Problem
In Poland you inevitably learn about the Holocaust. You will hear about the holocaust from a guide on even a standard city tour as you pass a museum or site, or the guide us asked by fellow tourists about the other tours. A trip to either the capital of Poland, Warsaw, or the pretty, small, historic city of Krokov, where the Nazis quickly invaded from nearby Germany and set up their capital in the small city which they preserved, whilst bringing in Jews from all over Europe, just across the border to Auschwitz.
A recently published book tells the love story of the Jewish tattooist of Auschwitz, "Lale" Sokolov (1916-2006), who fell in love with a girl called Gita from his home country, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. They both survived the camp - he sent food to her.
After the war, he searched for her. They found each other, married, and emigrated as far away as possible. They lived the rest of their lives peacefully in Melbourne, Australia.
Sokolov was the surname which Lale adopted when he lived in the Czech Republic, under Russian rule. His birth name had been Ludwig Eisenberg. He was forever the survivalist, inconspicuous.
Everybody will share the understanding of the love story and man's feeling of guilt and fear about the controversy over a potential accusation of collaboration.
In addition, what stands out for me, as I am a keen polyglot, is the vital life-saving factor, the tip, that he survived because he spoke so many languages.
He spoke many languages, like the late relative by marriage of mine who also came from the Czech area. The tattooist was a clever man, but also living in the Czech area surrounded by several other countries. He had to speak other languages to be understood by foreign visitors. Also he had the outgoing personality which impelled him to learn languages, as well as the native wit which allowed him to learn languages. If he had not spoken all those languages, he would not have been chosen to do that job, as a tattooist which saved his life in two ways. It kept him off the lists of those who would be gassed. He was given extra food.
The newspaper account also includes one sentence which makes no sense: 'he died before learning that his parents had died". He could not learn after he died. Do they mean 'without learning' or 'before he could learn', I presume so.
I see that the writer of the article has a European name, Ritu Prasad. Maybe the bilingual translator confuses before and after, gets the time sequence wrong, meaning, 'after learning' or 'just after learning' which implies that the shock of the news hastened his death.
My last thought is that the writer means 'before we/they i.e. the researchers learned'? Such errors and ambiguities are increasingly frequent nowadays. You don't have to be foreign to confuse a clause, attach a description of the subject as an afterthought, after the object of the sentence. In this case, two whole sentences are linked.
What's wrong with the sentence structure? Lack of a sub-editor? Cost-cutting? Carelessness? Race to publish first?
Grammatically, a case of a missing subject, attaching a sub-clause which appears to belong to the subject of the sentence, he, instead of the missing subject of the attached second sentence 'we learned instead of learning). If you have to read a sentence twice it's badly written.
However, you may be interested in both the BBC article and the book:
Helpful Websites:
http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42568390#_=_
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages.
In Poland you inevitably learn about the Holocaust. You will hear about the holocaust from a guide on even a standard city tour as you pass a museum or site, or the guide us asked by fellow tourists about the other tours. A trip to either the capital of Poland, Warsaw, or the pretty, small, historic city of Krokov, where the Nazis quickly invaded from nearby Germany and set up their capital in the small city which they preserved, whilst bringing in Jews from all over Europe, just across the border to Auschwitz.
A recently published book tells the love story of the Jewish tattooist of Auschwitz, "Lale" Sokolov (1916-2006), who fell in love with a girl called Gita from his home country, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. They both survived the camp - he sent food to her.
After the war, he searched for her. They found each other, married, and emigrated as far away as possible. They lived the rest of their lives peacefully in Melbourne, Australia.
Sokolov was the surname which Lale adopted when he lived in the Czech Republic, under Russian rule. His birth name had been Ludwig Eisenberg. He was forever the survivalist, inconspicuous.
Everybody will share the understanding of the love story and man's feeling of guilt and fear about the controversy over a potential accusation of collaboration.
In addition, what stands out for me, as I am a keen polyglot, is the vital life-saving factor, the tip, that he survived because he spoke so many languages.
He spoke many languages, like the late relative by marriage of mine who also came from the Czech area. The tattooist was a clever man, but also living in the Czech area surrounded by several other countries. He had to speak other languages to be understood by foreign visitors. Also he had the outgoing personality which impelled him to learn languages, as well as the native wit which allowed him to learn languages. If he had not spoken all those languages, he would not have been chosen to do that job, as a tattooist which saved his life in two ways. It kept him off the lists of those who would be gassed. He was given extra food.
The newspaper account also includes one sentence which makes no sense: 'he died before learning that his parents had died". He could not learn after he died. Do they mean 'without learning' or 'before he could learn', I presume so.
I see that the writer of the article has a European name, Ritu Prasad. Maybe the bilingual translator confuses before and after, gets the time sequence wrong, meaning, 'after learning' or 'just after learning' which implies that the shock of the news hastened his death.
My last thought is that the writer means 'before we/they i.e. the researchers learned'? Such errors and ambiguities are increasingly frequent nowadays. You don't have to be foreign to confuse a clause, attach a description of the subject as an afterthought, after the object of the sentence. In this case, two whole sentences are linked.
What's wrong with the sentence structure? Lack of a sub-editor? Cost-cutting? Carelessness? Race to publish first?
Grammatically, a case of a missing subject, attaching a sub-clause which appears to belong to the subject of the sentence, he, instead of the missing subject of the attached second sentence 'we learned instead of learning). If you have to read a sentence twice it's badly written.
However, you may be interested in both the BBC article and the book:
Helpful Websites:
http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42568390#_=_
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages.
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