#Ghetto Youth

[kamishouse999]

Selassie nuh asleep

Ghetto youth a suffer in de streets and we leave, fi leave

Too much juvenile missy bleed

In our world, innocent killed by police in da freedom world

Society nuh believe all dem ting cah we do

A boss run an' smoke weed, give mi youth a chance

Fi go school and go read

Society a harvest a crime dem nuh need

Farmin' on de seventies, politican plant de seed

Selassie ay, your philosophy I lead

Christianity a tell mi sumtin' when mi nuh believe

What them seh fi rich, if a dey hurt mi haffi leave

Better them cah a fuss

Mi never writ against dem, ere fi escape us

Dem cyaan trick di ghetto youth

We haffi rise up

#VybzKartel

[curryvillain]

OLDIES SUNDAY: Prince Oret - Ghetto Youth (1989)

In life, there are many ups and downs. Some succumb to the downs, while others find ways to overcome them to live positive lives. Today’s Oldies Sunday selection highlights an Artist who like many, overcame negative circumstances, and lived a positive life from thereon. His name is Prince Oret, and we look back at his single, “Ghetto Youth“. Produced by Little John on the “Give Me The Right…

[gent-illmatic]

Nostalgia💚

We all we got

[chicademartinica]

I wanted to talk about the asks/ messages I got about me calling Sailom (and Saifah) and Sand ghetto and hustlers.

I’m from the ghetto. I’m not mocking them, I see them. Their class and money problems deeply impact their personalities and worldview. They have a hustler mentality. They are both paying off their parents debts. They know dealers, pimps and sex workers and dabble in illicit activities themselves. Don’t start me on Saifah’s scamming self.

The men they are in love with (Ray and Kanghan) are rich snobs who make faces and are baffled by the real world. In both these shows these dudes don’t even know how to talk to people. The social commentary is ACIDIC and the message in post covid / election Thai media is still RICH PEOPLE ARE FUCKING WEIRD AND WEAK AND DISCONNECTED FROM REALITY.

[quotesfrommyreading]

From July to November 1942, Hans, Schmorell and Graf were forced to take a break from their studies—and their burgeoning activism—to serve as medics on the Eastern Front. There, they witnessed with their own eyes the misery of Jewish prisoners in the Warsaw Ghetto. “Warsaw would sicken me in the long run,” Hans wrote to his parents in July. “Half-starved children sprawl in the street and whimper for bread. … The mood is universally doom-laden.”

Appalled by the violence and injustice they’d witnessed, the friends returned to Munich determined to step up their resistance efforts by distributing leaflets throughout Germany and Austria. Ultimately, the White Rose circulated at least 7,000 leaflets in 16 major cities, from Munich to Frankfurt to Vienna to Berlin, conveying the impression that the group’s membership was widespread, not just a handful of indefatigable students hand-cranking out pamphlets in Munich.

The leaflets were like nothing the Gestapo had ever seen—not rigid ideological tracts aimed at the working classes, but passionate, erudite manifestos that quoted Friedrich Schiller, Plato and Laozi. “The guilt of Hitler and his accomplices goes beyond all measure,” read the group’s fifth leaflet. “Tear up the cloak of indifference you have wrapped around your hearts. Make your decision before it is too late!”

  —  Hans and Sophie Scholl Were Once Hitler Youth Leaders. Why Did They Decide to Stand Up to the Nazis?

[parure-d-insomnie]

Tricky____''Ghetto Youth'' (1996)______vocal Sky______album 'Pre-Millenium Tension.

[1five1two]

Watch "Yaadcore - Ghetto Youths [Official Video]" on YouTube

[9misoundsystem]

Ras Makka - No More Guns (Ghetto Youths)

[radiophd]

ghetto youth crew -- kaya

[chunghasweetie]

𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐃 | J.JK

— pairing | stranger!oc x stranger!jjk

— summary | jungkook being dragged to a party ends up with him fcking namjoon’s homegirl

— warning | bad writing (i’m doing my best)

sexy sex, cursing, praising

— word count | 2.9k words

— song suggestion | privacy — chris brown

“Got fuckin’ work in the morning I don’t have time for this shit.” Jungkook grumpily complained once again.

His friends here and there would drag him out to some parties downtown. Nights full of drinking and meaningless conversations with random people.

He used to be a party guy but after his career jump started, he had no interest in going out.

His friend group went out every weekend, bars, clubs, parties, etc. It didn’t matter. Any social event, you’d be sure to see them.

“Stop complaining. You’re here aren’t you?” Jimin groaned. “You’re getting annoying.”

“Whatever.” Jungkook shook his head.

“Don’t know why you’re mad. Maybe you’ll actually get some tonight.” Taehyung added.

“Yes Jungkook! We know hella girls here and I know they be down for some Kookie.” Jimin teased. “Are our usual girls going? What about the Kim girls? Or the Choi twins? Yo see is Y/n is gonna pull up!” He nagged Namjoon.

“I ain’t even check. Do it matter? You’ll hang with anyone.” Namjoon rolled his eyes in response.

The men eventually pulled up to the function, hearing the loud music blaring from the outside before they even went in.

“Smells like weed and cheating partners, my favorite.” Taehyung inhaled. “Aren’t you excited Jungkook?”

Jungkook glared in response, still annoyed.

The men flashed their IDs to the security at the front before entering.

His friends weren’t wrong about the smell. It grew stronger with each step, it burned into his nose.

“Ah shit my main ones already here!” Jimin pointed at a group of skimpy dressed girls dancing near the bar, “Hey ladies!”

The men walked their way, girls giggling at their enthusiasm.

“Ladies.” Taehyung smooth talked them, making them giggle and shy away.

Except one anyway.

“We missed you!” One of them pouted, attempting to be cute.

“Yeahhh! Jiminie it’s been a week why haven’t you texted me?” The others screechy voice could make Jungkook’s ears bleed.

“Oh my gosh.” One of them froze. “Omg omg omg!!! Jungkook finally came!! You brought him!” She jumped in excitement.

“Woah!”

“He’s so handsome in person!”

“How’d you get him to come out? Who cares! I want him to dance with us!”

“Come on girls.” Namjoon calmed them. “Let him breathe, he not used to the spotlight like us.”


Jungkook shot him a glare. “You act like I’m scared of em’.” He mumbled

“I know you not.” Namjoon shook his head. “But one of them, you might be.”

“What?”

“Fuck, it’s hot in here.” A voice came from behind the other girls. “Can you guys move out the way? I’m tryna get another drink.”

And his heart stopped.

He had never imagined he’d see the most beautiful face at some ghetto underground function.

“Hey Y/n.” Namjoon greeted, giving her a side hug.

“Hey Joon.” She smiled, turning to Jungkook. “You brought your other friend.” She smiled his way, waving.

He just stared back at her, with a dumb look on his face.

“What’d I tell you? Told you he wouldn’t talk.” Namjoon shrugged.

“It’s cool.” She shrugged. “Probably won’t see him again.”

“This why I can’t stand either of you. Never want to go out and live up your youth!” Jimin interrupted, two girls on his arm.

“Because some of us actually have lives outside nightclubs.” She rolled her eyes, refacing Namjoon. “Hold my purse? I need to go to the bathroom real quick.”

Namjoon nodded and she walked off.

“Bad as hell huh!” Namjoon blurted, bro-hugging Jungkook.

“She’s cool.” Jungkook tried to stay nonchalant.

“He’s lying!” Jimin laughed. “Nah we knew you’d like her that’s why we begged her to come out too!”

“You have got to be kidding me.” Jungkook groaned “You guys are annoying as shit.”

“Eugh look at him! My man’s smitten!” Jimin pretended to swoon, making all the girls laugh.

“Nah. She pretty yeah, but that’s about it.” He shrugged.

The man was lying through his teeth.

That weed smell? Turned to straight vanilla when she walked his way. His attitude? Complete 360.


Damn was she pretty. They didn’t even meet her here they had to drag her out.

The comment she made to Jimin? Instant green flag.

He felt more delusional than the time Taehyung through a Las Vegas stripper actually loved him.

He shook his head, ignoring his heart pounding out of his chest.

“Whatever man. Get this man a drink!” Taehyung flagged down the bartender.

“Okay I’m back.” Y/n grabbed her purse from Namjoon. “Thank you.”

“No worry about it. Yo, my boy said he’ll buy your drink. Get whatever.” Namjoon told her, winking at Jungkook.

“Really?” She rose her eyebrow, turning her attention to Jungkook.

“Uh— Yeah I got you. Get whatever.” Jungkook swallowed.

Namjoon made eye contact with the rest of the boys, signaling them to move away from the bar so they could be alone.

“I’ll take a Malibu Bay Breeze.” She ordered.

He ordered after her, “I’ll just take a Gin and tonic.”

“Sorry they’re annoying.” He apologized for his friends. “But I haven’t formally introduced myself, my names Jungkook.” He put out his hand.

“Y/n.” She shook Jungkook’s hand. “I heard you don’t like coming out like that huh?”

His lips curve into a slight smile. "Nah, I ain't really a party guy. My boys dragged me out.”

“But now that you hear, I'm glad I came." He takes a sip of his drink, eyeing her. “They never mentioned you before.”

The bartender came back around with their drinks, the two thanking them.

“I don’t come out like that either.” Y/n replied, sipping on the drink she was just served. “Namjoon and I dated a bit in college but now we just cool. He just asked me to come out tonight to hang out with you guys.”

His eyes widen briefly. "Oh so you know Namjoon, huh?”

She nodded.

“Well, I gotta say, Namjoon's got good taste.” His eyes linger on her face, then slowly drift down to her body. “Real good taste.”

“Yeah you think so?” She chuckled, “You definitely have a good eye.”

"Oh, you have no idea.” He leans in closer, growing more comfortable and confident. “Like I’ve said, I'm not really into the whole party scene, but if I had known there'd be beautiful women like you here, I'd have come more often."

“Really?” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t think Namjoon would pull up with a friend I wouldn’t find immature and annoying.”

“Well, I’m glad I'm not disappointing. And just so you know, I'm far from immature."

“You ain’t gotta tell me. I can see you compared to the boys. You’re more reserved than them” She responded.

"That's one way to put it.”

Jungkook reaches out and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, “I like to think I'm more... refined. More put together."

He was pulling out the stunts now.

“I can tell.” She grinned.

Y/n was definitely giving him a major ego boost. Not in a desperate way, enough for him to want more.

“Refined and interested.” His voice dripped with passion. “So tell me, Y/n, what else can you tell about me based on first impressions? Since you’re so observant.”

“You seem to be very forward, I can already pick that up.” She chuckled. “Might be the playboy type.”

“Forward, yes. Playboy? I don’t know about that one Y/n.” He leans back slightly, “Hey now, I’m not that bad.” He grinned.

“But I won’t lie and say I don’t enjoy women.” He admitted."

“How’s that working out for you? Since you never go out.”

"Well, it's not like I haven't had options. He leans in close My bed's not empty every night, if that's what you're implying.”

He winks, clearly enjoying her company.

“So you are just like your friends is what you’re telling me?” She rose her eyebrow.

He noticed a small change in Y/n’s expression.

He was realizing he was getting a bit ahead of himself, getting cocky.

He needed to slow it down.

“Hell no, I'm nothing like those horny bastards.” He shakes his head, “I'm just... selective. And skilled. But hey, don't go spreading that around."

“Nah, now I have to tell everyone.” She teased.

Back on track.

He gasps dramatically, placing a hand over his heart. "You wouldn't dare. I'd have to take drastic measures to keep you quiet."

“Really? And what are those measures?”

Damn was Y/n beautiful. The light highlighted her face beautifully in every way.

She didn’t even need to show all out because her body was already built so perfectly.

Everytime she spoke it was like honey to his ears.

He grins, his eyes locking onto hers "Well, I could always make sure you forget all about telling anyone.”

He reaches out and gently brushes his thumb across her lower lip. “Or maybe I could just keep you occupied all night, so you don't have a chance to say a word."

She was definitely feeling him as much as he was feeling her.

“I like the sound of that…” She mumbled.

“I’ll be honest Y/n, I usually ain’t the type of guy who asks this to random women but,” He paused. “Would you want to get outta here and head back to my place?”

༊—

He nuzzles into her neck, inhaling deeply. "You smell amazing. His hand slides further up her thigh as he speaks. “Fuckin’ finally got you alone."

They had already made out during that entire taxi ride.

The two barely could barely make it through the door of his house, lips smacking and saliva dripping from their passionate mouths.

As soon as the door clicked shut, he was all up on her, his hands gripping her hips as he spun her around to face him.

His kisses was passionate and demanding, his hands roaming over her body possessively. He broke the kiss only to speak against her lips. “Bedroom. Now. I gotta have you.”

“You’re turning me out” she chuckled against his mouth before heading up his stairs into his room.

He followed close behind, his hands gripping her backside as they entered his room.

He gently pushed her onto his bed, his eyes never leaving hers as he began to unbutton his shirt. “You’re driving me crazy. So fuckin’ pretty.”

“I didn’t even do anything” She mumbled.

“You exist. That’s enough.” He crawled onto the bed, his hands finding the hem of her shirt.

“Lift your arms.” His voice was low, commanding.

He gently lifted her shirt over her head, tossing it aside as he took in the sight of her. His hands roam over her bare skin, his fingers tracing patterns on her stomach.

“Fuck, you're gorgeous.” He murmurs, his lips pressing against her collarbone.

“I’ll be honest I haven’t uh— done anything like this in quite some time.” She confesses.

Jungkook pauses, looking at her with a soft expression. "Okay, baby. Whatever you're comfortable with.”

He continues to kiss and nuzzle her neck, his hands staying above the waistband of her pants. "I just want to be with you, however you need me to be.”

That almost immediately set her off. It was the bare minimum yes, but she couldn’t help but smile.

She grabbed him by his hair and crashed her lips back onto his and sloppily made out with him once again.

His response was equally fervent, his hands gripping her hair as he deepened the kiss.

His body covered hers, his hips grinding against hers. He broke the kiss to trail his lips down her body, his tongue darting out to taste her skin. “Unbutton my pants.” He rasped out.

She nodded, doing as she was told.

He lifted his hips, allowing her to slide his pants and boxers down. His erection sprang free, waiting for her.

He guided her hand to it. “Stroke me. He groaned, his head falling back. “Just like that, baby. Your hand feels so good.”

She had no problem touching him, almost like she had already known his body.

He groaned at her touch, "Fuck, just like that." His hands found her breasts, kneading the soft flesh as he continued to grind against her.

He could feel her heat through her pants and it was driving him crazy. “Take these off— fuckin’ now.”

She loved being directed what to do. He was demanding and instructed her well. She quickly slipped her pants off, leaving herself in a dark red glittery thong she didn’t think anyone would’ve seen.

His eyes darkened as he drank in the sight of her. He ran a hand up her thigh, his touch rough.

"You look...addicting. His fingers hooked into the waistband of her underwear, slowly pulling it down. "Lift up, baby. So pretty”

She nodded slowly, biting her lip as she stared down at him.

He tossed her thong aside, leaving her bare before him. He took a moment to admire her, his hands caressing her thighs. "Spread your legs for me." His voice was low, almost a growl.

She slowly spread out her legs, her heat throbbing for him.

He settled between her thighs, his eyes locked on her center.

He reached up to spread her lips open, exposing her to his gaze. "You just pretty from head to toe." He murmurs, his thumb rubbing gentle circles against her clit.

"I'm going to eat you out until you can't remember your own name." He smirked in excitement.

“Jungkook” She whined, mesmerized by his words.

He grinned up at her, his breath fanning over her heated center. “I’m just getting started.”

He leaned in, his tongue flicking out to taste her.

He explored her thoroughly, his tongue delving deep inside her.

“Oh fuck” A curse word slipped from her lips, not expecting his warm and wet tongue so soon.

“Fucking amazing. Tastes so fucking good.” He mumbled against her head.

He chuckled against her, the vibration causing her to shudder. “Perfect girl.” He continued his assault, his hands holding her thighs apart as he devoured her.

“You’re fuckin’ good at that” She hummed, mind numb from how overwhelmed she was with pleasure.

He could feel her walls clenching around his tongue, her juices dripping down his chin.

He lifted his head, his chin glistening as he looked at her. “And I’m just getting started.”

He climbed up her body, kissing her deeply so she could taste herself on his tongue. His hands wrapped around her wrists, pinning them above her head. “Keep them there.”

He leaned over, grabbing a condom packet he had previously tossed on the bed. He ripped it open with his teeth and slid it over his length.

“Now just let me know if I need to go slow okay? Gotta let me know if you’re hurting.” He kissed her forehead.

“O-Okay.” She nodded.

He aimed himself at her entrance, his broad tip stretching her as he slowly inched inside her tight heat.

The two immediately gasped as it went in, exhaling as he fit himself inside her.

He groaned low in his throat, “Fuck, you’re so tight. You weren’t kidding”

“W-Whatever. You’re just too fucking big.” Y/n mumbled.

“Mm but you’re taking me so good beautiful.” He picked up his pace.

Jungkook grunted, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he slowly thrust deeper.

“Take a deep breath, baby. You can do it.” He encouraged her.

“Fuckkkk” She groaned “Shits starting to fit perfectly.”

He pulled back to look at her, a smirk on his face. “That's it, take every inch. Your pussy takes it so good.”

He started to move, his thrusts deep and steady. One hand released her wrists to grab her hip, pulling her into each thrust.

“Feels so good.” She breathed out.

“You have no idea.” He growled, his pace increasing as he pounded into her.

“Fuck, I love this tight pussy.” He reached between them, rubbing her clit in time with his thrusts. “Come on, baby. Let me feel you squeeze my dick more.”

“You’re so rough” She giggled, blushing.

He grabbed her ankles, spreading her legs wider as he continued to rail her.

The sound of skin slapping against skin echoed through the room, mixed with their heavy panting and her screams of pleasure. “That's it, baby. Take it. Fuck.”

She whined “So…Fucking…Mmm…Good”

He leaned down to kiss her, muffling her cries as he continued to thrust into her hard and fast.

His own grunts of pleasure filled the gaps between her moans. “You're so close, baby. I can feel your body gripping me tighter. Let go pretty girl.”

Her body trembled, “Y-yeah.” She was under him, shaking and whining.

He felt her walls clamp down on him, her orgasm hitting her hard. He didn't hold back, letting her cum before quickly pulling out and cumming all over her stomach through the condom.

He quickly rolled over beside her, the two panting.

“You better not tell Namjoon.”

“Oh I have to tell Namjoon.” He chuckled.

“You can’t!” She tried to catch her breath. “Then he’ll be right.”

“About?” He cocked his eyebrow.

“He told me that I would end up going home with you tonight.” She mumbled.

“Oh yeah?” He chuckled. “Worked out for me.” He wrapped his arm around her.

“Worked out a little too well, I actually did it.” She shook her head.

“Mm it worked out for me real baby I got a pretty girl in my bed.” He taunted.

“Whatever! I was supposed to not be here tonight.”

“But are you regretting this?” He stared at her.

“No…”

“Then it doesn’t matter. Let him be right.” Jungkook shrugged. “At the end of the day, I’m the real winner.”

[fiercynn]

With Palestinians breaking free of their besieged ghetto, we suddenly hear the all-too-familiar chorus of “the cycle of violence” and other such clichés. As usual, this fixation on pacifism only arises when the oppressed strike back at their oppressors. It seems that the refusal to live in a cage is not a convincing explanation for violence and armed resistance. Regardless of whether Israelis were killed or not, there was no way Palestinians could have launched an effective resistance campaign without being widely condemned or demonized. Even when resorting to tactics such as BDS campaigns to effect change, Palestinians were quickly rebuked, with critics likening the tactic to a “Nazi campaign,” and eliciting draconian legislation to legally ban the practice in places like the United States. In 2018, Gaza launched the unarmed Great March of Return to challenge the occupation and demand the right of return. It was dubbed a “riot,” and met with sniper fire, killing over 300 Palestinians, and creating an entire generation of maimed youth. Palestinian administrative detainees — prisoners held without charge, trial, or access to lawyers — are demonized for daring to go on hunger strikes. Even merely trying to access the International Criminal Court, which in theory should be the most agreeable arena to air grievances in the supposed “rules-based-international-order,” was met with hostility and rejection. These specific examples were chosen not to imply that other forms of resistance are illegitimate but rather to illustrate how even when Palestinians try to play by the non-armed rules set out for their resistance to be seen as “legitimate,” they are still framed as aggressive terrorists. There is always a reason why even the mildest methods of resistance are deemed wrong, always some technicality explaining that while “usually” this would be the right way to do things, it doesn’t apply to Palestinians. The goalposts are infinitely shifting, and it becomes glaringly obvious that the issue is not with the methods, but instead with who is undertaking them.

fathi nemer on october 24, 2023 for mondoweiss

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Niuta Teitelbaum

Niuta Teitelbaum was a Jewish resistance fighter in Poland who despite her innocent, youthful appearance was a deadly assassin who shot dead four Nazi officers.

Born in Warsaw in 1917, Niuta was raised in a religious Jewish family. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Niuta was one of the first volunteers to join the underground resistance movement. She said, “I am a Jew. My place is in the struggle against the Nazis for the honor of my people and for a free Poland!” Niuta was 22 but petite and baby-faced, she looked much younger. Wearing her blonde hair in two long braids, she resembled a Polish farm girl, which enabled her to move around Warsaw without arousing suspicion among the Nazi guards stationed around the city. Niuta transported weapons and helped Jews find safe havens even as she put herself in danger repeatedly.

With audacious bravery, sometime around 1942 Niuta approached the Nazi headquarters in Warsaw. Questioned by the officer guarding the front door, Niuta, acting shy and embarrassed, said she needed to see a certain high-ranking German officer. She said it was a “personal matter” implying that she was pregnant out of wedlock. The guard at the door snickered as he told her the officer’s room number and gave her a special pass to enter her supposed paramour’s private office. She thanked him shyly, and walked through the building to her “lover’s” office. Niuta entered the room to find the officer sitting at his desk. Before he could say a word she pulled out a pistol with a silencer and shot him in the head. He died instantly. Calm and collected, Niuta made her way back through the building to the front door and thanked the guard sweetly.

Because her resistance activities were so secretive, information is incomplete. What is known is that in another startlingly courageous episode, Niuta shot three Gestapo agents, killing two of them and wounding a third. Then she obtained a white lab coat and pretended to be a doctor to gain entry into the agent’s hospital room, and shot him again, killing him this time. Niuta landed a spot on the Nazis’ Most Wanted list, and was given the nickname “Little Wanda with the Braids.”

For three years, Niuta evaded her German pursuers and continued her resistance activities, until she was captured in 1943 and imprisoned with thousands of other Polish Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, where she participated in the famous uprising of April 1943. For most of the ghetto fighters it was a suicide mission; they knew they were likely to die but wanted to go down fighting. Niuta was one of the few who survived the ghetto battles and managed to escape. However, in July 1943, her hiding place in Warsaw was discovered and she was arrested by the Gestapo. Niuta was beaten and tortured for several weeks, but she refused to give information about any other resistance fighters or activities. Niuta was executed by the Germans later that year at age 25.

For her heroic resistance activities, including killing four Nazi officers, we honor Niuta Teitelbaum as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[octuscle]

Hotel room: filthy chav tf

It was an imposition. An absolute imposition. Having to spend the night in a youth hostel was unbelievable. But in a triple room? Without your own bathroom? Using a communal shower room? That had to be a joke. Yes, his company had to cut costs. There was a new travel policy that banned five-star hotels and business class flights. All well and good. But a youth hostel?!?!?!?!! He called the travel agency and insulted his colleague in the worst possible way. She just replied dryly that everything else was fully booked because of the trade fair and that she had even written Alexander an e-mail asking if the booking was okay. And he had replied with a curt "yes". Unfortunately, there was nothing more she could do, he was still on the waiting list for two hotels. But if there was no answer by now…

Alexander moved into his room. It smelled like a lad's changing room in a community school on a council estate. Of course, he had no idea what it smelled like. But that's how he imagined the stench. Without greeting or acknowledging the teenager lying on the bed playing with his cell phone, Alexander went to the window and pulled it open. "Oi, did someone crap in yer head, mate? Shut that window, innit?" the chav yelled at him. "I don't understand a word you're saying," Alexander replied and began to unpack his suitcase. I don't know how the chav could live like this, he thought to himself. He needed order. He then changed into his bedding, which he saw as a further humiliation, and lay down on the bed. The chav was listening to music so loud that Alexander could clearly hear the bass. He found it more than annoying. But he tried to ignore it. He put on his headset and called his fiancée. Alexander assumed that the chav lying in the bed above him couldn't hear anything, as loud as he was listening to music. So he complained without a care in the world and blasphemed about the young man with the disturbed relationship to personal hygiene and the impossible haircut. "Honey, I have to stop, I have to get out of here and have lunch somewhere civilized." Alexander ended his phone call. He looked up. And he was looking at a dirty white sock.

"Oi, I'm Callum, but me mates call me Cal. So you call me Callum. Did ya just say my smell's botherin' ya? I thought posh gits like you love the scent of real man's feet." Alexander almost threw up. Without saying anything, he jumped up, grabbed his coat and left the room. He had a lunch date with an old school friend at a trendy steak restaurant. It was supposed to distract him and save the evening as much as possible. As he stood in the subway, he wondered what the devil had possessed him not to take a cab. It smelled almost as bad here as in his hotel room. Suddenly he realized that the smell was coming from his armpits. Damn, had he forgotten the deodorant this morning? The journey seemed like an eternity. People wrinkled their noses. My God, that was embarrassing. In the restaurant, he went to the toilet first, wet a towel, took off his shirt and jacket and wiped his armpits. In the stress, he didn't even notice that instead of a white microfiber undershirt with a V-neck, he was wearing a worn-out, yellowed fine rib undershirt. The waiter eyed him a little disparagingly as he brought him to his table. His friend was already sitting there and stood up to greet him. Alexander gave him a fist bump. His friend looked irritated and returned the greeting. "My best man, what kind of ghetto attitudes are these? At least it goes with your casual footwear." Alexander looked at the floor. He was wearing rather expensive-looking sneakers. And white socks. He stammered something about a suitcase that had gone missing and that he'd been a bit stressed. His friend grinned a little disparagingly and poured Alexander a glass of red wine.

The conversation was somehow wooden. Marcus told stories from their school days. But Alexander couldn't remember any of them. The wine was quite tasty, the steak was too rare for him, but he didn't dare complain. With lots of ketchup, it was fine. When the waiter asked if he should pour more wine, Alexander replied with his mouth full "Oi mate, gimme a big beer, yeah? And some mayo with them chips." The rest of the meal passed in silence. All you could hear was Alexander smacking his lips. And after he had finished, a loud and passionate burp. Marcus looked horrified at first. Then he laughed uproariously and burped at least as loudly. "Blimey, mate! That was a good one. Now off for a fag and a fart outside?" "You can proper bet on it, mate. Got a spare cig for us?".

Marcus and Alexander had to put their last few pounds together to pay. The waiter looked disgustedly at the stale bills. "You got a problem, mate? Our money not good enough for ya? What's it gonna take for a blowie, eh? Would ya prefer that?" Alexander could barely stop Marcus from starting a fight with the waiter. He waved for security. A few minutes later, the two chavs were thrown out the back exit.

The evening was still young. Alex called Cal to see if he would like to have a beer in the pub at the youth hostel and watch the game. Cal replied that he had just taken a punter up to the room and had to fuck him first. Blimey, Cal was always lucky. Mack suggested he stand by the mess hall exit. Maybe you could pick up a customer there too. Alex looked in his wallet. He was broke again. He could do with a few pounds. They had at least managed to scrounge two fags from a passer-by. The evening was off to a good start. And at some point it would end with a hot threesome in their room.

Pics found @maennersneakersockenfuesseskins and @belgiquecuir

[historicity-was-already-taken]

On May Day, May 1, 1943, surviving fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, most of whom were varying stripes of Socialist, sang The International. One of Jewish commanders, Marek Edelman, wrote about it in his memoir:

“On May Day, the Command decided to carry out a ‘holiday’ action. Several battle groups were sent out to ‘hunt down’ the great­est number of Germans possible. In the evening, a May Day roll-call was held. The partisans were briefly addressed by a few people and the ‘Internationale’ was sung. The entire world, we knew, was celebrat­ing May Day on that day and everywhere forceful, meaningful words were being spoken. But never yet had the ‘Internationale’ been sung in conditions so different, so tragic, in a place where an entire nation had been and was still perishing. The words and the song echoed from the charred ruins and were, at that particular time, an indication that Socialist youth was still fighting in the Ghetto, and that even in the face of death they were not abandoning their ideals.”

He didn't include anything regarding the language they sang in, but Edelman was a member of the Bund, and they were staunch Yiddishists, so I'd like to think it sounded like this:

[alwaysbewoke]

NINE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS COMPARE ZIONIST POLICIES TO THOSE OF THE NAZIS

“Sometime after [1956] I heard a news item about Israelis herding Palestinians into settlement camps. I just could not believe this. Weren’t the Israelis also Jews? Hadn’t we – they – just survived the greatest pogrom of our history? Weren’t [concentration] camps – often euphemistically called ‘settlement camps’ by the Nazis – the main feature of this pogrom? How could Jews in any measure do unto others what had been done to them? How could these Israeli Jews oppress and imprison other people? In my romantic imagination, the Jews in Israel were socialists and people who knew right from wrong. This was clearly incorrect. I felt let down, as if I was being robbed of a part of what I had thought was my heritage. …

I have to say to the Israeli government, which claims to speak in the name of all Jews, that it is not speaking in my name. I will not remain silent in the face of the attempted annihilation of the Palestinians; the sale of arms to repressive regimes around the world; the attempt to stifle criticism of Israel in the media worldwide; or the twisting of the knife labelled ‘guilt’ in order to gain economic concessions from Western countries. Of course, Israel’s geo-political position has a greater bearing on this, at the moment. I will not allow the confounding of the terms ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘anti-Zionist’ to go unchallenged.”

Dr. Marika Sherwood, ‘How I became an anti-Israel Jew’, Middle East Monitor, 7/3/18. Marika Sherwood is a survivor of the Budapest ghetto.

-----

“Israel, in order to survive, has to renounce the wish for domination and then it will be a much better place for Jews also. The immediate analogy which a lot of people are making in Israel is Germany. Not only the Germany of Hitler and the Nazis but even the former German Empire wanted to dominate Europe. What happened in Japan after the attack on China is that they wanted to dominate a huge area of Asia. When Germany and Japan renounced the wish for domination, they became much nicer societies for the Japanese and Germans themselves. In addition to all the Arab considerations, I would like to see Israel, by renouncing the desire for domination, including domination of the Palestinians, become a much nicer place for Israelis to live.”

Dr. Israel Shahak, Middle East Policy Journal, Summer 1989, no.29. Israel Shahak was a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

-----

“I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of ‘blood and soil’ in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people – coerced ghettoization behind a ‘security wall’; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival – force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth. This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.” 

Dr. Hajo Meyer, ‘An Ethical Tradition Betrayed’, Huffington Post, 27/1/10. Hajo Meyer was a survivor of Auschwitz.

-----

“As a Jewish youngster growing up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide, I was for years haunted by a question resounding in my brain with such force that sometimes my head would spin: ‘How was it possible? How could the world have let such horrors happen?’

 It was a naïve question, that of a child. I know better now: such is reality. Whether in Vietnam or Rwanda or Syria, humanity stands by either complicitly or unconsciously or helplessly, as it always does. In Gaza today we find ways of justifying the bombing of hospitals, the annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach. …

There is no understanding Gaza out of context – Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians – and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.

The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery. Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm. With such a gross imbalance of power, there is no equivalence of culpability. …

And what shall we do, we ordinary people? I pray we can listen to our hearts. My heart tells me that ‘never again’ is not a tribal slogan, that the murder of my grandparents in Auschwitz does not justify the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, that justice, truth, peace are not tribal prerogatives. That Israel’s ‘right to defend itself,’ unarguable in principle, does not validate mass killing.

Dr. Gabor Mate, ‘Beautiful Dream of Israel has become a Nightmare’, Toronto Star, 22/7/14. Gabor Mate is a survivor of the Budapest ghetto.

[mariacallous]

Lithuania’s Jews and Yiddishists around the world are mourning the passing of Fania Brantsovsky, the last surviving member of the Jewish underground in the Vilna ghetto and a keeper of the flame of the city’s once glorious Yiddish past, who died at the age of 102 on Sunday in Vilnius.

Brantsovsky escaped the ghetto in 1942 and fought against the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Rudninkai forest with a group of Jewish partisans under the command of Abba Kovner. 

In the years after the war, she became a lifelong advocate for the memory of Lithuanian Jewry and their Yiddish language, serving as the librarian and beloved teacher at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute and an ambassador to visitors she brought to view the landmarks, many vanished, of a city that had once been known as the “Jerusalem of Europe” for its rich Jewish culture. 

It was a role that brought her world-wide acclaim and eventually local hostility, when Lithuanian nationalists began to equate her Soviet liberators with the Nazis, and tried to discredit partisans like her who had once considered the Russians their allies.

For all these roles, Brantsovsky was hailed by Yiddishists around the world who consider her death the end of an era.

“She lived so long that she came from a completely different universe than ours, like out of a history book,” Alec “Leyzer” Burko, a Warsaw-based Yiddish teacher, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“We’ve lost the last exemplar of interwar Yiddish Vilna, someone who could impart the spirit of the Yiddishist movement of interwar Vilna and its secular circles. We lost our last active veteran of the Vilna ghetto and the Jewish partisans,” said Dovid Katz, an American-born Yiddishist and co-founder of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute.

“And on a personal level,” he added, “we’ve lost a dear friend whose warmth, enthusiasm, encouragement, and desire to help, show and teach was a huge inspiration.”

Brantsovsky was born Feige Jocheles in 1922, in the then-Lithuanian capital of Kaunas but her family moved to Vilnius, then a part of Poland, when she was just five years old. 

As a young girl, she was active in the rich Jewish life of Vilnius. At the time, Vilnius was home to more than 60,000 Jews and boasted over 100 synagogues, the largest of which had seating for more than 2,000. With a Jewish community that had been flourishing when Napoleon passed through the city in the 18th century, Vilnius was more than just a religious center. It was home to a rich cultural and political scene, all in the Yiddish language. 

While she hailed from a secular family, which Brantsovsky noted kept neither kosher nor Shabbat, she completed her entire traditional education in Yiddish-speaking schools, and as a teenager was active in Jewish political youth movements

That world was shattered in 1941, when Vilnius fell under the control of the Germans and Brantsovsky, along with Vilnius’s tens of thousands of other Jews, were herded into the cramped conditions of the Vilna ghetto. 

From the first days of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, they began taking Jews from Vilnius to be killed in the nearby Ponar forest. Over 100,000 people would be killed there, including 70,000 Lithuanian Jews and 8,000 Roma, making it the second-largest mass grave in Europe after Babyn Yar in Ukraine.  

“Our life was more of existence, really,” Brantsovsky once described the ghetto in an interview with Centropa, a European Holocaust memorial organization. Every day was a struggle for survival, and one slip-up or turn of fate could mean starvation, or deportation to Ponar.

Brantsovsky recalled hearing of a resistance movement forming in the ghetto and quickly requested to join. 

“The underground organization of the ghetto united all parties and trends such as communists, revisionists, Bund etc. Their common goal was to fight against fascists,” she told Centropa. 

That group would be remembered as the United Partizan Organization, or by its Yiddish initials, FPO. 

The FPO had considered instigating an uprising in the ghetto, as would later take place in Warsaw. After the capture and execution of it’s leader Yitzhak Wittenberg by the Gestapo, the movement’s leadership decided instead to take its fighters out of the ghetto and into the nearby forests where Soviet-backed partisans were harrying the rear and supply lines of the German army. 

Brantsovsky bid farewell to her family and was smuggled out of the ghetto on Sept. 23, 1943. She would later learn that on the same night, the Germans began their final liquidation of the ghetto, killing most of its inhabitants. None of her family would survive the Holocaust.

In the Rudninkai forest, which has been immortalized in partisan literature under its Yiddish name, Der Rudnitzker Vald, she joined up with a partisan unit composed of Jews under the command of Abba Kovner, known as the Nokmim or Avengers.  

In the forest she trained with weapons and explosives and took part in military operations against the Nazi occupation. 

“We blasted trains and placed explosives in the enemy’s equipment. We shot and killed them,” she told Centropa. “Yes, I did, I killed them and did so with ease. I knew that my dear ones were dead and I took my revenge for them and thousands of others with each and every shot.”

In the forest, she also met her future husband Mikhail Brantsovsky. Nearly a year after fleeing the ghetto, Fania returned, rifle in hand, as the Soviet Red Army captured the city. 

Less than a month after returning she and Mikhail married. 

“We were intoxicated by the victory, our youth and love,” she recalled. 

After the war, her commander Abba Kovner would gain fame as one of Israel’s poet laureates, and infamy for an aborted plot to kill 6 million Germans in vengeance for the Holocaust. 

Brantsovsky took part in none of that: She stayed in Vilnius where she and Mikhail built a life together and had two children. 

In the years after the war, it quickly became clear to Brantsovsky that the world of her youth had been lost. 

“There were hardly any Jews left in Vilnius. When I saw older Jews, or they looked old to me considering how young I was, I felt like kneeling before them to kiss their hands.” she once recalled. 

Fania quickly went to work, helping to document what had been lost, and assisted Soviet Jewish writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman in the “Black Book of Soviet Jewry,” a 500-page document that recorded the Nazis’ crimes in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union. 

While it was first published in the USSR by Der Emes, the Yiddish-language arm of Pravda, the book would later be suppressed as the Soviet policy towards the Holocaust shifted to present the genocide as solely an atrocity against Soviet citizens, not one that specifically targeted Jews.  

Though Mikhail and Fania had been present and honored in Moscow’s Red Square during the victory parades of 1945, their enthusiasm towards the Soviet regime dulled after experiencing the antisemitism of Stalin’s later years. 

Mikhail passed away in 1985, and Fania retired from her job as a teacher in 1990 just before Lithuania gained its independence. 

In retirement, Fania found a new purpose: In an independent Lithuania, there was renewed interest in recording Vilnius’s Jewish past and studying the Yiddish language of its Jews. 

In the early 1990s, Fania and a group of other survivors, including another former partisan, Rachel Margolis, worked to establish a Holocaust museum in Vilnius known as the Green House. 

In 2001, Katz, a professor of Yiddish who had previously worked at Oxford, relocated to Vilnius and established a Yiddish institute at Vilnius University. 

“When I founded the Vilnius Yiddish Institute in 2001 my first executive act was to hire Fania as librarian and that choice was a success from day one,” Katz told JTA.

Fania, who worked as a teacher much of her adult life, originally trained to do so in Yiddish for students in the city’s Jewish school system. The Nazis shattered that future, but decades later, the Vilnius Yiddish Institute represented a return to her roots. 

“She understood that she was the carrier of so much of the living Yiddish culture of the interwar period, especially its secular Yiddishist incarnation,” Katz explained.  

The Institute lasted for 17 years, until it ultimately closed down in 2018. Every year it ran a summer program attended by students from around the world, and Fania became a fixture of the experience, telling students about the city of her youth, the experience of the ghetto and bringing them out to the remains of her partisan camp in the Rudninkai forest well into her nineties. 

She is remembered fondly by nearly everyone who passed through.

“I feel really blessed to have had an opportunity to work with her,” Indre Joffyte, who helped run the program, told JTA. “Fania’s energy, determination and passion in everything she did was an inspiration to everyone around her. I will always remember her caring nature, our girly conversations, her preparedness to help, and her inner youth despite her age and tragic life experiences.”

In independent Lithuania, Fania became a prominent figure in its Jewish community as well as in diplomatic circles, guiding visiting leaders on tours of the former ghetto and Ponar where so many of her relatives were killed.

But the increased attention also invited trouble. 

In the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, a nationalist narrative arose in the Baltic states that equated the actions of the Soviets with the Nazis.  

Known as the “double genocide” theory, it has been largely rejected by Jewish and western Holocaust institutions, but has become the standard presented in Lithuania and the other Baltic states. 

It resulted in a smear campaign directed against Brantsovsky and other surviving Jewish partisans, such as Margolis and Yitzhak Arad who was the director of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993. 

For fighting in units allied with the Soviets, they were accused of being war criminals on the same level as Lithuanians who collaborated with the Nazis. 

“I agree completely with all the anti-Communist pronouncements. What I disagree with is, of course, the equalization of the people who committed the genocide at Auschwitz and the people who liberated Auschwitz. They’re simply not the same.” said Katz.  “As much as one should hate the Stalinist Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945, we were in the American-Anglo-Soviet alliance, and the Soviet Union was the only force fighting Hitler in Eastern Europe. So of course, Fania’s partisan union was aligned with the Soviet partisans in the forest who were fighting.”

For Brantsovsky, the issue came to head in 2008, when Lithuania’s chief prosecutor publicly demanded that she be questioned over her alleged connections to a massacre of Lithuanian civilians during the war. 

Katz believes that the demand was in retaliation for increased pressure from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish institutions for Lithuania to investigate its own wartime collaborators.

The charges were dropped that same year, but the incident had a notable effect on Brantsovsky, resulting in her receding somewhat from public life in Lithuania. 

She didn’t stop teaching Yiddish, however, and was active in working with students and guiding tours until her 99th year, when she had a fall on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

With her passing, another thread connecting Eastern Europe’s Jewish past and rich Yiddish culture has been severed. 

“She was one of the last witnesses of prewar Jewish life in Vilna, a proud graduate of its Yiddish school system where everything from chemistry to Latin and Shakespeare was studied in the Jewish community’s native language,” Jordan Kutzik, a former deputy Yiddish editor at The Forward, said in a memorial post on Facebook.

“After nearly her entire family and cultural milieu were murdered and then her native language suppressed for 50 years, she wasn’t wasting any time in helping to document her city’s history and encouraging others to explore it.”