Exam Code: ASVAB Practice test 2023 by Killexams.com team
ASVAB Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery

Your scores in four critical areas -- Arithmetic Reasoning, Word Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension and Mathematics Knowledge (see below) -- count towards your Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) score. The AFQT score determines whether you're qualified to enlist in the U.S. military. Your scores in the other areas of the ASVAB determine how qualified you are for certain military specialties. Score high, and your chances of getting the specialty/job you want increase.

The ASVAB features eight individual subtests:

Subtest Minutes Questions Description
General Science 11 25 Measures knowledge of physical and biological sciences
Arithmetic Reasoning 36 30 Measures ability to solve arithmetic word problems
Word Knowledge 11 35 Measures ability to select the correct meaning of words presented in context, and identify synonyms
Paragraph Comprehension 13 15 Measures ability to obtain information from written material
Auto and Shop Information 11 25 Measures knowledge of automobiles, tools, and shop terminology and practices
Mathematics Knowledge 24 25 Measures knowledge of high school mathematics principles
Mechanical Comprehension 19 25 Measures knowledge of mechanical and physical principles, and ability to visualize how illustrated objects work
Electronics Information 9 20 Tests knowledge of electricity and electronics

Total number of items: 200
Test Time: 134 minutes
Administrative Time: 46 minutes
Total Test Time: 180 minutes

Note: Until recently, "Numerical Operations" and "Coding Speed" were also administered on ASVAB, but have been dropped.

Scoring high on the ASVAB will require study and concentration. Don't skimp on preparing for this test -- read about what you should prepare for, and take our practice test, which gives you an idea of how well you'll score, identifies areas that need improvement and suggests resources you can use.

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a test that covers basic knowledge such as math and verbal skills, writing skills, and vocabulary. It is a required test for entrance into the military, but it can also be an indicator for general aptitude skills for other purposes. For those looking to go into military service, the ASVAB score is a crucial indicator of prospective job placement, so it is very important to take this test seriously and to focus on your strengths when taking the exam. Higher test scores often mean better jobs, higher salary, and more opportunities for advancement in the military.

Three different versions of the ASVAB test are available: The CAT-ASVAB (computer adaptive test), the MET-site ASVAB, and the Student ASVAB. These different versions are designed to suit different needs, so it is important to understand the basics of each test before sitting for an exam.

The CAT-ASVAB is a computer-based test that is only provided at Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS) for enlistment purposes. The test is customized based on the takers answers, so if one question is answered correctly, the next one will be more difficult. This test is timed, although users have the option of pacing themselves throughout the exam. However, it is not possible to go back through the test and check answers or change responses after they have been submitted. The CAT-ASVAB is broken down into 10 subparts, including basics such as arithmetic and verbal skills as well as auto information, electronics, shop, and mechanical knowledge

The MET (Mobile Examination Test) Site ASVAB is only for those who have been referred by a recruiter to take the test because it is only for enlistment into one of the branches of the military. This test is broken up into 8 parts and is very similar to the CAT-ASVAB. The primary difference here is that the MET Site ASVAB is conducted with a pencil and paper rather than on the computer. This means that the answers to the MET ASVAB can be changed, but the test is still timed, so it is a good idea to keep track of the time while testing. Also, test takers for the MET ASVAB are not penalized for wrong answers, so always guess and respond to all of the questions in order to maximize your chances for scoring well on the exam.

The Student ASVAB is the most flexible of the exams. It is typically provided to high school students to help them assess their skills, job prospects, potential military positions, or college majors. The ASVAB for students is essentially the same as the MET ASVAB exam, only students are not necessarily testing for positions within the military. The students school counselors examine their scores and help them decide on what to do after graduating from high school. This test is still an important component of a students education because it can help them identify their strengths and weaknesses and help set them on the right track for their future career goals.
Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
Military Vocational action
Killexams : Military Vocational action - BingNews https://killexams.com/pass4sure/exam-detail/ASVAB Search results Killexams : Military Vocational action - BingNews https://killexams.com/pass4sure/exam-detail/ASVAB https://killexams.com/exam_list/Military Killexams : Veteran Readiness and Vocational Rehabilitation

If you are a veteran who has a VA disability rating and an employment handicap, you may be entitled to Veteran Readiness and Employment (previously known as Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment) services under Chapter 31 of the GI Bill (VR&E). These services include - but are not limited to - counseling, training, education and job placement assistance.

The following services may be provided through the VR&E program:

  • Comprehensive rehabilitation evaluation to determine abilities, skills, interests, and needs.
  • Vocational counseling and rehabilitation planning.
  • Employment services such as job-seeking skills, resume development, and other work readiness assistance.
  • Assistance finding and keeping a job, including the use of special employer incentives.
  • On the Job Training (OJT), apprenticeships, and non-paid work experiences.
  • Financial assistance for post-secondary training at a college, vocational, technical or business school.
  • Supportive rehabilitation services including case management, counseling, and referral.
  • Independent living services for for Veterans unable to work due to the severity of their disabilities.

VR&E Eligibility

Eligibility and entitlement for VR&E are two different things. You may meet eligibility criteria, yet not be entitled to services. The first step in the VR&E process is to be evaluated to determine if you qualify for services. To receive an evaluation for VR&E services, you must have received a discharge that is other than dishonorable and have a service-connected disability rating of at least 10% - or a memorandum rating of 20% or more from the VA.

Period of Eligibility - Like many VA benefits VR&E has a limited period of eligibility. The basic period of eligibility in which VR&E services may be used is 12 years from the date of separation from active military service, or the date the veteran was first notified by VA of a service-connected disability rating, which comes later.

The basic period of eligibility may be extended if VA determines that a veteran has a Serious Employment Handicap.

VR&E Program/Process Overview

If you are eligible for an evaluation under the Veterans Readiness program, you must complete an application and meet with a Veterans Readiness Counselor (VRC). If the VRC determines that an employment handicap exists as a result of a service-connected disability, you will be entitled to services. You and the VRC will then continue counseling to select a track of services and jointly develop a plan to address your rehabilitation and employment needs.

You and your Veterans Readiness Counselor will work together to:

  • Determine your transferable skills, aptitudes, and interests.
  • Identify viable employment and / or independent living services options.
  • Explore labor market and wage information.
  • Identify physical demands and other job characteristics.
  • Narrow vocational options to identify a suitable employment goal.
  • Select a VR&E VetSuccess program track leading to an employment or independent living goal.
  • Investigate training requirements.
  • Identify resources needed to achieve rehabilitation.
  • Develop an individualized rehabilitation plan to achieve the identified employment and / or independent living goals.

The rehabilitation plan will specify an employment or independent living goal, identify intermediate goals, outline services and resources needed to achieve these goals. You and the VRC will work together to implement the plan and achieve successful rehabilitation.

If the VRC determines that you are not entitled to services, her or she will help you locate other resources to address any rehabilitation and employment needs identified during the evaluation. Referral to other resources may include state vocational rehabilitation programs, Department of Labor employment programs for disabled veterans, state, federal or local agencies providing services for employment or small business development, internet-based resources for rehabilitation and employment, and information about applying for financial aid.

Additional VR&E Benefits and Definitions.

Subsistence Allowance - In addition to receiving a monthly payment while attending training through VR&E, you may also qualify for a monthly subsistence allowance. This is paid each month during training and is based on the rate of attendance (full-time or part-time), the number of dependents, and the type of training. For example a full-time attendee with two dependents could receive up to $955.92 a month. View the current VR&E Subsistence Allowance Rates.

If you're eligible for both Veterans Readiness and Employment benefits and Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits you can choose the Post-9/11 GI Bill’s monthly housing allowance instead of the VR&E subsistence allowance.

Employment Handicap - An Employment Handicap is defined as an impairment of the veteran's ability to prepare for, obtain or retain employment consistent with his or her abilities, aptitudes, and interests. The impairment must result in large part from a service-connected disability. For veterans rated at 20% or more, a finding of employment handicap results in a finding of "entitled."

Serious Employment Handicap (SEH) - A Serious Employment Handicap is defined as a significant impairment of a veteran's ability to prepare for, obtain, or retain employment consistent with his or her abilities, aptitudes and interests. The SEH must result in the most part from a service-connected disability.

Note: For veterans rated at 10% disability and for veterans whose 12-year period of basic eligibility has passed, the finding of an SEH is necessary to establish "entitlement."

Suitable Employment - Work that is within a veteran's physical and emotional capabilities and is consistent with his or her pattern of abilities, aptitudes, and interests.

Non-Paid Work Experience (NPWE) program - NPWE provides eligible veterans and service members the opportunity to obtain training and practical job experience concurrently. This program is ideal for veterans or service members who have a clearly established career goal, and who learn easily in a hands-on environment. This program is also well suited to veterans or service members who are having difficulties obtaining employment due to lack of work experience. NPWE programs may be established in federal, state, or local (e.g. city, town, school district) government agencies only. The employer may hire the veteran or service member at any point during the NPWE.

Learn more about the VA's Non-Paid Work Experience (NPWE) program.

Keep Up With Your Education Benefits 

Whether you need a guide on how to use your GI Bill, want to take advantage of tuition assistance and scholarships, or get the lowdown on education benefits available for your family, Military.com can help. Subscribe to Military.com to have education tips and benefits updates delivered directly to your inbox.

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 14:43:00 -0600 en text/html https://www.military.com/education/gi-bill/vocational-rehabilitation
Killexams : The Blindness of Colorblindness No result found, try new keyword!“The GI Bill,” I wrote in When Affirmative Action Was White, “offered eligible African Americans more benefits and more opportunities than they possibly could have imagined in the early 1940s” when ... Mon, 06 Feb 2023 07:39:00 -0600 en-US text/html https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-blindness-of-colorblindness/ Killexams : Today’s Premium Stories

LONDON

Even before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, getting an education was tough for the young woman from Kandahar.

Ms. A. says she endured violence, street harassment, and “daily threats on the way from men” – never mind family poverty – “so that I could be someone in the future, and get freedom and independence.”

But nothing prepared her for what she witnessed in late December, when a phalanx of Taliban gunmen came to her university to halt her final exam, as they enforced a new decree that banned women from higher education.

“I could not believe my eyes that it could be true,” recalls Ms. A., who asked that her full name not be used, for fear of retribution. Scores of fighters with assault rifles blocked the university entrance and tore through classrooms, as if on a military operation, prompting male students to shout at them to permit the female students to enter.

“It was so scary,” says Ms. A, whose hands and one foot were badly bruised when the Taliban hit students with their guns and dispersed them with live fire. “I still remember their wild eyes and long hair; I can’t forget their horrible faces and actions.”

Video of the clash taken by a classmate shows one male student getting pulled to the ground by a black turban-wearing Talib, who kicks and beats him hard as gunshots sound.

Such violent episodes have played out in different forms at universities across the country, illustrating the collision between Afghan women’s expectations of contributing publicly through education, work, and greater freedoms, and the ultraconservative Taliban’s demands that they stay at home, be subservient to their husbands, and disengage from society.

The women’s expectations were raised during 20 years of American and Western military and donor presence, which sought to build civil society. Now, a year and a half after the Islamist Taliban swept to power, earlier Taliban promises of allowing girls and women to study at high school and university and to work outside the home have been snuffed out by one edict after another that activists say are driven by misogyny.

Mothers and babies wait to receive help with nutrition at a clinic run by the United Nations' World Food Program, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Jan. 26, 2023. A WFP spokesperson says malnutrition rates in Afghanistan are at record highs. The distribution of aid has been severely impacted by a Taliban edict banning women from working at national and international nongovernmental groups.

Yet while Afghan women say their lives have grown darker under the Taliban, they nevertheless are often still struggling to find ways to get by, and cling to their determination to get an education and to work.

Still, as Afghans cope with the toughest winter in a decade, with widespread hunger made worse by a banking and financial crisis and the cutoff of donor funds to the Taliban, there is shock at how the Taliban have prioritized their zealous shrinking of the role of women. Much United Nations and Western relief work is in limbo, for example, over a separate Taliban ruling that bans Afghan women from working for them.

Existential questions

Among many other exact and restrictive edicts, women have been banned from visiting parks and gyms.

“Is it a sin being a girl? Is it a sin to learn? Is it a sin just to exist and breathe?” asks Ms. A. Those questions, she says, have addled her and even made her suicidal, as anger grows in her family about its own sacrifices to invest in her education, which now “appear a waste of time and money.”

Her existential pondering echoes across several interviews, conducted by The Christian Science Monitor over secure messaging apps and with the promise of anonymity, with young women in three regions of Afghanistan. Two had jobs working with the U.N. or international nongovernmental organizations while also pursuing advanced studies. All of that is now on hold.

“They will marry me off and that is the end of my every dream, [but] I don’t want to stop fighting for my education. I don’t want to stay backward,” says Ms. A. Still, she acknowledges that working and applying her studies “is not possible in Afghanistan for the next several years.”

Such restrictions imposed on Afghan women have drawn widespread global rebuke.

After a late January visit to Afghanistan, for example, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the ban on women working for the U.N. and relief agencies was “a potential death blow” that could have “catastrophic” results.

“Afghanistan is going through a savage winter, the second under the Taliban,” Mr. Griffiths told reporters at a press conference. “Last winter, we managed to survive. I don’t know if we can do this indefinitely, not with these bans.”

Mr. Griffiths said the Taliban promised him that new guidelines would enable women to work in humanitarian operations, and the U.N. was “asked to be patient.” But even though the Taliban reportedly permit women to work in the health sector, officials in Kandahar ordered that those working in local clinics must be accompanied by a male guardian.

Housebound in Kabul

Taliban restrictions have confined Ms. S. to her family home in the capital, Kabul. She started school in 2005 and was at the top of her class every year until graduation, when she aced the national Kankor exam, chose advanced study, and later took a high-profile job.

She stopped work when the Taliban came to power, and was identified by the Taliban as someone who took part in protests to preserve women’s rights that took place shortly thereafter.

“I had an immense fear that the Taliban will arrest me, because I was leading a women-based civil society organization,” says Ms. S. “Whenever I got home, my family was thinking about me.”

Disappointed but unbowed, Ms. S. “decided to get back on my feet.” She started a master’s program in business administration.

Afghan female students stand outside Kabul University, Dec. 21, 2022, as Taliban security forces began upholding a higher education ban for women by blocking access to university campuses across the country.

“I had promised my parents that I would study and serve my family and my country,” she says.

But when she was about to take the final test in December, there was instead a lesson in rough Taliban enforcement.

“The teachers were trying to prevent the Taliban from entering, but they came into our class,” recalls Ms. S. “We were very scared. We said to them, ‘Please let us pass our exam.’ But they took our books from our hands. They were very disrespectful and forced us out of the university.

“All of us women were crying, and I came home crying and disappointed. I threw away all of my books. I hate pens and notebooks,” she says. “I think that all my dreams have been lost and I have wasted my efforts.”

Undesired marriages

Similar frustration is voiced in northwest Afghanistan, where Ms. N. also describes how her final exams in Mazar-e-Sharif were blocked by the Taliban – and how one commander has now complicated her life even more.

When the Monitor first spoke to Ms. N., she described living “free like a bird” before the Taliban seized power, as an activist working for women’s and children’s rights.

But then her family’s economic situation deteriorated so far, with her father unable to keep his butcher shop open under Taliban rule, that he was forced to supply away her 15-year-old sister in an underage marriage early last year – partly to pay Ms. N.’s university fees. Ms. N. said she could “never forgive herself” for that outcome.

As a personal form of resistance, Ms. N. then doubled down on her medical studies. But even that option has now evaporated.

When the Taliban banned women from higher education, her university decided to conduct all exams secretly within a week – three months early.

Yet within 10 minutes of starting the exam, “Taliban fighters entered the test room with great aggression and started beating the professors and women,” recalls Ms. N. “They beat us ceaselessly, tore our test papers, and violently dragged us from the test room.”

And that is not the only Taliban problem Ms. N. has to contend with. A commander once saw her enter university, took a photograph, and forced a university administrator to supply up her contact details.

The Taliban commander “calls and sends me messages, warning me, ‘If you don’t marry me, I will kill you and your father,’” says Ms. N. He goes to her house in a distant village once or twice a week, pressing her father for her hand.

“We are witnessing the Taliban in our society using women like slaves,” says Ms. N. “In our village, Taliban commanders want to marry for the second or third time. If the girl is not satisfied, the Taliban force her.”

The cumulative result for Ms. N. is that renewing hope is a challenge, compounded by not enough money to pay for her father’s medical treatment – or even to pay for much food or heat in the house.

“Our only effort was to acquire knowledge to save our nation and society from this bad misery,” says Ms. N.

“By banning women from education and work, the Taliban again want to make women’s lives dark. ... If a woman is not educated, then she will raise illiterate children to society, and we will not be able to solve our problems.”

Hidayatullah Noorzai contributed to this report.

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 15:00:00 -0600 en text/html https://www.csmonitor.com/Daily/2023/20230208
Killexams : Eichmann in Jerusalem—II

In March, 1939, Hitler moved into Czechoslovakia and welded Bohemia and Moravia into a German protectorate. Eichmann was immediately appointed to set up an emigration center for Jews in Prague. (“In the beginning I was not too happy to leave Vienna, for if you have installed such an office and if you see how everything runs smoothly and in good order, you don’t like to supply it up,” Eichmann told the police examiner.) Prague was somewhat disappointing, although the system was the same in both cities: “The functionaries of the Czech Jewish organizations went to Vienna and the Viennese people came to Prague, so that I did not have to intervene at all. The model in Vienna was simply copied and carried to Prague. Thus the whole thing got started automatically.” But the Prague center was much smaller, and “I regret to say there were no people of the calibre and the energy of a Dr. Löwenherz.” But these (as it were) personal reasons for discontent were minor compared to mounting difficulties of another kind. Hundreds of thousands of Jews had left their homelands in a matter of a few years, and millions waited behind them, for the Polish and Rumanian governments now left no doubt in their official proclamations that they, too, wished to be rid of their Jews. (They could not understand why the world should get indignant if they followed in the footsteps of what one of their officials called a “great and cultured nation.”) The opportunities for Jews to find refuge within Europe had been exhausted long before, and now the avenues for overseas emigration clogged up, so even under the best of circumstances—that is, even if war had not interfered with his program—Eichmann would hardly have been able to duplicate “the Viennese miracle” in Prague. He knew this very well. Certainly Eichmann could not have been expected to greet his next appointment with any great enthusiasm. War broke out on September 1, 1939, and one month later Eichmann was called back to Berlin to succeed Müller as head of the Reich Center for Jewish Emigration. A year before, this would have been a real promotion, but now was the wrong moment. No one in his senses could possibly think any longer of a solution of the Jewish question in terms of forced emigration; not only was there the difficulty of getting people from one country to another in wartime but now, through the conquest of Polish territories, the Reich had acquired two or two and a half million more Jews. It is true that the Hitler government was still willing to let its Jews go (the order that stopped all Jewish emigration did not come until the fall of 1941), and if the Final Solution had been decided upon, nobody had as yet given orders to that effect, though Jews in the East already were concentrated in ghettos and were also being liquidated by the Einsatzgruppen—the mobile killing units of the S.S. that operated in the rear of the Army. It was only natural that emigration, however smartly organized in Berlin in accordance with Eichmann’s “assembly line” principle, should peter out by itself—a process Eichmann described by saying, “It was like pulling teeth; tendency: listless, I would say, on both sides. On the Jewish side because it was really difficult to obtain emigration possibilities to speak of, and on our side because there was no bustle and no rush, no coming and going of people. There we were, sitting in a great and mighty building, amid a yawning emptiness.” Evidently, if Jewish matters, Eichmann’s specialty, remained a matter of emigration, he would soon be out of a job.

It was not until the outbreak of the war that the Nazi regime became openly totalitarian and openly criminal. One of the most important steps in this direction, from an organizational point of view, was a decree, signed by Himmler on September 27, 1939, that fused the Security Service of the S.S., to which Eichmann had belonged since 1934, and which was a Party organ, with the regular Security Police of the state, in which the Secret State Police, or Gestapo, was included. The result of the merger was called the Head Office for Reich Security (the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or R.S.H.A.), and Heydrich was its first chief; after Heydrich’s death, in 1942, an old acquaintance of Eichmann’s from Linz, Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, took over. By Himmler’s decree, all police officials—not only of the Gestapo but also of the Criminal Police and the Order Police—received S.S. titles corresponding to their previous ranks, whether or not they were Party members, and this meant that overnight one of the principal arms of the old civil service was incorporated into the most radical section of the Nazi hierarchy. As far as I know, no one protested, or resigned his job. (Himmler, the head and founder of the S.S., had since 1936 been Chief of the German Police as well, but the two apparatuses had nevertheless remained separate until now.) The R.S.H.A., moreover, was only one of twelve Head Offices in the S.S., the most important of which, in the present context, were the Head Office of the Order Police (the Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei), under General Kurt Daluege, which was responsible for the rounding up of Jews, and the Head Office for Economy and Administration (the Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, or W.V.H.A.), under Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, which was in charge of concentration camps and was later to be in charge of the “economic” side of the extermination.

The “objective” attitude—talking about concentration camps in terms of “administration” and about extermination camps in terms of “economy”—was typical of S.S. habits of thought, and was something that Eichmann, at the time of his trial, was still very proud of. By its “objectivity” (“Sachlichkeit”), the S.S. dissociated itself from such “emotional” types as Streicher (that “most unrealistic fool,” as Eichmann called him) and also from certain “Teutonic-Germanic party bigwigs who behaved as though they were clad in horns and pelts,” to quote Eichmann in the police examination. Since Eichmann did not like such nonsense at all, he admired Heydrich greatly, and he felt a lack of sympathy with Himmler because, among other things, the “Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German Police” (as Eichmann invariably referred to him), though boss of all the S.S. Head Offices, had permitted himself “at least for a long time to be influenced by it.” During the trial, however, it was not the accused who succeeded in carrying off the prize in “objectivity;” it was the counsel for the defense. A tax and business lawyer from Cologne who had never joined the Nazi Party, Dr. Servatius was nevertheless able to teach the court a lesson in what it means not to be “emotional” that no one who heard him is likely to forget. The great moment—one of the few great ones in the whole trial—occurred during the short oral plaidoyer of the defense, after which the court withdrew for four months to write its judgment. Servatius declared the accused innocent of charges bearing on his responsibility for “the collection of skeletons, sterilizations, killing by gas, and similar medical matters,” whereupon Judge Halevi interrupted him. “Dr. Servatius,” the Judge said, “I assume you made a slip of the tongue when you said that killing by gas was a medical matter,” at which point Servatius replied, “It was indeed a medical matter, since it was prepared by physicians; it was a matter of killing, and killing, too, is a medical matter.” And, perhaps to make absolutely sure that the judges in Jerusalem would not forget how Germans—ordinary Germans, not former members of the S.S., or of the Nazi Party—even today can regard acts that in other countries are called murder, he repeated the phrase in his “Comments on the Judgment of the First Instance,” prepared for the review of the case before the Supreme Court, stating that not Eichmann but one of his men, Rolf Günther, “was always engaged in medical matters.”

Each of the Head Offices was divided into sections and subsections, and the R.S.H.A. contained six (later seven) main sections. Section IV, headed by Müller, who was an S.S. Gruppenführer, or major general (the equivalent of the rank he had held in the Bavarian Police), was the bureau of the Gestapo. Its task was defined as “combatting opponents hostile to the state,” of whom there were two categories, and who were therefore dealt with by two subsections: Subsection IV-A, which handled matters concerned with Communism, Sabotage, Liberalism, and Assassinations, and Subsection IV-B, which handled matters concerned with Sects; that is, Catholics, Protestants, Freemasons, and Jews. Each of the categories in this subsection received an office of its own, designated by an arabic numeral, and Eichmann, in March of 1941, was appointed to the desk of IV-B-4 in the R.S.H.A. Since his immediate superior, the head of IV-B, turned out to be a nonentity, his real superior was always Müller. Müller’s superior was Heydrich, and later Kaltenbrunner, each of whom was, in his turn, under the command of Himmler, who received his orders directly from Hitler.

In addition to his twelve Head Offices, Himmler presided over another organizational setup, which also played an enormous role in the carrying out of the Final Solution. This consisted of the Higher S.S. and Police Leaders, who were in command of regional organizations; their chain of command did not link them with the R.S.H.A.—they were directly responsible to Himmler—and they always outranked Eichmann and the men at his disposal. The Einsatzgruppen, on the other hand, were under the command of Heydrich and the R.S.H.A.—which, of course, does not mean that Eichmann had anything to do with them. The commanders of the Einsatzgruppen also invariably held a higher rank than Eichmann. Technically and organizationally, Eichmann’s position was not very high; his post turned out to be such an important one only because the Jewish question, for purely ideological reasons, acquired a greater importance with every day and week and month of the war, until, from 1943 on, in the years of defeat, it had grown to fantastic proportions. In these years, his was still the only office that officially dealt with nothing but “the opponent, Jewry,” but actually he had lost his monopoly, because by then all offices and apparatuses—state and Party, Army and S.S.—were busy “solving” the Jewish problem. Even if we concentrate our attention only upon the police machinery and disregard all the other offices, the picture is absurdly complicated, since we have to add to the Einsatzgruppen and to the Higher S.S. and Police Leader Corps the commanders and the inspectors of the Security Police and the Security Service. Each of these several groups belonged to a separate chain of command that ultimately reached Himmler, but they were equal with respect to each other and nobody belonging to one group owed obedience to a superior officer of another group. The prosecution, it must be admitted, was in a most difficult position in that each time it wanted to pin some specific responsibility on Eichmann, it was obliged to find its way through this labyrinth of parallel institutions. (If the trial were to take place today, this task would be much easier, for the political scientist Raul Hilberg, in his book “The Destruction of the European Jews,” published in Chicago in 1961, has succeeded in presenting the first clear description of this incredibly complicated machinery of destruction.) Furthermore, it must be remembered that all these organs, wielding enormous power, were in fierce competition, which was anything but a help to their victims, since their ambition was always the same—to kill as many Jews as possible. This competitive spirit, which, of course, inspired in each man a great loyalty to his own outfit, has survived the war, only now it works in reverse: it has become each man’s desire to exonerate his own outfit at the expense of all the others. This was the explanation that Eichmann gave when he was confronted with the memoirs of Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, in which Eichmann is accused of doing certain things that he claimed he never did and was in no position to do. He admitted easily enough that Höss had no personal reason for saddling him with deeds of which he was innocent, since their relationship had always been quite friendly; Höss, he insisted—in vain—wanted to exculpate his own outfit, the Head Office for Economy and Administration, by putting all the blame on the R.S.H.A. Something of the same sort happened in Nuremberg, where the various accused presented a nauseating spectacle by accusing each other (though none of them blamed Hitler). Still, this was not done merely to enable a man to save his own neck at the expense of somebody else’s; the men on trial represented altogether different organizations, which had a long-standing, deeply ingrained hostility to one another. Eichmann always tried to shield Müller and Heydrich, and Kaltenbrunner as well, even though Kaltenbrunner had treated him quite badly. No doubt, one of the chief mistakes of the prosecution was that its case relied too heavily on statements of former high-ranking Nazis, dead or alive; it did not see, and perhaps could not be expected to see, how dubious these documents were as sources for the establishment of facts. The judgment itself, in its evaluation of the damning testimonies of other Nazi criminals, paid no attention to this question of loyalties, but it did take into account the fact that (in the words of one of the defense witnesses) “it was customary at the time of the war-crime trials to put as much blame as possible on those who were absent or believed to be dead.”

When Eichmann entered his new office, in charge of Subsection B-4 of Section IV of the R.S.H.A., he was still confronted with this uncomfortable dilemma; namely, that, on the one hand, “forced emigration” was the official formula for the solution of the Jewish question, and, on the other hand, emigration was no longer possible. For the first (and almost the last) time in his life in the S.S., he was forced by circumstances to take an initiative—to see if he could not, in his words, “give birth to an idea.” According to the account he gave the police examiner, he was blessed with three ideas. All three of them, he had to admit, came to naught. Everything he tried on his own invariably went wrong—nothing but frustration. It was a hard-luck story if ever there was one. The inexhaustible source of troubles, as he saw it, was that he and his men were never left alone—that all these other state and Party offices wanted their share in the “solution,” with the result that a veritable army of “Jewish experts” had cropped up everywhere and were falling over themselves in their efforts to be first in a field of which they knew nothing. For these people Eichmann had the greatest contempt, partly because they were Johnnies-come-lately, partly because they tried to enrich themselves in the course of their work, and often succeeded, and partly because they were ignorant, not having read, as he had, any “basic books.”

Eichmann’s three dreams turned out to have been inspired by the two “basic books” (Herzl and Böhm), but it was also revealed that two of the three were definitely not his ideas at all, and with respect to the third—well, “I do not know any longer whether it was Stahlecker [Franz Stahlecker, his superior in Vienna and Prague] or myself who gave birth to the idea; anyhow, the idea was born.” This last idea was the first, chronologically. It was the “idea of Nisko,” and its failure was for Eichmann the clearest possible proof of the evil of interference—the guilty person in this case being Hans Frank, Governor General of the area in Poland the Nazis designated the General Government. In order to understand the Nisko plan, we must remember that right after the conquest of Poland, the Polish territories were divided between Germany and Russia. The German part consisted of the Western regions, which were incorporated into the Reich, and the Eastern area, including Warsaw (Russia got an area still farther east), which at first was treated as occupied territory and later became the General Government. As the solution of the Jewish question at this time was still “forced emigration,” with the aim of making Germany judenrein (Jewclean), it was natural that Polish Jews in the Western regions, together with whatever Jews remained in other parts of the Reich, should be shoved into the General Government, which, whatever it may have been, was not considered to be part of the Reich. By December, 1939, evacuations eastward had started, and over the next two years roughly a million Jews—six hundred thousand from the incorporated area and four hundred thousand from the Reich proper—arrived in the General Government. If Eichmann’s version of the Nisko adventure is true—and there is no reason not to believe him—he or, more likely, his Prague and Vienna superior, S.S. Brigadeführer Dr. Franz Stahlecker, must have anticipated the eastward deportations by several months. This Dr. Stahlecker (Eichmann was always careful to supply him this title) was in Eichmann’s opinion a very fine man, educated, full of reason, and “free of hatred and free from chauvinism of any kind;” in Vienna, he used to shake hands with the Jewish functionaries. A year and a half later, in the spring of 1941, this educated gentleman was appointed Commander of Einsatzgruppe A, and afterward he managed to kill by shooting, in little more than a year (he himself was killed in action in 1942), two hundred and fifty thousand Jews—as he proudly reported to Himmler himself, rather than to his own chief, Heydrich. But that came later, and now, in September, 1939, while the German Army was still busy occupying the Polish territories, Eichmann and Dr. Stahlecker began to think “privately” about how the Security Service might get its share of influence in the East. What they needed was, as Eichmann later put it, “an area as large as possible in Poland, to be carved off for the erection of an autonomous Jewish state in the form of a protectorate,” for “this could be the solution.” And off they went, on their own initiative, without orders from anybody, to reconnoitre. They went to the Radom district, on the San River, not far from the Russian border, and they “saw a huge territory, the San River, villages, market places, small towns,” and “we said to ourselves: That is what we need and why should one not resettle Poles for a change, since people are being resettled everywhere?” This, they said, would be “the solution of the Jewish question”—firm soil under their feet—at least for some time. Everything seemed to go very well at first. They spoke to Heydrich, and Heydrich agreed with what they said, and told them to go ahead. It happened—though Eichmann, in Jerusalem, had completely forgotten it—that their project fitted in very well with Heydrich’s over-all plan at this stage for the solution of the Jewish question. On September 21, 1939, he had called a meeting of the heads of departments of the R.S.H.A. and the Einsatzgruppen (they were already operating in Poland) and had given general directives for the immediate future: Jews were to be concentrated in ghettos; Councils of Jewish Elders were to be established; and all Jews were to be deported to the General Government. Eichmann had attended this meeting as representative of the Center for Jewish Emigration—as was proved at the trial by means of the minutes, which Bureau 06 of the Israeli Police had discovered in the United States National Archives, in Washington. Hence, Eichmann’s (or, more probably, Stahlecker’s) initiative amounted to no more than a concrete plan for carrying out Heydrich’s directives. And now thousands of people, chiefly from Austria, were deported helter-skelter into this godforsaken place, which, an S.S. officer explained to them, “the Führer has promised the Jews [as] a new homeland.” The officer went on to tell them, “There are no dwellings; there are no houses. If you build, there will be a roof over your heads. There is no water; the wells all around carry disease; there is cholera, dysentery, and typhoid. If you bore and find water, you will have water.” As one can see, “everything looked marvellous,” Eichmann said, except that the S.S. expelled some of the Jews from this paradise into Russia, and others soon had the good sense to escape of their own volition. But thereafter, Eichmann complained, “the obstructions began from the side of Hans Frank”—whom they had forgotten to inform, although this was “his” territory. “Frank complained in Berlin, and a great tug of war started. Frank wanted to solve his Jewish question all by himself. He did not want to receive any more Jews in his General Government. Those who had arrived should, he said, disappear immediately.” And they did disappear; they were actually repatriated, which had never happened before and never happened again, and those who returned to Vienna were registered in the police records as “returning from vocational training”—a curious relapse into the pro-Zionist stage of the movement.

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 12:56:00 -0600 en-US text/html https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/a-reporter-at-large/02/23/eichmann-in-jerusalem-ii
Killexams : UK university workers hold three day national strike

University lecturers and other higher education workers at all 150 UK universities completed three days of strike action Thursday. The 70,000 University and College Union (UCU) members are striking for better pay and conditions and against the gutting of their pensions.

This week’s industrial action completes nine of a scheduled 18 days of intermittent stoppages being held in February and March.

The picket line at Manchester Metropolitan University, February 16, 2023 [Photo: WSWS]

The UCU is seeking to end the strike with a sellout deal and is involved in negotiations with the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) at the conciliation service Acas. It is joined in the talks by other unions in dispute with university employersthe EIS, the GMB, UNISON and Unite. Ahead of the talks, UCU leader Jo Grady said, “Our union is determined to reach a negotiated settlement which allows staff to get back to work and students to continue their studies uninterrupted.”

Prior to the latest strikes, the UCU bureaucracy insisted a below-inflation pay offer from UCEA was put to an electronic ballot, even while saying it was “worth only 5% for most UCU members.” In the survey, over 30,000 members voted to throw out the offer by a margin of 80 percent.

The UCU calculated that the employers would return with a slightly increased pay deal the bureaucracy could again put before the membership, claiming this as its extraction a victory. The union complained in a statement on February 8, “Despite staff emphatically rejecting the 5% pay award, employers have not yet responded with an improved offer.”

The employers have no interest in making any concessions, despite the first national strike by university workers taking place almost four months ago. A UCU statement noted that the employers “have admitted it would cost just 3% of their reserves [more than £44 billion] to settle UCU’s pay claim.”

Sheffield

Simon is a Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He explained, “There’s been an ongoing, long-term issue around the massive reductions in the worth of the pensions in the Universities Superannuation Scheme. The other issues are low pay, casualisation, pay inequalities, particularly gender-based pay gap, and job security.

Simon [Photo: WSWS]

“Lots of our colleagues are on various short-term, insecure contracts with hourly rates. This is something that’s grown over the course of my career from an exception to being the norm. We want a return to a proper profession where you can make a decent living.

“Stress levels make things really hard. This round of strike action is 18 days which is a huge challenge for many members of staff to participate in financially, but it shows the level of determinations that there are so many people out here in this important action.