#once someone compared it to the treatment of the victims of the holocaust

[eclaire-went-bam]

i'm THIS close to just making my pronouns he/it, or just it/its, bcs istg ppl see "prefers it/it but also ok with he/they" & think it's a good excuse to not call me by my "weird" pronouns

people hardly ever use "he" either, bcs i don't pass

like. it/it's my preferred pronouns. he/they is tolerable but over time i'm just going to get annoyed. wait till they hear abt my super secret neopronouns

[deviantartdramahub]

You know, sometimes I can understand those who say they're appalled with how things are going on DA, namely when it comes to the forums. Those of you who aren't American like me and beloved Katherine may or may not know that, on July 13th, someone tried to irreversibly harm a person of importance and ended up accidentally striking someone else before being struck down by authorities.

The response from other important people has been appreciated, but I've observed regular civilians do not share this comprehension of fairness and civility. This could be no more apparent from even those I thought may be friends in their true colors in responses/opinions than anyone else. It is above toxic when you think death and allowing making light of it and holocaust denial is fine, even if for a lack of catharsis (stuck up much? And people are still hellbent on what they consider the other issue, like even Mr. Crocker would call you crazy.)

I am not the kind of person who today is politically obsessed with constantly theorizing that certain people who share remote similarities with the suspect of WWII is a fascist, but for that reason, even those who are rightist can admit it is a very dark road to go down, and I wanted to use this as good timing to discuss with you what has been called the six kinds of holocaust denial, because they are all seen as holons of each other, simultaneously separate enough to treat as having exclusive characteristics but intertwined enough to share one umbrella of treatment, perhaps for the sake of DNI lists everywhere (these are all the same in the eyes of people who consider themselves wise).

Tragedy denial: This is the form of holocaust denial most people think of when they hear the term holocaust denial. This includes things like denying anyone was killed (which is a wrongful assumption, many, many people were killed), denying that there was a war, claiming the war was justified, denying the modus operandi of death, etc. There of course was a war, there were twenty million people killed by Adolf, and there were invasions. Even wars that happened thousands of years ago I would not tolerate denial of.

Victimization denial: This refers to anyone who, accidentally or intentionally, misrepresents the victim count of WWII. Do you really think that, every time someone out there says it was "only this group of people who were targeted" or "only that group of people", it does anyone any good? Many people for example completely throw away the fact that people with disabilities were targeted for about a decade before everyone else was targeted.

Perspective denial: This refers to people who, either genuinely or spitefully, listen to war stories and accounts of things that happened during the war and refuse to take it seriously. This is actually the most common kind of holocaust denial, perhaps you may have listened to the glorified accounts of the Allied Powers doing things like making lines of inflatable tanks and remarking it sounds fishy. But this is no less holocaust denial, because it all tangles together in places.

Intensity denial: This refers to anyone who makes light of the intensity of the war, most often through violating Godwin's Law. Every time you compare someone to the worst man who ever lived, you're not just casting an unjust shadow over that individual, you're also unshaming said worst man who ever lived.

Leadup denial: This refers to anyone who denies the context that led up to the war, in fact it is said it was leadup denial of WWI that led to the outcrying that led to WWII.

Aftermath denial: This refers to anyone who denies the things that the war has left us with, for example certain groups that were once scattered across the continent are either overinflated or underinflated. Complicitness denial also plays into this.

Some people are a shame to those they claim to stand by.

[whitehotharlots]

We have lost our damn minds

Let's do one of those reddit "Am I the Asshole Threads." Only this may be more like "Am I Going Insane." Because everything I'm about to say seems completely, undeniably obvious to me, but I feel like if I were to voice any of this publicly I would get in trouble.

It seems to me that both sides of the cultural divide refuse to admit that power relations are contextual, and this mutual refusal is kinda what’s holding the whole grift together.

Someone who is very powerful in one time or place might find themselves less powerful, or even oppressed, in another. And this goes double for power that stems from a person's identity markers, which are not nearly as deterministic as every seems to think they are. This is obvious, right? 

An obese, non-passable trans woman with AIDS would probably not find a kind reception at the Republican National Convention (although, judging by how much Trump people love Diamond and Silk, this might depend on what the person was saying).  Anyhow, we can assume some degree of hostility if this trans person went to Butte, Montana or wherever Trump decides to hold his black mass and she attempted to give a speech about how she's oppressed because the waiter at Olive Garden took too long to bring out the third tray of breadsticks. If this exact same person gave the exact same speech at an academic humanities conference, however, she would be treated like a god. She would be given a pass that made everyone around her agree with her enthusiastically and call her a genius no matter how stupid or hateful she was being. The Olive Garden waiter would be fired immediately, at the very least. Maybe it would even kick off a nationwide boycott...

In denying context, we give ourselves permission to claim victimhood even in contexts where we have a great deal of power. That's how Obama can present himself as some kind of hapless waif. It's how people can say the only reason anyone would criticize Oprah is because they feel threatened by strong black women. It's how MAGA assholes can compare themselves to holocaust victims after they get asked to leave Wal Mart because they were caught using deodorant and putting it back on the shelf.

And this is because we live in a very sick and very broken country. It's because we all believe that no one deserves basic human dignity except for those who fall into a handful of formally recognized victimhood statuses, and we understand politics and governance as nothing beyond the establishment and policing of these classes. If you're suffering, you must deserve it. And since we ignore context, brutality can always be rationalized by at least one side: you had access to affirmative action/privilege ergo if you can't pay for cancer treatment that's because you're lazy and dumb. 

This is how we end up with people posting things like “I am gay. But I am not and have never been attracted to men. Yes, we exist” and this will not only receive tens or hundreds of thousands of approving comments, but anyone who expresses anything less than enthusiastic celebration will be accused of hating this person. The person successfully established victimhood, and once that status had been achieved--however moronically--he became untouchable. 

[therebelsthemartyrsthesurvivors]

Changing the Narrative

While confronting the Holocaust in Germany and Poland, visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka II, the memorial sites, I had an epiphany: the victims of the Holocaust are always labeled as victims and the perpetrators are always infamously talked about, as if they should be the main focus in our history books. These people, these “victims” were fighters and martyrs who knew about sacrifice and the possibility of death. Some survived death when they were only a few feet away from it, and not even this scare turned them away from returning to dreadful places like the Warsaw Ghetto to warn others of the fate that was awaiting them in death camps like Treblinka II. We do not give credit where credit is due. We do not talk about people like Emanuel Ringelblum, we talk about people like Heinrich Himmler. We do not talk about people like Jan Karski, we talk about people like Rudolf Höss. Because of course we have to mention the evil behind it all, but we give credit where credit is not deserved, and we see this at memorial sites, we see this at museums, we see this in poor representations of the Holocaust in film, media, in museum tours, and literature. We focus on the perpetrators and the bystanders, the people at fault, but we never focus on the fact that there was a resistance, there was hope, there were uprisings fueled by hope and the unity of persecuted peoples.

This paper is meant to ethically represent the Holocaust— the survivors, the resistance, and the rebels— those who rebelled against the odds and fought a fate decided for them by the infamous perpetrators and the bystanders. This paper is meant to highlight the stories we do not always talk about. In this paper I will be focusing on three specific groups of the many peoples targeted in the Holocaust, specifically Jews, women and children (including the unborn), and the LGBT community. This paper is a written self-reflection based on my experiences confronting the Holocaust as a survivor of assault. I want to change the narrative and focus on the stories that matter, reflect on the truth of the Holocaust, and discuss what can be done differently to respectfully and ethically commemorate the survivors and “victims” of the Holocaust. In this paper, I will argue and defend the fact that the so-called “victims” were martyrs, and the survivors were the greatest resistance of all.

THE HEAD, NOT THE TAIL

Dating back to 1930s Europe, the persecution of Jews had started much earlier than is recognized. Propaganda was used to divide communities, and successfully turned the backs of non-Jewish neighbors on their Jewish neighbors (as we see in several pogroms that occurred throughout the war— before, during, and after), however men were targeted before women and children. German Jewish men were being deported and interned far before German Jewish women were because women clearly were not even remotely viewed as a threat. In reference to Between Dignity and Despair, a historical account written by Marion Kaplan, German Jewish women were vital to the survival of German Jewish men deported and interned prior to the creation of ghettos and the decision to exterminate all Jews. Men “were forced to flee promptly” (Kaplan 24). Wives and mothers were responsible for saving their husbands from permanent internment in camps. These women learned several languages to be able to locate their husbands and fathers, and they managed to hold down the household, all at once. German Jewish women had “the burden of keeping their households and communities together.” (Kaplan 6) Men were only set free because their female relatives located them and provided them with the identification papers necessary to be released. It was their female relatives who tracked them down and released them from internment. They newly learned how to financially support their families, how to get by with the few resources they had, and they learned how to use these few resources to accomplish finding a site of refuge. We never hear these stories though, and we need to change the narrative.

The Greatest Crime. Jewish and Roma women were a persecuted minority. Jewish women more exclusively because they had the ability to procreate Jewish children, and of course, Jewish lineage is passed on through the mother. This was viewed as a political threat to the Third Reich.

At Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, Jewish and Roma women were subject to forced sterilization methods to test which methods would be most cost effective. Other “undesirables” were also exposed to forced sterilization at these camps. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, visibly pregnant Jewish women and Jewish women with small children were sent directly to the gas chambers to be killed. The story of Jewish women and children entering Auschwitz-Birkenau is a painful one. Dr. Josef Mengele, infamously known for conducting medical experiments on twins at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was responsible for the decision that declared that Jewish women with small children entering the camp would be gassed. His logic was that the small Jewish children had nowhere to go because all Jews were imprisoned in the camps, they could not work, and there weren’t any facilities on the camp where they could live and develop “normally”. He also claimed it would not be humane if he sent the children on their own to the “ovens” without allowing the mother to be there to witness the child’s death, so the mother and child would be sent together. We hear about Dr. Josef Mengele every time we talk about Auschwitz, but someone we never talk about who is incredibly vital to the survival of Jews in Auschwitz was Dr. Gisella Perl.

A Hero in Hell. Dr. Perl was a Hungarian gynecologist who was interned as a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz, yet was also the head women’s doctor. Dr. Perl once spoke that the greatest crime at Auschwitz was being pregnant. She worked under Dr. Mengele and was ordered to notify him of any pregnant women that were living onsite at the camp. Dr. Mengele claimed that these women were going to be sent to a different camp to receive better nutrition. Women quickly came forward on their own, but it was soon learned these women were being experimented on and were sent thereafter to the crematoriums. Dr. Perl made it her mission to save as many women as possible while she could. She performed secret abortions on the dirty, excrement-infested floors in the barracks with her bare hands. She explained to the expecting mothers that two lives would be lost if they went through with their pregnancy because becoming pregnant in the camps meant a death sentence was awaiting them.

Fertility = Sabotage = Resistance. Interestingly enough, pregnancy was not at all uncommon on these cursed grounds where pregnancy was supposedly “not allowed”. However, brothels were common and contraceptives were clearly not available to women. Male prisoners would often seek out sexual favors in exchange of goods that would help a woman survive at the camp. There were barracks specifically used by the SS to molest and rape Jewish women. “Their actions and feelings towards Jewish women created inner conflicts for the SS officers, leading to violence against the women, who were blamed for seducing the officers” (Holland, par. 5). Age was not a restriction either. Thousands of babies were born at Auschwitz but were almost all immediately executed upon exiting the womb. Dr. Perl saved many women from instant death with the hope that they would one day have a family of their own, outside of the hell they were living in. There are only two known infants who were born in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp and survived. A one year old weighed in at six pounds and was so weak that she could never cry, which is how she survived. She was easy to hide because no one ever heard a sound coming from her. Her mother was dying due to starvation when she gave birth to her. We never hear these stories though, and we need to change the narrative.

IDENTITY

We seldom hear about the LGBT community when we talk about the Holocaust. I could even use the word ‘never’ if I wanted to because if we are being honest, the LGBT community is not commonly included in the narrative. Members of the LGBT community faced harsh, brutal treatment in concentration camps and were treated far worse than political prisoners, Jehovah’s witnesses, the Roma, criminals, and asocials. Lesbians were subject to black triangles and labeled as “asocials” instead of receiving the pink triangle which was meant to label a person as being gay. These pink triangles assigned to gay men were commonly used as shooting targets for the SS. Compared to gay men, lesbians were hardly viewed as a threat, but they were raped and “forced” to verbally change their sexual orientation. SS men found that lesbians were the easiest to sexually convert. Gay men in Germany were forcibly castrated. Boiling water was used to literally boil off their testicles. They were called in to local police stations where they were sodomized with the ends of broken broomsticks and the torture would not end until they bled. Gay men in the Holocaust were considered the “lowest of the low” but this is often omitted from history books and Holocaust literature.

Homosexuals are not Cowards. Willem Arondéus was an openly gay, anti-fascist resistance fighter. Arondéus was one of the very first to join the Dutch resistance and his underground organization provided Jews with fake identities. In 1943, he was responsible for the bombing of a public records office that contained a catalog with the names of hundreds of thousands of Dutch people residing in Amsterdam. This was important specifically in the case of Dutch Jews because Nazis were using the catalog to look into fake identities. He planned the attack on the records office with the help of other resistance fighters, many of them also openly gay. We do not mention the fact that he dressed as a German Army captain and walked fifteen men past guards to enter the records office. We do not mention the fact that Frieda Belinfante, a classical cellist, talented conductor, and open lesbian, was one of his main resistance fighters. The rebels marched into the building, they drugged the rest of the guards, and set up the explosives. They destroyed nearly a quarter of the public records office.

We need to talk about the fact that this moment, this decision, kept thousands of Jews from being deported and identified. Unfortunately, someone within the underground organization betrayed them and turned them all in. Arondéus said he acted alone in the bombing, but the Nazis executed him and the other thirteen resistance fighters anyway. The rest of the rebels managed to flee the country. Arondéus’ last words, spoken through his lawyer, were Homosexuals are not cowards. I have to write this in bold. I have to emphasize what was meant to be emphasized by Willem Arondéus. Homosexuals are not cowards. It is a rare opportunity that we get to hear these stories of justice, resistance, rebellion, and we need to change the narrative.

THE REBELS            

There is one last person I feel an intense need to talk about, and that person is Emanuel Ringelblum. I mentioned him earlier as someone we do not typically talk about and I want to end that. I feel it is important to address that there was a Jewish resistance and Emanuel Ringelblum was a huge part of it. Many people believe that Jews could have risen up against the Nazis and that they could have “actually done something”. Here is another ounce of proof that Jews resisted and rebelled and survived and actually did something.

The Archives. Ringelblum is responsible for the Oneg Shabbat Archives, better known now as Ringelblum’s Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto, which I will refer to as “the archives”. He was the inspiration behind the secret Oneg Shabbat Archives, which translates to “Sabbath pleasure”. Naming the archives “Oneg Shabbat” was technically code because Ringelblum and other archivists would meet late afternoons on the Sabbath, which is why the archives are named as such. During the day they would take in as much information as possible and write notes on what happened at night. The idea was to document the atrocities of the Nazis in the ghetto, and the archives played a huge role in memorializing those who passed on from starvation, those who were transported to Treblinka II. The archives have kept memory alive, stories, testimonials; they are living words that have survived. These stories, these documents are proof that the Holocaust happened, that there was a resistance, that people knew they might more than likely die, but they wrote anyway. If they were caught writing the archives, they would undoubtedly be killed, and they knew that. Most of the archivists who contributed to the Oneg Shabbat Archives passed away during the war, many of them deported to Treblinka II. This form of resistance is so significant and powerful because they did not resist with violence, yet these archives were a huge slap in the face for any Nazi, any bystander, anyone who was complicit with Nazi crimes because these archives proved that people knew they might die, it proved that people were not just dying because they were weaker or lesser or incapable; they were not dumb, they were not cowards. It proved that Jews were persecuted and it proved that they fought back in every way they could think of. If anything was going to survive persecution and death, it would be the truth. The Truth Meant Survival and Resistance. The one thing the Third Reich wanted to disappear more than the Jews was any memory of the Jews. Any memory of them resisting, rebelling, fighting back; any memory of them, any record of them living, any suitcase, pocket watch, or hairbrush that belonged to them. Anti-semites tried to strip Jews of everything they were, everything they had, every bit of their identity. There are two sides to the story of Jews during the Holocaust, and only two: Hope and Resistance. If Jews were so sure they were going to die, why would they try to fit their lives in little suitcases? Because they had hope. If Jews didn’t think and know they might die, they wouldn’t leave behind three milk cans worth of archives to keep their memory and stories alive. Keeping the truth alive was resistance. Ringelblum is important because he stripped the Nazis of their superficial identities. He stripped away the false importance that the Nazis gave themselves and he revealed the atrocities committed. All of the archivists revealed the cowards hiding behind the curtain, a curtain called “propaganda”. “The archive materials and Ringelblum's own written chronicles constitute the most comprehensive and valuable source of information we have” (“Emanuel Ringelblum”, 2018). Had Ringelblum not initiated the secret archives, we would not know a whole lot of what we do know now because of these documents. We probably wouldn’t know much of anything that transpired in the Warsaw Ghetto without these documents. We would not know a whole lot of what occurred in occupied-Poland. We would not know a whole lot of the truth without the Oneg Shabbat Archives. We never hear these stories though, and we need to change the narrative.

LACK OF ETHICAL REPRESENTATION AND MEMORIALIZATION      

We never hear these stories because people and governments feel threatened by the truth, they feel accused, they might feel ridiculed, they might be in denial. In Germany and Poland, I witnessed the way “homosexuals” who were persecuted during the Holocaust still are not ethically represented at memorial sites, at museums, by the tour guide at Auschwitz who spoke the words “homosexual rape” back to back in the same sentence to try to describe how one prisoner at Auschwitz sodomized and simply raped another man, neither known for being gay. I witnessed the way “homosexuals” are represented by a small concrete box, hidden off in a park, with a sweet video that truly does no justice to the people who were considered the lowest of the low in concentration camps and were treated as such; treated like target practice and science experiments. I witnessed the way an information panel at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp incorrectly included all members of the LGBT community under the same word, homosexual, when there was a photo of a young transgender woman pictured clearly right in front of me, but unless you have been to these places, you would not know of these stories, and I need to change the narrative.

Neglect.  I witnessed the way women were neglected at memorial sites. I witnessed the way the unborn were neglected at memorial sites. I witnessed the way it was common to hear that there were brothels at concentration camps, and I’ve read so many stories of women who saved lives in the concentration camps, yet we do not memorialize women as we do others. We categorize them under other groups of people, we steal parts of their identity that we do not want to ethically represent because “other people suffered too” and it “wasn’t just a war on women”, yet we have women being raped, being used for sexual favors, being killed upon arrival at concentration camps because being pregnant is a crime if you are considered an “undesirable”. Even German women were targets and were often forced to procreate to snowball the production of Aryan children, the opposite situation compared to that of a Jewish woman. I witnessed the way children were neglected at memorials. In the war, they were treated like adults, even though they were far from transitioning into adulthood. They were raped, beaten, abused, experimented on, and then discarded. If they were too young to work, they died in gas chambers. Some children worked in the camps at an age as early as five years old if they looked older enough, lying their way through the selection process to survive. Treated like adults then, barely memorialized now.

Knowing these stories that we do not talk about, I felt a moral obligation to address these issues and how a lot of these issues are still relevant to today. In Germany, memorial sites were neglected— blown-out speakers, waterproof lighting issues— not to mention, Nazi-era laws are still in place in the country to this day. In Poland, I met and spoke to locals who support the new Polish laws that are completely anti-semitic and are a sad example of Holocaust denial. I will not even begin to readdress what I mentioned about the tour guide at Auschwitz who referred to rape as “homosexual rape”. Ultimately, I think what made me feel uncomfortable in some of the cities I visited in Germany and Poland was the fact that there is still a lingering presence of what happened, yet people try to suppress it. It is almost as though there is no aftermath, and we are stuck in the past like it is still happening. It appears to be believed at memorial sites that so long as there is some contribution made to the memorialization of persecuted minorities that all is well, yet the memory of persecuted homosexuals is kept boxed in, closeted. There is no visible effort to protect the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. People sit on the memorial, have picnics at the memorial site, on the concrete blocks that are a part of the memorial. There are signs promoting “Hitler’s [recreated] Bunker” in Berlin that surround the area where the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is located. In regards to the educational tours, at least there is some contribution being made to spread the knowledge and awareness of what happened, but to call Auschwitz I “Auschwitz Muzeum” is unethical, uncomfortable, and desensitizing. In Oranienburg, Germany, one of the original meeting places for SS officers/commanders was repurposed as a city tax office. Their new police academy building is also repurposed SS property, and sits right in front of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Sachsenhausen is uncomfortably referred to as a museum as well. I understand that these are now historical sites and that there are exhibits at some of these camps, but I will never understand why we cannot just refer to them for what they were. When I visit these locations, I know exactly what happened and I do not view these places like they are museums, no matter how many exhibits there are in front of me. Real human hair is not an exhibit. Shoes that belonged to people is not an exhibit. The suitcases, the kitchenware, the glasses, the pocket watches. None of this belongs behind the wall of a glass case.

People died.

‘Museum’ is not the term used to represent a location where hundreds of thousands of real people died. Where human beings died.

CONCLUSION        

The truth cannot die. These stories cannot be made to disappear. No law can change the past, alter the past, nor can it convince me to ignore the past. I have seen what denial looks like at memorial sites. I have seen what denial looks like at museums. Because of this, I cannot ignore the truth, but I can change the narrative. I can share what I have learned, I can raise awareness, I can share the stories. I know that homosexuals are not cowards. I know that lesbians, women, children, Jews, European Roma, the resistance, the archivists… are not cowards. History knows this. History has seen this. Children and newborns survived Auschwitz when they shouldn’t have. Jewish women remained fertile when they shouldn’t have. Members of the LGBT community survived when they shouldn’t have. Jews survived when they shouldn’t have. Jewish lineage was passed on when it was meant to be cut off. History knows that the “victims” were martyrs, and the survivors were the greatest resistance of all. It is vital to share the stories of people like Dr. Gisella Perl, Willem Arondéus, and Emanuel Ringelblum. Spreading awareness is vital. Making note of unethical representation and memorialization is vital, correcting it is vital.

Memory will live on, as will the stories and the journal entries. Traditions will live on, lineage will be passed on, and the rebels will never really die. We cannot forget the stories that matter, the legacies that matter, and the people who changed the course of the Holocaust. There was a resistance. There was hope. We cannot let the truth die. We must preserve the truth, identity, history. Because if we do not defend history, it will be rewritten over and over again and the truth will be at risk. The Holocaust has truly nothing to do with the perpetrators and everything to do with the difference makers. It has everything to do with the survivors and the martyrs. It has everything to do with resistance and hope.

But this is never how the story goes, and we need to change the narrative. 

[acti-veg]

“Why do people compare animal agriculture with the holocaust?”

I don’t see this comparison made nearly as much as I used to, but it remains a contentious topic. It comes from an understandable place, because there are obvious similarities between the treatment of farmed animals and victims of the holocaust, both in terms of methods used for murder and attitudes towards those who suffered, particularly with regards to Jewish victims of the holocaust. I will outline here some of the facts and myths which form the basis for some of those comparisons, but also explain why I don’t think that these sorts of comparisons are appropriate for animal rights advocates to use.

Firstly, it is often stated that the Nazis drew their inspiration from slaughterhouses when figuring out how to mass murder so many millions of people, but no one has ever been able to supply me with a credible source to back this up. It most likely comes from Henry Ford’s comment that slaughterhouse kill floors were what inspired him to make cars on an assembly line, and the fact Henry Ford in turn influenced the Third Reich and their creation of concentration camps, but this link is tenuous it best. It seems far more likely, as has been remarked by the Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer John Toland, that Hitler was in fact inspired by the US Indian Reservation system, and the Armenian genocide is often cited as another inspiration. As for the actual method,  the effectiveness of Zyklon B was discovered when it was first used upon Soviet prisoner’s of war, not on animals, and the creation of concentration camps in the form they eventually took was built around this. 

The other comparisons which are made generally involve how animals are transported, how they are treated during the slaughter process in factory farms and the use of gas as a method of slaughter, which is still common. More than this, I think it comes from trying to find any human atrocity which even comes close to the sheer scale of animal slaughter in terms of numbers and organisation, and the holocaust is unfortunately an obvious example to use of this. Every single death from the holocaust and the battles of world war 2 combined still doesn’t even come close to the numbers of animals killed per year, but the comparison is often used in the context of slaughtering a large number of individuals all at once, and how those who died in concentration camps were certainly treated no better than we treat farmed animals now, and similarly were viewed as objects, as less than human.

I explain these things so the context in which these comparisons are drawn but I vehemently oppose their use, because they are both offensive and unhelpful when trying to advocate for animals. While all oppression is linked, what we are talking about when we discuss  the holocaust is the shared experience of millions of people in a specific time and a specific place, with specific cultural ramifications still felt today, which unless you are Jewish yourself are impossible to understand. Unless you are a holocaust survivor or are in someway emotionally and culturally involved in that event it is simply not your comparison to make. Most Jews still eat meat, and while I think that’s wrong, I don’t think that makes it okay to tell them that they are taking part in the same thing that was done to their ancestors, because drawing on that pain and using it as a way to provoke guilt is manipulative in the extreme. This is all these comparisons ever really do, they don’t sway them to our cause; more often than not they just end up hurting people, and often they are used to do exactly that.

It is inappropriate to compare animal agriculture and the holocaust not because what animals experience is any less horrific but because animals are the victims of an entirely different system of oppression, with very different causes and consequences. The holocaust is unique in all of history. It is not comparable to the Rwandan genocide, it is not comparable to ethnic cleansing Darfur, it is not comparable to the mass slavery of black men and women in Europe and the Americas. Even if this comparison were philosophically appropriate it still wouldn’t be appropriate for advocacy regardless; all it does is isolate and further distance people from the animal rights movement; it makes us sound like extremists. We can advocate for our own movement and talk about animal suffering without being insensitive to the suffering of others, or hijacking someone else’s cause and using it for our own ends.

 Most of the time when these comparisons are used they are used simply to make a point about animal rights, they aren’t exploring the interlinked nature of oppression, they aren’t empathising with the suffering of humans, they are essentially just using victims to further our own agenda, and that is wrong regardless of what our intentions are. If a holocaust survivor or someone deeply involved in that event wants to compare animal suffering to what they or those they loved suffered through, like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Ellie Wiesel did, then that is their decision to make, but it is not ours, however similar the means of murder used for holocaust victims and farmed animals alike may be.

The mass slaughter of animals is uniquely and profoundly immoral in a way that has no comparison in all of human history. We don’t need to rely on comparisons which offend and isolate because what is happening to animals is horrific enough by itself. These comparisons may be understandable, and I’m sure they grab people’s attention, but it is exactly the wrong sort of attention for our movement. These comparisons are offensive, inappropriate, and the fact of the matter is that they just don’t work. If we want to be taken seriously as a movement then our advocacy has to be better than that. 

(More resources available at Acti-veg.com)