oakstar519

[oakstar519]

Kintsugi ghost shell Repair with gold and let the resilient scars show.

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Here's the notes on the Medieval Fantasy Star Wars au! I'll add to this as I do more. If you're new here, this is the saga of me drawing Star Wars but like what if it was Fantasy?

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Poob has it for you

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came to class expecting a quiz, and instead my calc professor is doing a very elaborate card trick with a deck he borrowed from some random student

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it's 3 in the morning why am i still in a voice channel listening to my friend make disturbingly sexual noises whilst eating m&ms. how did my life decline this far

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https://www.yadvashem.org/blog/jewish-girl-was-poster-baby-in-nazi-propaganda.html

In 1935, the Nazi drive to isolate and demonize Jews was soaring to new heights. Hitler had been elected Chancellor of Germany two years earlier; late in 1935 a series of decrees known as the Nuremberg Laws made brutal distinctions between “Aryans” - ethnic Europeans - and non-Aryans: Jews, Roma, and Black people.

The laws were designed to target Jews. Overnight, German Jews were stripped of their citizenship, forbidden from holding government jobs, and were restricted from public spaces lest they “infect” Aryans.

A key driver of this pseudo-racial propaganda was a magazine called Sonne ins Haus, or “Sunshine in the Home,” which promoted the Nazi myths of Aryan perfection and non-Aryan pollution. In 1935 the magazine ran a contest across Germany to find the perfect “Aryan” baby. Ten famous portrait photographers were asked to each submit ten portraits of beautiful German babies. Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist of the Nazi party, would judge the winner himself.

Goebbels chose an adorable six-month-old girl as the winner: the ideal Aryan child. Her name, unbeknownst to Goebbels, was Hessy Levinsons. Her smiling likeness was plastered on the magazine’s cover as proof of Aryan superiority, becoming a popular propaganda picture, imprinted on postcards and greeting cards across Germany for years to come.

There was only one snag: Hessy was, in fact, Jewish. The greatest Nazi example of Aryan perfection was a Jewish baby from a Jewish immigrant family. Her remarkable win put her entire family into grave danger.

Family Beset by Antisemitism

Hessy’s parents Jacob and Pauline Levinsons were classically trained opera singers. They moved to Berlin in 1928 when Jacob landed a coveted spot in an opera house. He used the stage name Yasha Lenssen to disguise his Jewish-sounding name. As antisemitism increased across Germany, however, the management found out his real, Jewish-sounding name, and fired him. “Living in Berlin, both my parents were going to be opera singers,” Hetty later described; “However, when they found out that my father was Jewish they canceled his contract.”

Life became increasingly hard for Jacob and Pauline, as for all Jews in Germany. Spurned by musical establishments, neither could find work as singers. Jacob took a travelling salesman job to make ends meet and the couple moved into a tiny studio apartment.

In 1934, Pauline gave birth to Hetty. When Hessy was six months old, Pauline and her sister took her to one of Germany’s famous portrait photographers, Hans Ballin. He snapped a picture of the pudgy Hessy wearing a bonnet, with a few brown curls visible underneath. After Ballin developed Hessy’s portrait, Jacob and Pauline kept it displayed on the piano in their tiny flat.

Defying Hitler

Unbeknownst to the Levinsons, Hans Ballin was one of the photographers tapped to send in ten photos for the contest. He assembled ten baby portraits - then, on a whim, threw in Hessy’s picture too, and sent it off to the magazine.

A few months later, the Levinsons’ housecleaner was working in their apartment and remarked that she’d seen a magazine with their baby’s photo on the cover. The Levinson’s were horrified. Sonne ins Haus was well-known as a Nazi magazine; it was edited by the dear friend of the senior Nazi leader Herman Goering. They worried what would happen if it came out that the baby gracing the latest cover was discovered to be a Jew.

“I wanted to make the Nazis look foolish. I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this jest. And you see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect Aryan.”

Pauline rushed to Ballin’s studio and told him there must have been some mistake; Hessy, the winning baby, was Jewish, she explained. Ballin replied that he knew that and sent in her portrait as an act of defiance. “I wanted to make the Nazis look foolish. I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this jest. And you see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect Aryan.” Years later, when she was an adult, Hessy was asked what she would say if she could speak to Ballin about his decision to send in her photograph: “I would tell him, good for you for having the courage.”

In Hiding

The Levinsons were aware that Germans would respond furiously if they met the real-life Hessy and her family. An acquaintance told them that she’d been visiting friends who had a picture of Hessy, the perfect “Aryan,” hanging on their wall. The acquaintance mentioned that she knew the family and mentioned their Jewish-sounding surname, and the friend ripped the photo off the wall. (She later put it back, saying, “Oh never mind, she’s too cute.”)

Going out in public risked exposing the real Hessy to the world, so her parents kept her home. “I could no longer play in the park,” she later described, “and I couldn’t go to the zoo, my favorite place.” The Levinsons had a second daughter during this time, rendering their circumscribed lives even more cramped.

Fleeing Germany

After Hessy’s father Jacob was briefly arrested by the SS on fabricated charges of tax evasion in 1938, the family realized it was too dangerous to remain in Germany. They fled first to Latvia then to Paris, bringing Hessy’s baby nurse, a young Jewish woman named Gerta, with them.

When Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940, the Levinsons traveled to southern France, where they desperately tried to get visas to enter another country. The Levinsons were ardent Zionists but in the midst of war it was impossible to enter British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Instead, in 1942 they traveled to the Cuban consulate in the French town of Nice and obtained Cuban visas. They made their way to Marseille, bought train tickets from there to Lisbon, then purchased passages on a boat sailing from Lisbon to Cuba.

But there was a problem: Gerta, their nurse, was still in Paris, with no visa and no way of leaving Nazi-occupied Europe. While Paula waited with Hessy in Marseille, Jacob took the train back to Nice, a perilous journey for a Jew, to visit Cuba’s consulate once more. Terrified of being asked for his papers by the Nazi guards who frequently boarded trains, Jacob stayed in the dining car, eating and drinking nonstop until he felt sick. His plan worked: guards boarded the train, asking for all travelers’ travel documents, except those in the dining car.

In Nice, Jacob sold his silver cigarette case then entered the Cuban consulate carrying cash. Former Tel Aviv University Professor Robert Rockaway describes what happened next:

(Jacob) went back to the Cuban consul to offer him more money for another visa for Gerta. The consul said, ‘I already gave you four visas and am in enough trouble.’ Hessy’s father told him that he would not leave until he gave him another visa, sat down, and waited. At the end of the day, the consul said, ‘I am going to close. Are you going to leave or should I call the police?’ Hessy’s father responded, ‘I’ll leave as soon as you give me a visa.’ The consul looked at him and said, ‘You know, there is an old law in the books in Cuba that says a man can immigrate with all his possessions, including his slaves. Would you say this woman is your slave?’ Hessy’s father said, ‘Of course. Absolutely. This woman is my slave.’ The consul gave him one more Cuban visa.

Remembering

The Levinsons moved to New York in 1949. Hessy attended Barnard College, married and became a chemistry professor. In 2014, she and her husband visited Jerusalem and made their way to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum. She carried a copy of the original Sonne ins Haus magazine with her picture on the cover and donated it to the site to educate future visitors.

An adult Hessy Levinsons Taft holding the famous baby photo

Reflecting on her experience as the poster child of Nazi supposed “Aryan” perfection, Hessy noted that nearly all of her relatives in Latvia were murdered in the Holocaust. The fact that her Jewish face was celebrated throughout Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe seemed to be one small way she could retaliate. “I feel a sense of revenge, good revenge.”

Hessy’s greatest triumph, however, was merely being in Yad Vashem, in the free Jewish state of Israel. She told reporters: “My strongest memory from childhood was running away. My father told me once that when there would be a Jewish state there would be no more running away.” There, standing in Jerusalem, donating the Nazi magazine that celebrated a Jewish baby as the ideal child, Hessy was proof that the Jewish people have survived - and thrived - despite all of history’s attempts to wipe us out.

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very annoying that probably 95% of the time the fix for not having much appetite is just eating something

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hey babes, is Kanye’s repulsive stream of hatred because…he’s actually a Mossad asset? 🤔

this timeline is unbearably dumb

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checking up on former mutuals and friends

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zionism ≠ judaism

being a zionist ≠ supporting bibi netanyahu

being a zionist ≠ wishing all gazans to die

being a zionist ≠ supporting the israeli government

BUT

antizionism = antisemitism.

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Today has been the weirdest in a while.

Every Jew I know is experiencing some stage of grief and we're all commiserating with each other and sharing each other's anger and supporting each other.

And goyim are just....silent. Like, it feels like being inside a burning building, yelling for help, as people walk by on the sidewalk without looking (the number of nightmares I've had about this exact situation since Colleyville is....well. It's a recurring one, I'll just leave it at that).

And that adds this extra weight. It's not enough that Jews are going through what we're going through, that we're going through what we've been going through for the past year and a half, for the past 2000 years. It's the silence of people we thought were friends and allies. Even now, even after a year and a half of weeding out antisemites (to date: I've lost two active friends and five casual friends), it still hurts. Which sucks, because I thought I'd moved past that.

And yeah. I see your likes and that's fine I guess? But it feels so....condescending. Like cool. You liked that but didn't reblog. Cool, you liked that but didn't reach out to me directly. You SEE something is up and then you turn a blind eye.

You keep me hidden. And not in the good way.

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The act of promising to send back a person's corpse and then switching it out with an unidentified person as an act of psychological torture is something I've only seen from my worst cases as a forensic scientist.

I've seen it from organized crime outfits, typically Russian mob and cartels, and from serial killers. This reminds me more of the latter rather than the former as the outfits tend to behave in a certain manner and abide by various rules. Serial killers, however, often delight in the psychological torture of their victims, victims' family, and community.

There's a number of cases I've been brought in on to help ID corpses that were not who the killer said they were. Causing pain and anguish for the families and community to their delight.

In this instance, making a big show of returning these hostages and then pulling the rug out from underneath Israel and the greater Jewish community only serves one purpose; to cause psychological and emotional harm. And make no mistake, the people justifying Hamas and their actions up until this moment and beyond are acting like every True Crime Serial Killer Girlie that has come up to me in my career to try and justify the actions of people like Dahmer, Gacy, Gein, and so on. "They're just misunderstood." "What did you think they would do? They had a rough life. It's not their fault they did these things." "They're just fighting back against the system that made them this way." All of this is to take the onus of responsibility off of the serial killer, just as all these anti-Israel activists take the onus off of Hamas and its violent terrorism. And just like a True Crime Girlie coming up to me with their binder full of notes about why their serial killer blorbo is good, your opinion that Hamas is somehow justified in their action is worth nothing. You've presented yourself as lacking the moral and ethical stand point that condemns such actions as taking families hostage, promising to return them, and then pulling a "switcheroo" last minute to be cruel. You're not good people, and no amount of mental gymnastics to somehow blame Israel for this will make you a good person. And if somehow you're a fellow Jew? Well, I think you've burned every bridge with the community as of this moment.

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it is estimated that kfir and ariel were murdered on november 28th 2023, or a little after that, during the first hostage swap. (that is based on both forensic evidence and "concrete intel obtained by idf", per local media - which explains the accuracy of the time of death after so long).

their captors saw the first swap and wanted the kids to never be freed alive.

and we still don't know about shiri.

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I'm just... in a state of shock right now. I had hoped and prayed that it wasn't true but it's been confirmed that the Bibas family, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir, will be returned to Israel tomorrow to be buried.

I'm just trying so hard to comprehend this level of cruelty and hatred. The world said "never again" after the Shoah, but the reality was that was just a slogan. Not a promise.

"Never again" but when it did happen again, the world cheered and celebrated in the streets. 500 days of the hostages being globally mocked and dehumanized. People would graffiti swastikas over their posters, putting "babies are occupiers too" over top of Kfir's. Denying documented atrocities committed, mocking the hostage's families' grief, writing disgusting fanfiction about the female hostages and their captors.

I don't trust humanity after this. I never had much to begin with, but for the past year and four months, it went from "maybe the world will have basic human empathy" to "no, it turns out that applies to everyone but Jews."

I am sorry, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir. The world has failed you. May your memories forever be a blessing. And may Hashem give Yarden Bibas strength.

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and i know exactly how you’re all going to react now.