The Paper • Page 7 • November 2, 2017
Social Butterfly Cont. from Page 3
offered in 51 countries. This is not a grief therapy group, but a friendly and interesting discussion of death, dying, and end of life concerns. Bring an open mind, an open heart, and your curiosity! To learn more about Death Cafe, please visit deathcafe.com.
Kids in the Garden Class About Worms and Cotton – Come enjoy learning about worms and cotton with Farmer Jones on Saturday, November 11, from 10am to 12noon. At the class you will learn about our soil-makers – worms – and the wonderful cotton that’s growing at the Gardens. You might even do some weaving. Farmer Jones emphasizes hands-on discovery and fun for all. All of this takes place at the Alta Vista Botanical Gardens, and this is the 10th year of getting kids outdoors to discover their environment, enjoy nature, dig into gardening, learn about natural resources, and to share art and music. Class fee is $5/child, and $5/adult for Garden entry. Class is free for AVBG family members. All fees collected support the Children’s Garden. Adults stay with their children in the class. Pre-registration with Farmer Jones is required so there are materials for all. Contact farmerjonesavbg@gmail.com or call 760.822.6824. Your registration includes the class and a visit to the all Children’s Garden areas. Alta Vista Botanical Gardens are at 1270 Vale Terrace Drive, Vista, at the top of the hill inside Brengle Terrace Park. Visit the new website at altavistabotanicalgardens.org.
North San Diego County African Violet Society will meet at the Vista Public Library, Community Room, 700 Eucalyptus Ave. on Tuesday, November 14. As a program, they receiving mother leaves with little plantlets waiting to be seperated and potted up. These plants will be named. All materials will be provided for this hands-on meeting. Refreshments will be furnished by the club. For information, contact: Paulinemueller520@yahoo.com 1-760-433-4641, or, Barbara Conrad 1-858-759-6746 bconrad999@yahoo.com
2nd Tuesday Book Club To Discuss In A Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware – The Escondido Public Library invites adult readers to join the 2nd Tuesday Book Club meeting on November 14, at 6pm, in the Turrentine Room of the Library at 239 S. Kalmia St., Escondido. This month’s selection is In A Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware, which is currently being developed into a major motion picture. Copies of the book are available for check-out in print or eBook format and can be reserved at library.escondido.org/. As a group of friends gather for a celebration in a remote cabin in the woods, they are forced to question whether they can really trust each other. Join the discussion to explore obsession, complicated pasts, a murder, and the tension of total isolation as Ruth Ware ultimately has the reader questioning whether or not we can even trust ourselves.
Save the Date, for Lorraine Boyce’s Birthday Celebration – On Friday, November 17, the Escondido Community Child Development Center will hold a 90th Birthday Celebration for Lorraine Boyce, founder of the ECCDC in 1974. The celebration will be held at the San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum on North Broadway, Escondido, from 5:30-7:30pm. For more information, call 760.839.9361 or visit www.eccdc.com.
Letters to the Editor Cont. from Page 4
trey rake in huge profits .
I believe that their meaningless actions will lead to the gradual demise of the NFL the owners, and the wimps that play with a ball. I know personally that I used to look forward to the games played every week, but no more. I don’t need to watch greedy people stuffing money in their pockets while letting the American public know that they don’t give a damn about the country they live in. It will be a good day when the letters, NFL stand for NATIONAL FAILURE League! /s/George L. Beitner 3rd San Marcos, Ca. More NFL
My name is Steve Pantoja. I am the Commander at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3795 in San Marcos, CA.
The Post has cancelled the Sunday DirectV NFL Football Ticket. The Members of this Post can not support anyone or organization that disrespects the Veterans that have been killed defending our Flag/Country. There willl be a lot more Veterans killed that never will have the chance to go to college to become a football player and make millions of dollars so they can have a pass to disrespect our Country. Once again, the minority rules.
I recommend they go play football in Iraq, Afghanstan or Niger. That's where the real men/women go, they throw lead, not footballs.
God bless America and all the Veterans that have been killed, served and those that will serve America to keep our Flag flying. /s/ Steve Pantoja San Marcos, CA.
Celebrate Kindness at Escondido Public Library - The Library will host Choose Kind: Celebrate Wonder for children ages 4-12 on Thursday, November 16, from 3:304:30pm, in the Turrentine Room of the Library, 239 S. Kalmia, Escondido. Choose Kind: Celebrate Wonder takes place a day before the release of the film, Wonder, based on the best-selling novel of the same name by R.J. Palacio. The event will explore the story’s central themes of kindness through a storytime with related books, songs, and crafts. The novel and film center on the life of August “Auggie” Pullman, a fifthgrader who has a facial deformity. Auggie is attending mainstream school for the first time, and as he and his family deal with big changes, they must also confront issues of prejudice and bullying. In addition to enjoying storytime, participants of Choose Kind: Celebrate Wonder will have an opportunity to watch the movie’s preview and contribute their favorite or original, positive “Precept,” or “Rule to Live By,” to a community Choose Kind wall.
‘Social Butterfly’ Cont. on Page <None>
Historically Speaking by Tom Morrow
The Toolmakers of Nazi Germany – Part II
For years during the forties and fifties a popular American company used the sales phrase: “Better living through chemistry,” (Dupont) But, during the two world wars, chemistry played a large part as a destructive weapon.
Chemicals have been used for more than 100 years and those used during the first and second world wars were made with popular-labeled products on both sides of the battle front.
The company that made everything from aspirin to pesticides provided products used by both the Allied Forces as well as the Central Powers during World War I, and the Nazis during World War II.
Bayer was part of IG Farben, which at the time was the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company, from 1925 to 1952. and then again became an independent company. Bayer became part of IG Farben in 1925. In 1938, leading up to World War II, the IG Farben chemical conglomeration, which Bayer was a part, had 218,000 employes world wide. IG Farben was controversial both on the far left and on the far right, partially for the same reasons, related to the size and the Jewish background of several of its key leaders and major shareholders. Far-right newspapers of the 1920s and early 1930s accused IG Farben of being an "international capitalist Jewish company.” The liberal and business-friendly German People's Party was the most pronounced supporter of the new company, whereas not a single member of the management of IG Farben before 1933 supported the Nazi Party. A third, of the IG Farben supervisory board was Jewish. There is some evidence of "secret contributions to the Nazi war chest" in 1931 and 1932. IG Farben ended up being the "largest single contributor" to the successful Nazi election of Hitler’s campaign of 1933.
In 1941, an investigation exposed a "marriage" cartel between John D. Rockefeller's United States-based Standard Oil Co. and IG Farben. It also brought new evidence concerning complex price and marketing agreements between DuPont, a major investor in and producer of leaded gasoline, United States Industrial Alcohol Company and its subsidiary, Cuba Distilling Co. IG Farben had bought the patent for the pesticide Zyklon B, which later was used to gas thousands of Jewish prisoners. The gas,
ironically, had been invented by the Nobel Prize-winning German Jewish chemist Fritz Haber's research group.
During World War II, IG Farben used slave labor in factories that it built adjacent to German concentration camps, notably Auschwitz, and the sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. IG Farben purchased prisoners for human experimentation of a sleep-inducing drug and later reported all test subjects died. IG Farben employees frequently said, "If you don’t work faster, you’ll be gassed." IG Farben held a large investment in Degesch which produced Zyklon B. IG Farben facilities were frequent bombing targets of the Oil Campaign of World War II, and up to 1941, there were five Nazi German plants that produced synthetic fuel.
Due to IG Farben's Nazi entanglement, after the war it was considered by the Allies to be too morally corrupt to be allowed to continue to exist. But, IG Farben had large entanglement with American companies, notably with the successors of Standard Oil. IG Farben was modelled after and broken up into several companies. In the late 1940s, IG Farben was being rebuilt in the western zones and continuing doing business. In 1951, the company was split into its original constituent companies. The four largest quickly bought the smaller ones.
One of Bayer’s discoveries was heroin. In 1898, Bayer trademarked and marketed it as a cough suppressant and non-addictive substitute for morphine. But Bayer's first and best-known household product is aspirin.
Among other products produced by IG Farben include the nerve agent Sarin. And the German war machine kept fuel-hungry vehicles and airplanes running with a crucial product: synthetic fuel, made from lignite coal using the liquefaction process. The IG Farben Trial, was the sixth of the 12 Nuremberg war crimes trials. The defendants, all had been directors of IG Farben. Of the 24 defendants, 13 were found guilty. All were sentenced to prison, but received early release. Most were quickly restored to their directorships, and some were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
Since World War II, Bayer's continued primary areas of business include human and veterinary pharmaceuticals; consumer healthcare products; agricultural chemicals and biotechnology products; and high value polymers. Today, the company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. The Bayer company's motto today is "science for a better life." Today, popular consumer products such as Agfa and BASF, with Bayer aspirin-type products remain.
In 1995, Helge Wehmeier, the head of Bayer Corporation, publicly apologized to Elie Wiesel for the company's involvement in the Holocaust at a lecture in Pittsburgh. Too little too late.