@zermatist Perhaps because he was a first-hand witness to them?
@holdengraber Fleeing Paris, Benjamin entrusted the Angelus Novus print to Georges Bataille for safekeeping. He handed his 'Theses on the Concept of History' to Hannah Arendt in Marseilles, where she was in hiding, having already escaped the Gestapo in Germany and an internment camp in France.
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“For the Messiah arrives not merely as the Redeemer; he also arrives as the vanquisher of the Anti-Christ. The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.” Walter Benjamin, Thesis VI, ‘Theses on the Concept of History’