Errol Morris, Dutch Jews and indie rock

It happens to everyone from time to time, perhaps more often than we'd like to admit. You click on an interesting headline which unfolds into an interesting story which unfolds into a longer story, a background search and a Wikipedia check. Before you know it, and perhaps to your own chagrin, you've become a mini-expert on said subject and you aren't quite sure how it all started.

This happened to me when I began reading an ongoing series ("Bamboozling Ourselves") in the New York Times by visionary filmmaker Errol Morris. You know Morris, he's the man behind films such as "The Thin Blue Line," "Mr. Death" (in which he documents an engineer who became an expert witness to Holocaust deniers) and more recently "The Fog of War." What you perhaps do not know about him is that a) he is Jewish and studied philosophy at Berkeley and b) he is an outstanding literary journalist. One of the best.

"Bamboozling Ourselves" is a thick and detailed series, filled with information on the world of the Nazis, Dutch Jews and forged artwork. Lots of intrigue and despair, and Morris, ever the artist, paints a devastating picture. To be completely honest, the most I knew of Dutch Jews during the Holocaust before reading this was wrapped up in childhood readings of the diaries of Anne Frank and adulthood listenings to Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" ("Holland 1945" will break your heart).

So I challenge you dear reader, go and read Morris's NY Times series. Then listen to Neutral Milk Hotel. Then tell me you don't feel a thing.  I'll call you a liar.

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