Gossip Girl recap: the Unblairable lightness of being

With just a few episodes to go before the third series of Gossip Girl comes to an end, Josh Schwartz is sparing no emotions. This week Chuck and Blair came to a permanent (for now) end, while cracks began to show in Nate and Serena’s relationship. And of course, everyone’s favourite Polish maid got hitched.

 Yes, for the first time ever on a show centred around us versus them, the focus of the episode was ‘them’ as Dorota and Vanya got married. Rather less romantically, it was a rush job because Dorota’s family were coming from ‘the old country’ to the new world – and she hadn’t exactly told them she was preggers out of wedlock.

 Luckily, Chuck, desperate to prove to Blair that he wasn’t really a maniac who let his girlfriend prostitute herself out to his uncle, in order to save a hotel, stepped forwards and agreed to fund a wedding. Tomorrow.

 Which, basically, was an excuse for the Gossip Girl writers to throw in every politically incorrect, culturally offensive gag about Russians and Poles they could come up with. I’m no expert on Eastern European tradition, but I’m fairly sure a balloon game is not an ancient cultural practice there.  

 I’ve heard not many Americans own passports. Clearly the Gossip Girl staff don’t and have never been to Europe.

Cultural stereotyping? On Gossip Girl? Never.

 That said, it was actually a rather sweet wedding day, with Dorota all prettied up in wavy hair and a disingenuous white dress. Cyrus was positively kvelling at the happy couple, acting more as proud dad than capitalist employer. Absurdly, he wanted to give the newlyweds their own apartment, in Queens (generosity doesn’t stretch into Manhattan proper) which Eleanor Waldorf was not impressed with.

 “I was going to buy her a Vera Wang cake knife,” scoffs Eleanor, because “she’s just a maid, for goodness sake.” Quite. One should never blur the line between upstairs and downstairs.

 But then, as Blair has a meltdown of epic proportions, Eleanor sees just how positive a force Dorota is in her daughter’s life – and hands over the keys.

 Blair is upset because she’s finally cracked, admitting she and Chuck aren’t happy. Chuck takes all of three seconds to move on to a new conquest, while Blair – in the most improbable twist of the most improbable show on our screens ever – dances with Dan. Dan. She hates Dan. Hates him. HATES HIM.

 I’m really hoping the writers aren’t working towards a Blair-Dan relationship, because a) NO and b) my tired brain can’t take the messes up romantic tetrahedrons this show loves.

Trouble in paradise for Dumb and Dumber (Photo: Christopher Peterson)

 Elsewhere, trouble in paradise as dumb and dumber get caught in a web of deceit – a new development for a couple whom, as Chuck astutely observes, until now faced only the problem of “how shiny your hair is”.

 Serena is having secret liaisons with her ex Carter Baison – the show’s resident ‘we need a bad boy, stat’ character. Obviously, she’s hunting down daddy not actually cheating (yet) but with the stirring hands of Little J, Nate thinks she is.

 “Serena’s my sister and Nate’s my friend” insists Little J (methinks the crazy doth protest too much) to Eric, when he smells trouble.

 A fair point, except Serena’s also your brothers ex girlfriend, you are desperate to add benefits to your friendship with Nate, which may well be possible because his girlfriend is back with the ex who also dated her best friend, who also dated Nate…

 Ah, the tortured incestuous relationships of the Upper East Side.

 Later, Serena tells Jenny to pass on a message to Nate that she loves him. Yes, because you WOULD want the shameless hussy going after your man to play emotional courier. Smart move, blondie.

 But, oblivious to the demise of her romance, Serena hops on a plane to Palm Beach, where daddy has been spotted. But, shock horror, guess who opens the door (bearing in mind prior scenes of Rufus trying to track down his AWOL wife). No prizes, it’s Lily.

 Saving the best till last, this was a second week of Eric-heavy plot. Apartment boy and him have been texting, but as yet he’s got no confirmation of if he’s gay or not. Showing up at the wedding (sure, he’d OBVIOUSLY be invited) avec girlfriend is a clear indication, except it’s not, because he turns out to play for both teams.

 Recipe for disaster, but I’m glad Eric has a new love interest. His puppy dog eyes make you desperate for his happiness.

 Good episode – tragically I hear rumour there is a break next week, but I’m sure we will be back soon to hear all about Dorvanya’s honeymoon from hell, where they get stuck in Club Med because of the volcanic ash obliterating Europe.

Reflections on a visit to Poland, 65 years after Auschwitz was liberated

commemorating the dead at Birkenau concentration camp

 

 Today is the 65^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The concentration remains perhaps the most potent symbol of the Nazi Holocaust, the massacre that cost the lives of six million Jews and millions more communists, homosexuals and other minorities.               

In March 2007 I visited Poland with a Jewish group to trace the history of that time, to look into the past and the past of many members of my community. Below I share my experiences visiting Auschwitz, Birkenau, Madjanek and countless other sites where the Nazis carried out their genocide.           

I write this having just walked out of Birkenau concentration camp, the culmination of a four day visit to Poland.  It has been an incredible and enlightening journey for me, one that I hope many people of my generation will be able to undertake.            

 We were a group comprising of people of various ages and backgrounds; British, Australian and South African, religious and secular.  All different, yet all the same.  United by a common desire to connect with our heritage and to seek a better understanding of the atrocities of the past.            

 In the four days I have spent in Poland I have stood in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek, I have walked the streets of Warsaw and Lublin and I have heard first hand harrowing stories of lives uprooted by the Nazis.  I am exhausted, both physically, and mentally.  But even more so, in a way that I did not anticipate, I am uplifted and I am inspired.               

 Most of all, I am proud.  I walked out of Birkenau along the train tracks, where so many arrived to meet a tragic and horrific fate.  I walked straight down the middle, between the tracks, a free Jew able to choose both my literal and metaphorical steps.  For me, this was a symbol of defiance, in complete contrast to those who came in cattle trucks, stripped of every human dignity, never to make the return journey.           

 That sense of defiance has permeated my time in Poland.  I had found Warsaw, my first stop, a grey, cold, broken city, with little to recollect the vibrancy of pre-war Jewish life.  Krakow was the complete opposite, a place that they had tried to destroy, but that had survived and remained alive.            

human hair the Nazis took from the victims of the gas chambers

 

 We spent the weekend in the old district of Kazimierz, home to many of the Jews before they were exiled to the ghetto.  The weekend had coincided with the anniversary of the death of a reknowned Rebbe (religious leader), so the place was flooded with thousands of Hassidic Jews in glorious fur Shreimels, come to visit his grave and commemorate his death.             

Krakow is but a fragment of what it once was, a ghost town of empty houses and synagogues, the remaining testimony to centuries of life there.     

There are synagogues on every corner, an insight into just how vast the community once was, and it saddened me to see these places mere shadows of their former selves.  Yet, praying on Friday night in the one still active synagogue, with groups from across the world, was a poignant and inspirational experience.           

 What I have left Poland with is an overwhelimg sense of triumph and victory.  The Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, and sought to obliterate every last remnant of Jewish life in Europe.  They stripped away everything the Jews had, the massive stacks of shoes and piles of hair are just one heartrending example.  But they still did not suceed. Sixty five years on, Birkenau is in ruins.             

a Polish survivor shows photos of her husband, killed 67 years ago for helping Jews

 

  Poland has brought a new admiration and appreciation of what heroism really is.  During the trip we encountered bravery in many forms, at Schindler’s factory or speaking to an elderly Polish woman whose husband was killed 67 years ago to the day for helping ghetto Jews.     

We heard stories of resistance, both spiritual, for example celebrating the festival of Succot in the camps, or the physical uprising in Warsaw.  For me, this is heroism it its finest incarnation.                

 The great Jewish scholar Maimonides said ‘each person must see themselves as if the entire world were held in balance and any deed they might do could tip the scales.     

If the Holocaust has taught us anything, it is that one person really can make a difference.  And, even more so, that we must.             

The rail tracks at Birkenau. These led many straight to the gas chambers