Book display in Aleppo, Syria

I've been on holiday, starting off in Istanbul, then taking the train to the south of Turkey and then buses and train through Syria, ending up in Jordan.  Damascus is a fascinating city and almost everyone I met in Syria was friendly, but this book display in a shop window in Aleppo gave me a start.  The shop was round the corner from my hotel in the commercial district.

 

Comments

[Frank]

His heirs are there and theirs. Not nice. Not healthy. Not over yet.

[Mach3]

Grotesque.

[dubaijazz]

You know what, while I'm not gonna defend the disproportionate display of hitler-related books (which is a complicated issue, btw), what really saddens me is that this is the ultimate impression people will get about a country. Forget that almost everyone is friendly, Hitler is a best selling subject.

[Bob]

Dubaijazz, In what way is this a "complicated" issue?

--

I have three friends who worked for several years very closely together in a small organisation, two of them good friends, both Jewish (one lefty and secular, one observant and conservative), the third a Somali Muslim who, for the sake of this story I'll call Abdi. Abdi is a graduate, and a lovely man; kind, gentle, thoughtful. After the three had worked together for about 6 years, the topic of 9/11 somehow came up, and Abdi dropped into conversation that Mossad were responsible and all the Jews who worked there called in sick that day.

I'm not sure what point I'm making, Dubaijazz, but if you really think it is more significant that people are nice to a tourist than that they are obsessed with Hitler, then you probably also think it is more significant that Hitler was kind to animals than that he slaughtered 6 million Jews.