#Shoah

[the-itzy-bitzy-spider]

Someone and I were talking about this yesterday re: Japanese internment camps during WWII. This was my reply. It's about the shoah but it absolutely applies to Native experiences.

"The other thing is this. If the bar for "unacceptable" is the shoah, then when something falls short we have 2 choices: A) we lie about the actuality of the events which undermines the suffering of the victims, or B) we ignore everything that happens if it doesn't meet the bar of the shoah. Both are disingenuous and both further suffering and both pit victimized and oppressed minorities against one another, as though giving a shit about injustice and human suffering is a zero sum game. We can just admit the internment camps were absolutely reprehensible without needing a comparison to anything else. The horror is evident and people don't need to turn one atrocity into an allegory for another so that folks don't have to participate in a basic thought exercise."

Leftist bloggers are using Native genocide as a fucking metaphor for other issues as if we aren't still here and primary targets of this administration that wants nothing more than to erase our identities and our tribes and hand our land over to mining and oil companies. Fuck all the way off honestly. Don't bring up our people's suffering if you're just gonna pretend like we're not even here anymore.

[iliothermia]

Hey y'all. It's International Holocaust Awareness day Both of these books changed me. Consider reading them or please share for someone else who might. It's never a bad thing to learn more.

Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz by Slomo Venezia This is one of the only books I've found that touches on the living conditions and viewpoint of a Jew from Greece. Reading it, the author felt like a friend. It was horrifying.

Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide this book explained people were taught to completely separate Jews from being human in people's minds in the years leading up to the Holocaust- especially in the medical field. It has interviews with some of the doctors who did these things. The site for the books also has an archive of images, films, objects, publications, recorded sounds and documents. You can find information on many communities. Thank you

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Rather proud of the post I made for JVP Boston for Holocaust Remembrance Day!

Antizionist Jewish Shoah survivors have always been some of my heroes.

And every one of them has been attacked and discredited by Zionists.

[hailruth]

leaving this here for no particular reason.

[cavalierzee]

Zionists Morphing Into Nazis

During the Holocaust, Nazis would paint the Star of David on the homes of Jewish people – marking them for forced eviction.

Zionists do the same to Palestinians. The Star of David marks a Palestinian home for eviction, and then destruction.

Ousman Noor

[gingerswagfreckles]

It's become extremely obvious over the past 15 months that the only reason much of the Western world ever basically agreed that the Holocaust was bad and was willing to teach about it is because for a brief period of time, Jews and gentiles in most of Europe + America had a common enemy in the Nazis. But this acknowledgement of Nazi antisemitism was only ever the same kind of acknowledgement of antisemitism that we get right now, where people are only willing to acknowledge the antisemitism of the people they already had a completely separate reason to dislike or fear. Antisemitism in this worldview is just a tool, a secondary accusation one can lodge at someone who is already for different reasons an enemy. It is never acknowledged as a form of bigotry in and of itself, that exists on its own and not as a follow up to another "more serious" form of oppression or bigotry against gentiles.

Obviously any Holocaust education we do get in Europe and the US has very much been the result efforts by Jews and our allies in a practical sense, but it is undeniable that there was a brief 70 or so year period where the white Western consciousness found it valuable (or at least politically convenient) to recognize antisemitism as wrong and the Holocaust as horrific. As true, original-brand Nazism fades, though, we see opposition to antisemitism and the Holocaust becoming less and less valuable to the white Western identity, as actual threat of Nazi occupation fades to historical memory. Newer, rebranded neo-Nazis and leftist Hamas supporters pose little to no threat to white Western gentiles. And thus, we see now not only a growing acceptance of antisemitism, but also a growing hostility towards the idea that we should study or condemn the Holocaust as anything particularly terrible. The Holocaust no longer represents a way for gentiles to additionally condemn an ideology that also threatened them, that also killed their families, that also resulted in their own countries and communities being occupied or destroyed by foreign fascist governments. It no longer represents to them an ideology that is in any way a threat to their own safety or way of life.

This is why we see such a massive rise in Holocaust denial among Gen Z, and, even more broadly than overt Holocaust denial, the rejection of the idea that the Holocaust should be particularly studied or condemned. More and more, we see people "questioning" the "propaganda" of The Jews Crying Victim All The Time, we see young people wondering why they are so cruelly forced to acknowledge on very rare occasion the suffering that the Jewish people went through in their own homes and towns. Often this is framed not only as intellectual bravery but moral bravery, as if this new generation rejecting Holocaust education is somehow fighting back against the unfair valuing of Jewish tragedy above gentile tragedy. What they don't understand, of course, and what many Jews up until now didn't understand either, is that no one ever valued the Holocaust because it WAS a uniquely horrific event in history, because it WAS the first and only industrialized genocide that gassed millions to death on a scale we can only pray the world will never see again, because it WAS only 70 years ago and is still a living part of the history of many Western countries. No. The Holocaust was only ever given the acknowledgement it was because it represented, at one time, an ideological threat that also included gentiles, though less overtly than it targeted Jews.

That ideological threat against Jews has not gone anywhere, and is in fact is seeing a new glory day dawning with the rise of fascism worldwide and the normalization/glorification of antisemitism on the left. But this new form of antisemitic hatred, be it neo-Nazism or support for Hamas, does not represent a threat to white Western gentiles, their way of life, or the integrity of their governments. And so we as we see the decoupling of the Holocaust from something that also incidentally threatens gentiles, we see standing against the Holocaust and antisemitism as a symbol of white Western identity disappearing as fast as it came.

[girlactionfigure]

This week, Lily Ebert, a 100-year-old Auschwitz survivor, became a great-great-grandma.

"I never expected to survive the Holocaust. Now I have five beautiful generations. The Nazis did not win!"

From near-death at Auschwitz to five generations of Jewish life. - Dov Forman 

[vague-humanoid]

[mask131]

This morning, it was discovered that, during the night, two dozen of red handprints have been painted on the Wall of the Justs.

The Wall of the Justs is part of the Parisian Memorial of the Shoah: it is the list of the names of nearly four thousand men and women who helped protect and save Jews during the Occupation of France by the Nazis.

Tell me again how the red handprint is "definitively not used by antisemites or for antisemitic purposes"? And tell me, please, how defacing this memorial (which is not even to the memory of Jews, but to the memory of those that stood up against the Nazis) will help Palestine in any way?

... Maybe you can't, because this is proof that, for some person, it is not about Palestine at all. They don't care about bringing food or medical help to Gaza. They just see an opportunity to express their own hate.

Everybody has been saying this, and I will concur: most of these people are either antisemites, or uneducated ignorants who are so short-sighted they don't even realize how bad their own actions look, and thus soil the very cause they want to defend.

At best, they wanted to say something about how pro-Palestinians are "the Resistance" but failed monstrously at carrying the message because they DEFACED A SHOAH MEMORIAL. At worst, they wanted us to understand what is the only thing to be read here: "These people who saved the Jews in World War II have blood on their hands now." And this is such a vile and nauseating message.

[tributary]

i’m posting this article because it’s an interesting bit of history, and also because this is a playbook we’re seeing again. (some) leftists viewing fascists as “class allies” against social democracy, excusing antisemitism/misogyny/ableism as a step towards broader anti-capitalism. the idea of the “lumpenproletariat” as “useless poor” who fascists see as drains on society for essentially the same reasons, the fervent conviction that surely a working-class embrace of fascism will lead to a working-class embrace of communism. the total surprise when the fascists expel and kill the leftists once they seize power. the real red-brown alliance is what it looks like when spotted leopards eat faces.

as @stripedroseandsketchpads said, condoning bigotry as a “unifying factor” for the working class is a slippery slope to worse, because here you have a designated class of undesirables who it is acceptable to sacrifice for the cause. the canary in the coal mine for whether the state can commit industrialized mass murder and have everyone at home and abroad be basically fine with it was the euthanasia program/Aktion T4.

[jewish-mccoy]

zionist blocklists

if goyim are so determined to compare everything to the Holocaust, here’s a fucking comparison for you.

why are you making lists of Jews — and it is Jews, because most “Zionist” blocklists contain at least 2-3 users who are actually not Zionist in any form? who else did that?

seriously, goyische leftists, who else made lists of Jews, of Jewish businesses to boycott?

you may not be Nazis, but you sure as fuck have no problem copying moves out of their playbooks. and while we’re on the subject, this whole chasing Jews off social media and trying to ban us from places like rallies, colleges, etc? We’re dangerously close to being halfway through the 10 stages of genocide.

I seriously want goyim to reblog this. Because being an ally isn’t just reblogging the feel good content.

You’re complicit if you aren’t uplifting Jewish voices. And I’m not telling you that you have to reblog my post specifically, but I do want you to at least ask yourself why you aren’t. Because I truly believe, based on facts, evidence, personal experience, historical knowledge, that everything I have said is true.

[xclowniex]

Fuck off you dumb fucking cunt

We can all agree that what happened to her was very bad, and I wish that was the end of what I'm about to say. Stop comparing Palestine to the holocaust. They are two separate situations.

And this isn't even about if they're on the same level or not as that doesn't matter. Please just stop going "oh is this the new holocaust? Is this the new Anne frank? Are Palestinians the new jews they're semites too ya know" like shut the actual fuck up.

And this wouldn't be such an issue if it wasn't paired with the erasure of jews (snd roma) from the holocaust. Like we are literally seeing the holocaust be rewritten online where instead of people acknowledging that antisemitism was the motivation behind it, and that antisemitism was steeped into other forms of bigotry like homophobia being antisemitic homophobia because the Nazis thought jews were the reason why people were gay, instead of recognizing that, it's being rewritten to just be this amorphous bad event(tm), which every minority was affected by equally. This is in part due to shit holocaust education as well as antisemitic conspiracy theories surronding the holocaust.

And going "oooo is this the new holocaust" about Palestine is just so fucking stupid. Because no it's not. It can never be, because the holocaust was unique in the fact that it was about HATING JEWS. IF A GENOCIDE IS NOT ABOUT HATING JEWS THEN ITS NOT THE NEW HOLOCAUST.

And the combination of the two just make it so fucking insidious. We are being written out of our own fucking history in more ways than one.

And also like, not to mention, calling what is happening in Gaza the "new holocaust" is not letting Palestinian history stand on its own. It's not letting the nuance flourish. It shouldn't be the new anything, it should be its own thing. Why does everything else get to be its own thing and get it's own name yet for palestinians its always compared to or dubbed the "Palestinian holocaust".

[unsolicited-opinions]

Good Morning Britain manages to do a piece on Holocaust remembrance while carefully avoiding any mention of Jews.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @thepersianjewess

[chaoticamelay]

elon "world's most dangerous antisemite" musk spoke at a far-right extremist political rally in germany and said he thinks people need to 'move beyond' the holocaust, so i've shelved my original post planned for international Holocaust Remembrance Day and instead i am going to talk about how european cities are built with jewish gravestones.

during ww2 the Nazis and their allies were in search of places to get good quality stone for building. then they realized they had countless: the cemeteries of once thriving jewish communities they were targeting. An unknown number (we will never know exactly how many, but it is high) of matzevot (jewish gravestones) were removed from our ancestor's graves and used as construction materials. even after 1945 our cemeteries kept being used as quarries. because our communities were never the same afterwards.

all over Europe, you can find roads, sidewalks, buildings, tools, christian gravestones... even a children's sandbox, made of gravestones stolen from our old jewish cemeteries. sometimes the cemetery land was 'repurposed' into something else as well, with no regard for the human remains there.

Poland

There were 1200 jewish cemeteries in Poland alone, and more than four hundred of them did not survive the war times. They were rearranged to provide sites for housing estates, sports fields, garbage dumps, or sand quarries. The sand mined from them to build houses was mixed with human remains. Only a hundred and fifty graveyards still have more than a hundred gravestones, but before the holocaust there were at between a few hundred thousand or a few million.

Between 2008-2011, photographer Łukasz Baksik documented some places in poland where Jewish gravestones were ''repurposed" during and after the war. Here are his photos: Matzevot for Everyday Use

Top left: A cowshed in Starowola by Parysów, a village in east-central Poland, made of cobbled together jewish gravestones. Top right: A children's sandbox in Szczecin, a city in the West Pomerania Province built in the 1960s/70s. Bottom left: School playing courts in Kazimierz Dolny, a town in eastern Poland. The schoolyard was built, in the 1950s, on the grounds of a Jewish cemetery, and there are fragments of matzevot in the walls. Bottom right: In the town of Brok, in eastern Poland, the interior of a workshop contains a mounted grindstone carved from a jewish gravestone.

Czech Republic and Ukraine

In the 1980s, cobblestones made from Jewish gravestones were used to pave a busy part of Prague's Old Town, a main city square called Wenceslas Square on Na Prikope, a popular shopping street. (As of 2019 they are apparently going to be returned to the Old Jewish Cemetery).

In 2018, a road in L’viv, Ukraine was being repaired when city workers found over 100 Jewish gravestones used in paving it. Matzevot have been found here in the past and brought back to the Jewish cemetery by volunteer teams.

Left: Cobblestones used to pave a busy street in Prague, taken from Jewish headstones. The Hebrew letter hey and the numbers 895 are visible. Right: Matzevot used as paving in Lviv, being rescued by volunteers.

Belarus and Lithuania

in Vilnius, Lithuania, jewish tombstones were used all over the city in construction, including for an electric transformer substation, church steps, and the grand stairway in the trade union headquarters. They are being rescued and returned to the cemetery as they are found.

In Belarus, matzevot were used for house foundations, porches, fences, backyard paving, roads, or they were turned into millstones.

Left: A man examines the memorial made from gravestones that had been used to build stairs in Vilnius. Right: 2016 photo of Jewish gravestone used as stairway of church in Vilnius.

Greece

People often forget about Sephardic Jews and the Holocaust, but Greece and especially Salonika (Thessaloniki), the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," were devastated by the Shoah. Salonika's major jewish cemetery contained hundreds of thousands of graves- when it was completely destroyed by the Nazis (with the help of Greeks who wanted the land), the gravestones were used in construction projects around the city. Aristotle University sits on the site today. Fragments of matzevot can still be found around the city in churches, buildings, even sidewalks, although now when they're found they're brought to the new Jewish cemetery.

Broken up Jewish gravestone used for construction In Thessaloniki.

Eighty years is not a long time. We are not moving on. We are seeing rising fascism, scapegoating of minorities, violent nationalism. We said never again, not for anyone, not ever - the history books are right there telling us this is wrong, and we are NOT going to ignore words written with blood.

now that i have written all this out i don't actually know how to end the post so. i guess let's go with this: i'm not naive. ordinary people do terrible, awful things and I see how it is hard to trust anyone to not do terrible things to you when it matters most. but ordinary people also do wonderful, life-affirming things! i am a sephardic jew who is here because ordinary people resisted. stood up and threw themselves into the gears of the genocidal system that tried to kill my ancestors in greece and italy during the Shoah. people hid their neighbours, became resistance fighters. in athens a police chief gave jews false id cards and an archbishop gave jews false baptismal certificates. my family always taught me and my siblings that solidarity saves lives. you can start that right now!

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! –Mario Savio

[garlic-and-cloves]

I wonder if in another 80 years Jewish people won't even be mentioned when discussing the Holocaust

[challahbeloved]

It’s not surprising, but still poignant reading an excerpt of a letter home from a nazi soldier, regarding how he felt while murdering Jews…

“At the tenth truckload, I already aimed calmly and shot straight at the numerous women, children, and infants. I was mindful that I also have two infants at home who would have been treated by this horde exactly the same, if not ten times worse… Infants flew through the air in high arches, and we did them in already in midair before they [fell] into the pit… Hitler’s words are becoming true when he said at the beginning of the war: if Judaism thinks to instigate another war in Europe, then this will not be its victory but the end of Judaism in Europe.”

Him having infants of his own didn’t deter him, but encouraged him to kill Jewish infants because of how Jews were imagined as threats.

—

I read this excerpt in A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide by Alon Confino. Page 186.

Confino’s citation for this excerpt reads:

Mallmann, Riess, and Pyta, Deutscher Osten, 1939-1945, 28.