Re: [Leica] Nazi Leicas

[Andre Jean Quintal <megamax@abacom.com>]

Emmanuel Lowi wrote:
. . .
In delving deeper into the history of Ernst Leitz Wetzlar
during the war, I've learned that the company was certainly
better than most German firms in its treatment of Jews
and other targets of the Nazis. It is both gratifying and
appropriate to note that the makers of the world's greatest
cameras and lenses were also fine human beings in many other ways.
. . .
	--> Thank you, Mr Lowi for such a moderate and balanced
	intervention on probably a very touchy subject, very close
	to your heart. How the Nazi era came to be, came to pass
	will long remain a painful topic, even to otherwise sarcastic
	bystanders I hope. How strange events flowed that way
	and degenerated to what we do know of the times.
	     To most of us, it's a unreal photo here, a photo there,
	a film clip sometimes. To the poor souls who experienced
	the stigma and social violence of the WW2 times, I'm 100%
	convinced it etched soul wounds that require a lot of Love,
	a special Grace maybe, to even become bearable.
 	      And yet, Sir, you manage to find a measure,
	a very good measure even, of understanding, it seems to me,
	towards the "other" people caught in such a maelstrom
	of pain, such a vortex of horror and despair that then befell
	your people and, probably, so many moderate Germans
	who held and tried to abide by higher ideals.
	       But, ... can anyone forget those hopeless eyes ?
	       Photo-journalism can and DOES become documentary photography,
	one witness, ten witnesses, a thousand witnesses . . .

	       Let us pray such stigma and prejudice never ever
	befalls mankind again, never more my Lord Yahweh.

	       Andre Jean Quintal