood at attention in the boiling sun. A prisoner had escaped earlier and the Nazis were preparing retaliation.
None of the men knew exactly what the punishment would be but it was rumoured that several of the men would be chosen for the hunger bunker, a particularly gruesome form of death by starvation. Several prisoners had keeled over in the unbearable heat and were left to lie. Finally, as the sun went down, Deputy-Commander Fritsch, second-in-command to Commandant Hess, appeared freshly bathed and dressed in the finest and cleanest uniform and boots. He had come to announce what measures would be taken against the block. The men were lined up in ten rows of sixty men each. As Fritsch surveyed them, all were trying to be inconspicuous, invisible, so as not to be singled out. There was total silence. Fritsch announced that as the escapee had not been found, ten men would be chosen to die by starvation. He then…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins