#tw: Shoah

[voidingintotheshout]

I don't mean to be incendiary, but this video where she intentionally wanted to film in front of a bunch of prisoners with heads shaved and shirts removed crowded into a jail cell, it looks exactly like a concentration camp from Nazi Germany. I don't say that to trigger or antagonize people in the Jewish community. It's just gives me pause. Like, Tumblr has been talking about Trump and Elon Musk are Nazis and American fascism for a while. It's a different thing to know where the concentration camp they're going to be sent is. It's different to see someone, who wants bragged about having the toughness to kill one of her own puppies because the dog wasn't tough enough, proudly standing in front of what looks like a concentration camp.

I don't mean to trigger anyone, it just makes me extremely sad. I mean, geez louise it's literally not even the end of March! It's only been two months and we're already seeing what is probably the location of the concentration camp that American fascism is creating. Elsewhere in a story there already mentioning that since the Supermax prison was created, 300 people have died there. (Not to be misleading, that is not this group that's being sent from America, that's in total.) However I imagine it's an inevitability that there will be mass graves at this Supermax prison with people sent from America. It's just... It just makes me so incredibly sad.

I wanna know what's going on but between this and reporting any prominent Muslim who is in Pro Palestinian protests, being sent to Shady prisons in Louisiana. I just I didn't think we'd reach this part of fascism so quickly with most of four years left. It just makes me so sad. Stay safe y'all.

[voidingintotheshout]

Just so people know where I stand. I 100% know that the Holocaust happened and it was an evil thing done by horrible people to the Jews and there were a lot of non-Nazis in the allied governments that actively prevent the Jews from going to safety. What happened to the Jews during World War II was evil and monstrous. When I say, never again, I fucking mean it. No group should have to live through that. I can’t even conceive of the amount of collective PTSD you would have after your entire people had to go through something like that. For me, if someone denies the Holocaust, even as a joke, I’m not interested in talking to them any further. I just walk away. 

So, about 5 days back YouGov released poll results for a very comprehensive public opinion poll they did for the US, which you can see here: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_tT4jyzG.pdf The poll itself asks about a lot of different topics, but the section I wanna focus on here is the section between pages 96 to 112, which focuses on Antisemitism and Israel. Most polls with questions like these tended to only survey around 100~200 people, and had really depressing results, so I was really hoping going into this study that we'd see some more cheerful statistics. Maybe those small sample sizes caused some bias, I dunno. Maybe the numbers were off.

I kept being disappointed by how many people denied the holocaust in those studies. I didn't want to believe those numbers were real, quite frankly.

Well.

Of a poll of 1500 people, give or take, 7% say the holocaust is a myth, with another 16% saying they "don't know" whether it is or isn't, with people in the 18-29 age group having even more alarming numbers than that: 20% think the holocaust is a myth, and 30% that they don't know. Conversely, in the 65+ age group, not a single responder denies the holocaust.

If you take this poll as being representative, then out of 331.9 million people living in the US, that gives us about 23.2 million people (rounded down) in the US alone who think the holocaust did not happen.

For reference, there are only 16.2 million jews in the entire world, with 7.1~ million of them in Israel.

Turns out the numbers I saw previously were representative.

Fuck, dude.

[mayaoftheflowers]

What i think a huge issue with most goyim when it comes to the Shoah is that they don't grasp that an entire world was destroyed in the Shoah, and not even just in the "every person is as valuable as the world' sense.

Yiddish language, for instance- there were Yiddish theaters, coffeehouses, political parties.. all destroyed. The Shoah was an apocalypse.

[dj-of-the-coven]

Reasons why you should take a stand against Jewish hatred as an American:

1. Jewish Americans contributed massively to the advancement of medicine, technology, entertainment, and civil rights in your country without receiving support back from almost any group besides Black and Native Americans. It’s time to do your share.

2. American society, being overwhelmingly Christian, owes much of its culture to elements which it appropriated from Jews. If your name is David, Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, Johnathan, Michael, Benjamin, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Hannah, Alison, etc., you have inherited an aspect of Jewish culture that was stolen from us by the Romans. Every biblical reference with its origin in the Torah comes from us. If you like to talk about “biblically accurate angels”, you have an obligation to respect the Jews to whom this concept originally belonged. Don’t want to? Then forfeit our shit.

3. Whether you admit it or not, the holocaust is a (said with contempt) deeply beloved political cudgel used by all sides of the compass, and this “talking point” is owed completely and entirely to the real persecution and attempted annihilation of six million dead Jews. If you have ever used the holocaust as a rhetorical device in your political organizing, you have a duty to give a shit about the Jews who were murdered to make your point for you. Care about them and their living descendants or get the name of the damn holocaust out of your mouth.

4. If you consider yourself an anti-racist and an anti-Nazi individual, you owe it to Jews to include us in your activism. The very foundations of white supremacy and Nazism are composed of antisemitism. Refusing to do this work is just as counterintuitive to being an anti-racist as refusing to learn about black and brown persecution. You can’t knock down the house and leave the base.

5. It’s the right thing to do.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

If anyone is interested, please feel free to light a digital candle through Illuminate. I got a name a few years back, and it's a name I won't forget. May every name we have found be a blessing. May their names never be forgotten. May we never forget.

Never again means now.

[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.

[voidingintotheshout]

John Oliver on the Israel-Hamas War

I love this. Here are my favorite takes so far. Finding out that Kmart Australia needed to pull a bunch of decorative ham bags (I take pride in myself as a Muslim, that I did not know that a decorative handbag was a thing) because the messaging on the bag seemed like they were supporting a terrorist organization. With a ham bag.

The absolute dog shit take from American representative Mast, creating no daylight between Hamas and actual Palestinian citizens, and going so far as to say that the average Palestinian citizen is in no way different than a Nazi. I know this is a dog shit take because I’ve heard from a fair number of Jews on this, and I’ve never even heard Jews make this comment because of obvious reasons. Some Jews lived through the Shoah and they would not be so lighthearted about making a Nazi comparison.

I also learned that Gaza elected Hamas in 2006 when they were positioning themselves as the more moderate party, and they only ended up revealing how extremist they were after the fact. Also that they have not had any elections since 2006 and many, if not most, Palestinians do not support Hamas, but they have no way to get them out of power anymore.

Also, the obvious that most Israelis don’t like Benjamin Netanyahu.

I would disagree respectfully with John Oliver, when he seems to imply that all of the lack of food and water that Palestinians in Gaza have is due to Israel. He doesn’t say it out right but he does imply it. From what I’ve gathered, Hamas has chosen to use the resources of Gaza towards terrorism, and not towards taking care of their own people, and they are one of the most responsible in terms of the poverty in Gaza.

[mossadspypigeon]

[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.

[voidingintotheshout]

I made a mistake today by watching an hour of the news, and then, doing a one to two hour deep dive on Wikipedia, about the horrors of the Holocaust written by survivors. And surprisingly, it really tanked my mental health and so now I’m feeling really fragile. I hate it when I do this, oblivious to my mental health limitations and just hyperfocus on something that is ultimately affecting and traumatizing and then I can’t really do much for the rest of the day because I just feel so bad. Like, I didn’t need to know the name of that town. The one from the postcards the Nazis had the Jews say they were being sent to in the Theresienstadt family camp in Auschwitz. Forcing them to lie to their friends and relatives with postdated postcards, telling their relatives to send food, that none of the people writing those postcards would ever get to receive. It was so evil. I just wanted to know the name of the town they made the prisoners say they were going to. It was such a haunting story, but I didn’t need that information, and I should’ve known that doing a deep dive about that was probably not great considering that I have been feeling very emotionally fragile for a week beforehand.

It just pulled me over the edge, mental health-wise where my mental health got to the point that the normal things that I do aren’t gonna necessarily work to pull me out of this pit. I was tired and ready to go to bed but unfortunately I seem to have gotten a second wind through my sorrow and now I am not remotely tired. It’s just me in the middle of the night with my grief, feeling too fragile to even have music to accompany The extremely lengthy journal entry that I am going to have to write to encompass very ephemeral feelings.

And I hate this because it’s not even my shared trauma. I’m not Jewish. However, reading about that horrific levels of suffering is going to end up making anyone feel really depressed and sad and helpless. I feel stupid, because I felt fine when I started, and then I just blasted through the caution tape and into the point of no return and I didn’t even know it was happening. I just really hate it when my ADHD hyperfocus causes me to fixate on something that really tanks my mental health like this. 

It was just so traumatizing and disturbing reading about these viciously perpetrated Nazi atrocities and trying to figure out which American leader or politician or government flunky, would be doing this in America, or on some American Black site, and to whom? Which innocent looking government Trump funky might be doing this in the future in America? To whom? Are Trump acolytes studying these same horrific tales that are so evil and traumatizing as some kind of guide? Will I be targeted? With my friends? Will I be able to do anything to save them? I hate this. I wish I could say that this is just my stupid anxiety. I wish I could say that I’m just worried about nothing. I wish I could say that my Muslim friends, my immigrant friends, my trans friends, and my Jewish friends are all obviously going to be safe and it definitely won’t happen like that here but I just can’t say that anymore. I can’t be certain that it won’t happen like that here or on some black site somewhere. It makes me so sad that I don’t know what to do. It makes me so sad that I feel powerless to stop them or save them. 

I mean, I’ll probably be fine in the morning when these feelings pass, but… i’m just deep in it right now. I mean, it’s not like I can just read a book to take my mind off of it because I’m currently reading Mephisto by Klaus Mann. 

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been sort of deconstructing my feelings about antisemitism in certain spaces, and I've realized what truly bothers me about the non-jews who say that hitler would have 'loved' their features

It's the pride people have when they say it. It's the way that they know that, were they alive then, they would have been able to watch it all unfold before their eyes - hitler would have loved their blond hair, blue eyes, blood that is tainted with not one drop of judaism impurity.

I've heard people say this before and I've always been confused as to why people say things like that to this day. I think I've realized... They think it protects them, to have been safe in hitler's germany. They know, intellectually, that hitler isn't just some person, some random leader. They think of him in this cartoonish evil way - nobody could be as bad as him, so if I am safe with him, I am invincible. And something about that embitters me even more. We're still recovering to this day.

[stereotypicaljewishmother]

Just leaving this here for tomorrow.

[zionistgirlie]

Every land you go to is cursed. Burn in an oven you kike

The tolarent, loving left is at it again!

I'd love an example of a land the Jews went into and it got cursed. I know it the other way around— where Jews are kicked out of, the country goes to sh!t.

[jewish-joy]

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.