Bernard Storch: Holocaust Survivor, Soldier, and Camp Liberator Part II

. Soviet infantry crossing a river in Poland, 1944: WASHINGTON (VR)-- Andrew Hiller resumes his conversation with Bernard Storch, picking up the story when Storch goes into action on the Eastern Front in WWII. Bernard's first combat mission was a qualifed success, 2,000 soldiers were wounded, but the hill was taken. Shortly thereafter, the Germans forced a retreat. Storch says it is the only time his unit ever retreated.  Bad water, did however, remove him from the field. Dysentery nearly cost him his life. When he recovered, he re-enlisted and was assigned to an infantry unit where he served for the rest of the war. In 1944, he began the push into Poland before reaching Germany. He helped liberate a number of termination camps, wading through ash that he didn't realize was human remains. He says duty kept him going, but what he saw prevented sleep in those days. "They kept a people overnight in a church believe it or not. They got undressed in that church and we found out later after the fact that they had buses there from the christians that they had German buses,...

Read More........ → December 11, 2015

Traffic police pulls up Google's smart car for slow driving

Even AI cannot escape from the reach of the long arm of the law, Google discovered this week. A Mountain View police officer issued the first "ticket" for a self-driving car. The officer pulled over one of Google's smart cars for moving too slowly! The incident was snapped by Facebook user Zandr Milewski, who posted a picture of the incident on the social network. Commenting on his post, Milewski said that he had ''talked to the driver'' of the self-driving car, presumably, the human sitting in the front seat. He added, ''apparently MVPD [Mountain View Police Department] doesn't get NEVs [Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, a classification of vehicle that is limited to slower-moving roads] and pulled them over to ask why they were all going so slow.'' Confirming the the report with its own post on Google+, Google quipped, ''Driving too slowly? Bet humans don't get pulled over for that too often.'' Due to their low speed, Google's smart cars could end up getting many tickets, because the as they can only drive 25 MPH. They had also been programmed to be extra-careful on the roads. ''Like...

Read More........ → November 19, 2015

‘A director never finishes a film, he abandons it’

He likes to drive his characters mad and make his audience uncomfortable. But in persona, film-maker Darren Aronofsky, the mind behind intense and tough films like Black Swan is funny and easy. At a roundtable chat organised at the just concluded 12th International Marrakech Film Festival, he was full of quips and quotes. He also spoke at length about his forthcoming Russell Crowe film Noah. Excerpts: On hurricane Sandy’s impact on the filming of Noah: We actually were quite okay. We built a sea worthy vessel —the actual Ark was built in Long Island — which got wrecked since the impact of the Hurricane on Long Island was a lot. We couldn’t reach the sets for weeks. There was no electricity in that area for four days. But the emotional and human toll was much more than physical toll. On tweeting details about Noah: I’m a pretty private person. Agreed that Twitter is a pretty strange thing for me to get involved with, but I feel that we are in the New World so if one hasn’t got on to social media then one can feel left out. I’ve observed the great comedian Louis...

Read More........ → August 23, 2014