#tw: Shoah

[perfectlyvalid49]

So, my family came to the United States from Russia, and did so in the late 1800s and early 1900s. My mom’s dad’s family was the last to arrive and they came in 1922. This leaves us in the lucky position of not having any close family left in Europe to be killed in the Holocaust.

My husband’s family is not so lucky. None of them talk about it much, except for occasional comments from his parents like, “Dad spoke German, because, y’know, he was born there, but he didn’t like to.” I don’t ask because I feel like those sorts of conversations should be started by someone who wants to share.

But I do have a little bit of info, because years ago my father-in-law was contacted by a German researcher who was working on a book about Jewish families from the region that his dad was born in. There are no Jews there now, but there used to be, and this historian wanted to document what was, and where their descendants wound up. The book is in German, which none of us read, but a year or two ago the author sent us a word document with a rough English translation. I read through it, and there’s a line that I think about a lot:

“Their children Kurt, born on 5 September 1921 in Lösnich, and Else (Elise, called Ilse) born on January 30, 1923, also in Lösnich, are the only Jews born in Lösnich who survived the horrors of the concentration camps (Riga Ghetto and Stutthof concentration camp).”

The whole town was sent to Riga, and only my husband’s grandfather and great aunt survived.

I know that when we talk about the Holocaust a lot of big numbers get thrown around – 6 million killed, 2/3s of the Jews in Europe, 60,000 from this one city alone – and I think those are important to remember. The Holocaust was huge, and it’s important to remember the magnitude of what was lost. But I think that in talking about how big it is, we sometimes miss the personal tragedies as well. At a certain point, a number is just a number, and it loses its emotional sting. When it does, I want people to think about Kurt and Ilse, or other Jews just like them.

*the actual book contains middle and last names, but that’s my last name now, so I’m not sharing it with randos on the internet.

[laineystein]

Spending my day watching We Were The Lucky Ones and wow. Difficult but powerful and well done. 10/10. Do recommend.

[schn-tgai-saavik]

Pls pls "open that pandora's box" about what historical event TPP alludes to-- (no pressure ofc !!) I have about 2 ideas of what you could be reffering to?? But I am...so stupid (tm) so am probably wrong lol.

Well since it's so kindly asked I will do it! Bare in mind, that is just my analysis, feel free to disagree. (I know people on the internet dont always read things fully but hey I'm taking the risk)

Disclaimer! Now, the historical event I had in mind as being alluded to/symbolized in The Pandora Principle is a pretty sensitive subject, so I will elaborate under the cut.

As I said in the original post, I took a 45 hours class on the subject while getting my Associates Degree in history. I am by no means an expert, but we did delve deep into the subject and I wanna preface with the fact that I wish to remain respectful of this history and be extremly careful with it. (Also, we were encourage to teach and educate others about it to prevent history from repeating and knowledge from being lost, so might as well)

TW: Historical Event- The Holocaust/Shoah, concentration camps, genocide, death.

Indeed, this is why I said it was a "Pandora's box" I was scared to open and share.

To begin, let preface this with a bit of meta about Vulcans as a species and culture within the Star Trek Universe. As Leonard Nimoy was Jewish, his own culture was transmitted to the character of Spock, and subsequently to Vulcans as a whole. We can see it in the Vulcan Salute hand symbol being taken from a Orthodox Judaism, for example. Many other jewish creators on this app have good analysis of Spock's Jewish roots.

Keeping that in mind, now lets see The Pandora Principle, by Carolyn Clowes, and most specifically, Thieurull/Hellguard.

This planet, and the installation on it, is run by the Romulan Star Empire. It is a desertic world, extremly hot and dry, even by Vulcan standarts (as noticed by Spock upon arriving).

On it are ressearch facilities for a new Romulan weapon, a gaseous molecule/virus that bond with oxygen and renders air unbreathable, as well as prison cells and testing cells.

And in these cells are Vulcan scientists, taken from their ship near the neutral zone, brought on this planet to be the test subjects of the weapon. Many were also raped, as Romulans took advantage of Pon Farr, resulting in these cells Half-Vulcan, Half-Romulan children. Experiments also likely took place, and despite the complex/facility having food replicators, the Vulcans and the childrens were kept starving.

Seeing the two side by side, it's easy to draw certain conclusions.

The conditions of imprisonments, as well as the fact that innocent people from a target groups were brought in is reminiscent of how transport to concentration camps and their conditions were. The starvation, namely.

The weapon, kept in the titular Pandora's box of the novel, as well as the way it is tested (in tiny cells were the box is thrown in and broken) is reminiscent of Zyklon B and gaz chambers.

The experiments on prisoners are reminiscent of the ones undertaken by Mengele at Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

The rape by the guards or higher officers was also an occurence in concentration camps.

Even if Vulcans here aren't meant to represent Jews, many other group were persecuted in concentration camps: political prisoners, opposition to the Nazi regime, Romani people, Homosexuals, Communist, and members of other minority religious groups, which the Vulcan scientist captured, tortured, raped, experimented on and murdered can be likened to.

In the novel, the capture of Vulcans doesn't lead to a genocide, nor is it meant to be systematic method to conduct it as such, but rather their capture is a mean for the Romulan scientists to build their genocide weapon, and plan to use it on the Federation, namely, Earth and Vulcan. They even succeed in detonating it in Starfleet headquarters and Life City.

When I drew these links I wept, as I had when reading retelling of first hand witnesses and survivors of these horrors. If you wish to educate yourself further I reccomend If This Is a Man by Primo Levi.

It sheds a whole new light on the novel, on the character of Saavik, Spock, and their relation as mentor and protégé as well. I feel like if this was the intended angle by Clowes, it is very profound. The inherent trauma of Saavik related to that place is not undermined, and explored through the book.

That was my pandora's box of an analysis. Sorry if it took a more depressing turn that you might have expected. At the same time, it is by knowing the signs and methods that we can notice them, and with time going on and on, the first hand memories are fading.

[burnbrighterthanever]

magneto + six million germans (nakam)

[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.

[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.

[sayruq]

[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

[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.

[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

[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."'

[laineystein]

If this is weird you don’t have to answer it but I was wondering what sparked your interest in WW2? Not to say that Jews can’t like WW2 I just feel like it’s not common and it’s always fascinated me a bit especially because I think you said once that you have shoah survivors in your family? again if this is weird you can ignore it and I apologize lol

Not weird!

Have I answered this before? I feel like I have. But I’m happy to share again!

I am the grandchild of two Shoah survivors. I grew up very angry at the goy world and I didn’t understand how the entire world had turned a blind eye to the atrocities of the Holocaust and everything that led up to it. It was mind boggling to me that other people (goyim) were living lives completely separate from this genocide. And I didn’t have stories about non-Jews during this time. Until I was 21 I really didn’t have much interaction with the goy world at all. So I started reading about the war and what was going on in their world at that time. I was still angry, maybe even more so, but it gave my anger even more context. And I felt kind of valid in my anger…which I can’t really explain and I feel like I’m not articulating it properly here. Being the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors entitles me to anger and a million other emotions; knowing what happened surrounding that horrible time gave my emotions confidence. Nobody could ever say I didn’t understand what was going on. People *did* turn a blind eye to the growing antisemitism in Europe. People did know about the camps and said nothing. The world was fighting a different war than my family and my tribe and my family and my tribe would forever be fighting a different war, even when this particular war ended.

More simply - in general, I love history. It fascinates me. I love knowledge and learning. I think the knowledge that makes you uncomfortable is the knowledge you really need to learn because that’s the world and some aspects of it are never going to change. And a lot of it still makes me angry but when I compartmentalize it, some of it is courageous and inspiring and I think a lot of people were backed into a corner and thought they were doing the right thing. (I’m referring to 18 year old Allied soldiers who thought they were fighting for their country but just ended up watching their friends die and living in horrible conditions for months. I’m not talking about Nazis. Fuck Nazis.)

Regarding BoB - that premiered right around 9/11. And for 24+ hours I thought my parents were dead so when they finally got home, my dad sat down to watch it (he loves Spielberg) and with everything going on, he felt bad telling me I couldn’t watch it too. It was probably not appropriate for an 11 year old (read: it was NOT appropriate for an 11 year old). But he let me watch the entire thing with him. And he, the son of Holocaust survivors who knows far more about what my grandparents went through than I do or ever will, thought the Shoah episode was…fair. He got me the box set (it was before I left for undergrad - it was 5 VHS tapes and I actually put it in my carry on). I ended up watching it anytime my life was stressful. Midterms and finals. Sleepless nights in the army - I made my entire team watch it and they actually liked it. I watched it a lot in med school because I was really fucking miserable and had no friends so I just spent a lot of time in my apartment by myself. It was just a weird comfort watch when my life was chaos - but I almost always skip episode 8 because again: compartmentalizing.

The more I talk about this the more I realize how weird this is (my hyperfixation, not your question) but whatever.

Tachles there ya go 🙃

[hungriestofbears]

[burnbrighterthanever]

a.x.e. judgement day, kieron gillen // full spectrum resistance part one, aric mcbay // the butcher's sher, daniel kahn and the painted bird // unknown // nice people made the best nazis, naomi shulman // the book thief, marcus zusak // the butcher's sher, daniel kahn and the painted bird // incredible tails aka. rosencrantz and guilderstern in space, bluemeany // powers of x, jonathan hickman // carpe jugulum, terry pratchett

[voidingintotheshout]

Regarding the Shoah and the name Waldsee.

I’m reading about the shoah at the moment and how dark and horrible it was and I felt like I would reblog this article because this name doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page and I don’t know if a lot of people know about this aspect of the shoah so I thought I would point it out. Whenever Jews would ask where these transports were taking them, they were always told they were going to Am Waldsee. They were forced to write postcards to family saying that they were in this place on the Swiss border, and that they were happy. There was even a fake Nazi stamps from this place to cover their tracks. There’s a lengthy quote by Miklós Nyiszli about this in the book I’m reading. It’s very grim. It’s tough reading, but I felt like in this era of antisemitism. I owed it to the Jewish people to know they’re suffering, even if it’s just reading about it in the book.