#tw Holocaust

[salvadorbonaparte]

German television did something very impressive recently that I need to share with my international audience.

There is a popular children's show called "Die Sendung mit der Maus" (the show with the mouse). The show combines live-action educational segments and animated entertainment segments. Typically this would include, for example, a visit to a factory explaining how something is made, followed by a cute animated sequence like Shaun the Sheep. The show is written in a way that is easy to understand for children of different ages without being dumbed down or condescending. Actually, I occasionally watch it as an adult because I'm still learning new things from it.

A few days ago, it was Memorial Day for the Victims of National Socialism. To honor that, there was a special episode. The episode explained Stolpersteine (stumbling stones - small brass plates on the ground with the names of victims of the Nazis). Then, they covered the life of Felix Nussbaum, a German Jewish artist who was murdered in Auschwitz.

The episode explains the Nazi rise to power, their ideology, World War Two and the Holocaust and what that meant for Jewish people in Europe. It doesn't shy away from using words like "murdered" instead of talking around it. It explains things slowly, in easy language and emphasizes how people felt and how they dealt with horrible situations like hiding, fleeing and being arrested. They talk about it openly and honestly without it being too intellectually and emotionally difficult for children to follow.

In the 1930s Felix Nussbaum worked on an animated cartoon that was never finished and the script was lost for decades. To honor Felix Nussbaum's legacy, the animation team of Die Sendung mit der Maus animated his script and used that as the entertainment segment of the episode.

This episode is an impressive example of how children can be introduced to difficult topics and also deeply respectful of Felix Nussbaum's work and legacy.

[magefelixir]

“make auschwitz jewish again”

there are ACTUAL OUT AND PROUD NAZIS on this website. and literally nobody but the jews are talking about it.

let me repeat— there are people who think every jewish person or the majority of them deserve to DIE.

there are fucking nazis on this website

[tra-archive]

They’re such narcissists and perpetual victims omg

“Fascists always target trans people first” made me actually angry btw

[jewreallythinkthat]

I yearn for how big my family could have been if the Holocaust hadn't happend. The family trips to Ukraine, to Poland, to wherever my cousins would have spread to if they hadn't been slaughtered in the most horrific manner.

I weep for people I have never met, for the entire villages erased at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and the rest. The stories, the traditions, the recipes, the vibrant lives simple extinguished because of unfettered, unrestrained, and unchallenged hatred.

I am thankful that those who survived told the stories of those who did not, to ensure they are not blotted out of this history books; to make sure their existence endures, even if their lives do not.

And to those whose names are redacted from the annuls of history, whose very beings were reduced to ash as their existance was erased from the face of the planet, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were killed in the most terrible of ways. I'm sorry you were reduced to nothing more than a statistic. Despite being sent directly to death and avoiding the dehumanising tattooing, you were still forced to become nothing more than a number. A number slung around today by people trying to spread the same hatred that led to your death. Even if there is no marker with your name, and no being left who remembers you, you mattered. You existed and you mattered and I may not know who you were or what you looked like, despite the fact that all I know of you is how you died and not how you lives, please know I carry you with me wherever I go. I just hope that it's enough

[dailyworldcinema]

The reality of these camps — despised by those who built them, unfathomable to those who endured them — we try in vain to capture what remains.

NIGHT AND FOG (1956) Nuit et brouillard dir. Alain Resnais

[jewish-vents]

Six million of us died. My ancestors were either slaughtered, separated from their cultures and families, or traumatized for life. Yet people still speculate what the 'bad ending' of WWII would be. How is this ending not bad enough?

↑ this. so many people have speculated "what if Hitler won" and like... he's not some cartoon villain of world domination, he was an actual leader who lead a very serious and devastating genocide.

6 million Jews dead, entire families and histories wiped, thousands of books burned to ash. is this not bad enough for you? or is it only the "bad ending" when it starts affecting you as well?

- 🐬

[hungriestofbears]

[rotzaprachim]

“Antizionism is not antisemitism” may be absolutely true but the fact that many peoples’ working definition of “antisemitism” is roughly “something bad which might have happened to Jews but that certainly ended after the holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel and which neither I nor anyone in my family or cultural group could ever do” and Zionism is roughly “an ideology interchangeable with every other ideology I think is bad that is also something all the piggish money hungry world controllers I don’t like got in on” does not inspire terrible amounts of confidence

[animentality]

[spockeye-fierce]

TW Holocaust

So if you think Trump is Jew friendly consider that he just pardoned this guy.

[council-of-beetroot]

As we see an increase in antisemitism I have reflected on my experiences how many years ago being the token Jew in my eighth grade English class and I have found some aspects about it which lead me to believe are the parts that Holocaust Education in the U.S. goes wrong

Being taught in English Classes

Often such as in my state, the Holocaust is taught as part of English curriculum. English teachers aren't history teachers and they may be lacking in the skills or knowledge required to teach in the necessary depth to discuss the Holocaust.

My mother used to teach English but she had a history degree as well. She would lecture in class about everything leading up to and during WWII. I remember reading handouts she had in her classroom while I was waiting after school about the history of antisemitism. I didn't have any of this in my English class unit, because to put it simply most English teachers aren't my mother who also has the prior knowledge of how to teach history.

Additionally, as it is part of English, there is often more focus on Holocaust literature rather than the topic itself

This is where I think it gets extremely flawed if a person's primary knowledge of a historical period is Anne Frank or the incredibly inaccurate boy in the striped pajamas. A single account or work of complete fiction shouldn't be your main lens to view any topic whether it's the Holocaust, Slavery, Civil Rights movement etc.

You're in short blurring fact and fiction when discussing these things in the context of literature.

Sense of Finality

I feel like in my classes at least there was this idea that was kind of implied that hatred of Jews began and ended with Hitler and the Holocaust. I think this leads to misconceptions about antisemitism.

I feel this is a problem as I remember mistakenly getting that takeaway in school regarding civil rights in America. It was taught that Slavery was a problem, emancipation proclamation, MLK said I have a dream, and the civil rights act was passed and bam no inequality or racism. Later on, I fortunately learned this was flawed for many reasons. But not everyone does.

Not teaching about how the Holocaust happened

If you aren't given the knowledge of how centuries of hatred lead up to the Holocaust, I feel the main takeaway becomes that it was almost a random occurrence.

Many learn the Holocaust is bad without learning the signs of thinking that can lead neighbors to kill neighbors.

So many people don't have the basic facts such as Hitler being elected rather than assuming power.

I think when you learn of an atrocity of such scale without learning the human beliefs that brought about it, you have learned nothing.

I had a girl in my college uni class who was shocked when I said that antisemitism didn't begin and end with Hitler. I can see where she would get this idea if I at ten figured that racism ended with MLK.

Using Simulation

Slavery and the Holocaust should probably not be taught using roleplay. It usually goes poorly and you can find dozens of examples of how this goes wrong.

Sanitizing History

Exactly what it sounds like. But it's a major problem in general with history education in the US. I think we downplay westward expansion, and slavery in the us. When we downplay those it's easy to see how some begin to downplay the Holocaust.

We had a kid faint on the trip to the Holocaust memorial at some of the images. I think it was because they were inadequately prepared to see the horrors in image, my teacher didn't show any pictures in class.

Final notes

I don't blame teachers. Teacher's jobs fucking suck from what I've seen and many don't have the skills or resources or experience. I guess for now I think it's good to recognize those holes in our education and fill them ourselves through self education and life long learning

With the current political atmosphere of education of the unpleasant or difficult to discuss parts of history, i can only see things getting worse if we don't change anything. But like I said in the absence of a solid education which discusses these topics, it's important to educate ourselves and confront our lack of knowledge.

[thedissonantverses]

Big rant incoming because apparently Veilguard is now antisemitic because of the Executors. I’m angry angry just be aware.

Maybe we could stop applying terminally online leftist politics to the game with dragons for one fucking second because this is beyond the pale and could actually cause real world harm to Jewish people.

I am not kidding I read an entire “critique” that somehow went down the rabbit hole from “I didn’t like the secret ending”(which is fine) to “VG is liberal politics and cozy game and baaaaaad”(again ugh but fine) to “oh this is actually antisemitism now because of this thing I barely understand.” You managed to take an intentionally vague sequel setup and turn it into…that. You didn’t even go back far enough in history to properly talk about the problem and what you’re even saying. And what really pisses me off is there are places to talk about antisemitism in fantasy but oh no we’re not gonna do that here now are we?

Like this is actually the careless and thoughtless bullshit you accuse BioWare of doing. It is so unbelievably appalling to me how half-assed the discussion was. This is something that has been harming Jewish people for actual centuries and you just vaguely alluded to it cause you’re so pissy about this game for some reason. I wish I was surprised like at all but here we are again. You cannot do this without more than a Wikipedia article and a vague reference to the Holocaust Museum and I can’t believe I have to point that out to people. You should not be attaching it to your fucking DA write-up without serious consideration.

Get a fucking grip.

[ashinafantasy]

before we talk about punching nazis how about we discuss why the hell you have a red triangle in your username

[historic-meme]

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. This whole week l have been thinking alot about the Holocaust. So last night I re-read maus. One panel really stuck out to me during this reading. For context this is in Maus 2 when Art is talking to his therapist, a Holocaust survivor, about how he feels he could never measure up to his father who survived Auschwitz. At this point in the story his father had already past. May his memory be a blessing.

The dialogue, “but you weren’t in Auschwitz. You were in Rego Park,” hit me like a punch to the chest. I have no better way to explain the paradoxical guilt I felt and continue to feel as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. I did not live during the Holocaust. It had ended before my grandmother reached eighteen years old. And yet, the Shoah seems to loom over me. Forever a reminder, that I am alive by sheer luck. My great grandfather’s parents as well as two of his brothers were murdered in Auschwitz. My great grandmother’s twin sister was also murdered in the Holocaust. Despite hours of research, I still have no idea where exactly she died.

Using the term guilty for what I feel doesn’t seem exactly right but there is no better word in the English language. Maybe if I was smarter or more articulate I could find better words.

A key theme of this chapter is intergenerational trauma. This is the same chapter that has this iconic image.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I simply want to acknowledge the real and extremely painful intergenerational trauma and inherited survivors guilt felt by descendants of Jewish survivors. I know I struggled in the past with feeling like I even have any right to feel this way considering I am three generations removed from any of my family that were murdered in the Holocaust. If any other Jews struggle with thoughts like this, I want to assure you that your feelings are valid and real. Intergenerational trauma is complicated and the feelings that come with it don’t simply disappear once a certain number of generations from the event pass.

This post is specifically about the Holocaust and jewish intergenerational trauma stemming from our persecution and genocide. If this post resonates with you as a non-Jew who has intergenerational trauma I am glad, but please do not derail this post.

[fromgoy2joy]

Me, naively at 10: oh hey I just read a bunch of books about people surviving the holocaust. This antisemitism thing is pretty bad. But where could it be coming from? All the Nazis are gone and we hate them. Everything is fine now right?

Me, at 19: oh fuck- it is everywhere. It has weaseled its way into the core of every social movement, if it didn’t start out like that in the first place. It is in every political talking point about how there’s a “secret entity” ruling America. It’s in calls for death or violence against “Zionists” and their “organizations” without the definition of what that means. It’s in the acceptance of antisemitic people and movements as long as they have other desired components. It is everywhere and there is no inclination to stop it.

[notaplaceofhonour]

I understand and agree with pointing out that the Holocaust didn’t just affect the Jews that lived in Europe, and shedding light on the stories of Jews in other territories under Axis control. Every life lost or uprooted in the Holocaust matters and deserves to be remembered, not just Ashkenazim.

However, I’ve been seeing a bit of an overcorrection to the point that this valid & important point get twisted by some into the idea that Ashkenazim weren’t actually all that affected by the Holocaust at all and may have actually been safer than other Jews due to being White/European*, and I wanted to walk through exactly why that is so far from the reality and gets into really dangerous Holocaust Distortion.

The fact is that the vast majority of Holocaust victims were Ashkenazim. How do we know this? Well, first and most obvious without even getting into the numbers: the Nazis were most active in Eastern Europe, where most Jews were overwhelmingly Ashkenazi. Germany had colonies elsewhere and the affect the Holocaust had on Jews living in Africa and Asia is not any less important (and the fact remains that their stories are a genuine gap in Holocaust education that needs to be filled), but this doesn’t change the fact that the center of Nazi activity was Europe, and thus that is where their impact on Jews was most intense. But it’s important to not just go off of what seems “obvious” because what’s obvious to any given person is subjective and subject to bias. So let’s look at the numbers:

Estimates prior to the Holocaust put Ashkenazim at 92% of the world’s Jewish population (or roughly 14 million of the 15.3 million total Jewish population), meaning that it would be physically impossible for less than 4.7 million (or 78%) of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust to be Ashkenazim.

Even that number is only possible to reach by assuming that only Ashkenazism survived and literally every non-Ashkenazi Jew died in the Holocaust, which we categorically know is not the case due to the continued existence of Sephardim & Mizrahim, as well as other Jews. So the number has to be higher than 78%.

Additionally, the fact that the proportion of the world’s Jewish population that was Ashkenazi fell so drastically during to the Holocaust and still hasn’t recovered (from 92% in 1930, only recovering to close to 75% in the last couple decades) means that not only a higher overall number of deaths were Ashkenazim, but that a higher proportion of the total Ashkenazi population died than from other groups.

We also know that 85% of Jews killed in the Holocaust were Yiddish-speakers. The fact that Yiddish is endemic to Ashkenazi culture (and not all Ashkenazim would have even been Yiddish-speakers) due to assimilation means that at least—and most likely more than—85% of Jews killed in the Holocaust were Ashkenazi.

So, no, Ashkenazim were not some privileged subcategory of Jews who avoided the worst of the Holocaust. They were the group most directly devastated by it.

That doesn’t change the fact that the devastation the Nazis and their allies wreaked on other Jews is every bit as important to acknowledge and discuss, and must not fall by the wayside. The stories and experiences of all victims & survivors deserve to be heard, remembered, and honored, not just the most common or most statistically representative of the majority of victims. However, we can (and must) do that without allowing the facts of the Holocaust to be distorted or suggesting Ashkenazim were somehow less affected by the Holocaust or more privileged under the Nazis. The Nazis hated all Jews. Antisemitism affects all Jews. Period.

*without getting too deep into how categories like Ashkanzi/Sephardi/etc. don’t map neatly onto race like so many people seem to want them to. that’s a different post, but just pointing that out