#tw shoah

[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

[chanaleah]

"Seems like Jews didn't learn any lessons from the Holocaust!"

We did. We learned a very important lesson.

We learned that we are not safe without a state.

[koenji]

via via_maris (on ig):

In 1945 in Berlin, legendary LIFE Magazine photographer Robert Capa documented the first Rosh Hashanah service held in the city since 1938 at Fraenkelufer, a synagogue that the U.S. Army had helped restore after the Nazis torched it. The text reads:

'This year, for the first time since 1938 when the Nazis destroyed Jewish synagogues, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, was celebrated in a Berlin synagogue. Among the 500 worshipers who gathered for the services at sundown on Sept 7. were American and Russian soldiers who prayed together with the relatively few remaining Jews of Berlin. The synagogue, once burned by Nazis, had been repaired, re-painted and refitted with the aid of the U.S. Army.

The honor of holding the Torah or Sacred Scroll (above) during the ceremony was bestowed upon Pfc Werner Nathan, of Newark, N.J. The scroll had been hidden from the Nazis in an underground safe. Their freedom to worship restored once again, the German Jews prayed for a new world. "We are still in the dark," intoned the rabbi. "We are between two doors. We have opened and passed through only one. I ask God where we shall go from here."'

[kick-a-long]

ok, im making this a new post because im pretty tired of people saying "white jews" are "from europe after the holocaust." um no they are not.

I’m an American Ashkenazi Jew and the American Jewish population is much much older than immigrants from the holocaust. My father’s grandmothers family came from Eastern Europe in the 1850s and my father’s grandfather’s side came 1. some few generations before the civil war and 2. At least the 1840s for unknown reasons because we’ve been here so long my family forgot.

My grandmother personally started a business in her basement in the 20s and 30s to get European Jews work visas in the US so they could escape during and after the holocaust. Huge socialist.

Jews were arrested for union drives in 1909 America waaay before the holocaust. Jews were excepted from prohibition in America because of wine at Shabbat. That whole religious freedom thing in America? It’s always been attractive to Jews fleeing Russia and Europe and the Middle East since the us rolled the constitution out in 1776.

So, like, most Zionist Jews (because American has the second largest Jewish population in the world) are Americans who were here for hundreds of years.

Very few Jews escaped the holocaust. Very few Jews escaped Europe. very few living jews are European or "Escaped" the holocaust at all if you just look at the numbers. Jews only escaped Middle Eastern ethnic cleansing because of Israel. That was the entire reason for Israel. A place to escape the 70 year cycle of Jewish genocides.

6 million isn’t just a big number. It’s an indicator that there are very few “white European” Jews who escaped. When you say European Jews who escaped the holocaust, you are talking a very small number of people. It’s estimated at 240,000 “white European Jews” lived compared to 6 million who were killed.

i'll repeat that. 240,000 European people (340.000 escaped germany but 100,000 stayed in europe and were recaptured and sent to be killed leaving just the 240,000) lived. 6 MILLION DIED.

240,000 lived and 6 MILLION WERE KILLED. IN EUROPE. THE PLACE WHO IS CURRENTLY ELECTING SIMILAR GOVERNMENTS TO THE 1930S.

[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.

[fromgoy2joy]

To all my fellow people converting- this is a Call-in post

We are going to be a part of this community, as dictated by Jewish law, once we enter the water of the Mikveh, it will be as if we were Jewish all our lives.

That doesn’t erase the fact that we come from different backgrounds. Most of us didn’t have our grandmother escape genocidal countries. We didn’t grow up around the dinner table hearing holocaust stories about family and friends. The legacy of our families was not split between two choices of what opened up first for amnesty- Israel or the United States.

Our love for Judaism originates from studying theology, culture, and warm moments in the community- not clinging onto it in a generational storm where at any moment you can be expected to run.

Israel has been there for the Jewish people demonstrably, in a world where a Jewish child is taken aside at a young age and told “one day, they could come after you”.

In response, Israel has said “and we will be there to catch you.” This has rung true for the Jewish exile out of Middle Eastern countries, the fleeing from the USSR, and yes- Ethiopia.

Mistakes were made along the way. Tribalism between Jewish religious and geographical sects came up. Refugee camps in the newly established country were a mess- with high rates of death from sickness occurred in the Mizrahi resettlement. Where Ethiopian Jewish women’s translation failed as they were told they were being out on temporary birth control as to not overcrowd struggling camps.

But you don’t get to shake this in their faces. Not when the descendants of those Jewish people know Israel to be what saved them. What gave them life. And what has been threatened everyday by rockets in the sky and terrorist organizations on every side that promises for the painful death of them and their families.

You are under no obligation to support the actions of the Israeli government. But you have to understand why the country was founded, and especially why it was set up in 1948 after the largest slaughter of Jewish people had just ended, where it wasn’t clear if this could happen again the very next year.

You have to see the connection to the land, where Hebrew coins get dug up from thousands of years ago on a daily basis. Even if that’s not apart of your personal practices, you must learn of the background to many of our stories. What Jewish people longed for as they were ostracized and humiliated globally.

This doesn’t come at the price of not sympathizing with the Palestinians. Just as you can hold Jewish pain close to your chest, so can you the pain of Palestinians. The good news is, life isn’t a sports game with your team and their team. The bad news is, that makes it a whole heck of a lot harder.

That being said, we do have the extra responsibility of accurately representing the people we will hopefully call our own one day, BH.

Edit-born Jewish people, if this post speaks to you on any level, feel free to reblog. Your family histories deserve to be represented in our community.

[stereotypicaljewishmother]

Rest in peace, Mrs. Lily, may your memory be a blessing.

[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

[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.

[disgruntled-detectives]

All gentiles need to read this. Read and understand. I am SICK of the Holocaust being used as a rhetorical device, and not a very real tragedy that the Jewish population STILL hasn't fully recovered from. (I cannot speak about the Roma population, who were also primary targets for extermination) It's not your political talking point. It's not your point of comparison.

It's.

Not.

Yours.

[baroque-hashem]

I broke down crying in a bookstore today. I found a book on the Holocaust and there were pictures in it of the drawings made by Jewish children in the ghetto my family was in. And it just really hit me that the Holocaust isn't personal for everyone. For some people, it's just a story, just a morality play to learn a lesson through.

But for some of us, we actually had family who lived and died in the Holocaust. We still feel its affects today. And it haunts us. A child's hand drew every one of those pictures in the ghetto. Children from my family were in that ghetto. And they didn't make it. And for that I weep.

[ind1g3n0us-lev1t3]

Protest in New York

How surprising, typical "antizionists" displaying how "antizionist" they are by spewing "antizionist" and totally not antisemitic bullshit.

Edit: this image was not recent, it was from years ago. Which demonstrates that antisemitism in the "palestinian" cause has been in it far longer

[all-your-favs-are-jews]

I’m taking a Holocaust and Modern Genocides class and before we get into the the actual genocide my professor has been going into the history of Pre-Holocaust European antisemitism and Jewish life. This is because she said that she wants us to A)Understand the attitudes that built it up and B) So that the class would understand the casualties as real lives lost and not just numbers in a book.

It’s so strange hearing my goyishe classmates like actually audibly have break throughs about the diversity and actual life that existed within the European Jewry. Like it is so clear that none of them have ever thought of us AS anything more than numbers and sad faces to exist in movies. Like some people were legitimately shocked to find out that there are different branches of Judaism or that Ashkenazim and Sephardim have different cultures and traditions.

To make a long story short the guy who sits close me in that class said he didn’t know Jewish people had different political opinions or what Yiddish was but that’s a different story and I feel entitled to compensation because of it

[redditantisemitism]

User was just asking for shoe recommendations with a Jewish username

[visit-ba-sing-se]

Tonight at sundown Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is commemorated around the world.  

If you want to to honor the memory of one of the victims by lighting a candle, you can do that at the Illuminate website.

It will give you the name of one person for who you can viritually light a candle. If you want, you can also learn a bit about their life and share a small message.

Currently, there are over 800.000 candles lit. The goal is to reach 6 million to honor each and every vicitim.

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

Today, January 27, 2024, is Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the 6 million jewish people and other minorities who were victims of the Holocaust. This day always brings feelings of sorrow, loss, anger, fear, and resilience to the Jewish community, yet increased antisemitism from 2023-2024 will likely make those feelings even stronger.

If you can do nothing else, please reach out to a jewish friend or family member and show them that you care. A few kind words can go a long way.

If you are able to, consider donating to The Blue Card. They focus on providing aid to Holocaust survivors in Israel, including fulfilling medical needs, accessibility needs, providing food, helping with financial assistance, etc. They have been supported by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The second link also includes a list of resources for Holocaust survivors and their families and ways that people can help them. It is focused on resources in the USA, but there are some resources outside of the USA as well.

https://bluecardfund.org/

https://www.ushmm.org/remember/holocaust-survivors/resources

I am so, so proud of every Jewish person today just for living. We will not forget the atrocities that we went through and we will not let anyone else forget. Never again will this happen. Am yisrael chai ✡