Tag: holocaust

kosherqueer:

i’ve said this before but i want to repeat that i believe there’s a strong case to be made that holocaust denial is far more widespread, multifaceted, and insidiously institutionalized than it is often depicted. 

the way we are taught about the holocaust, the way the narrative is constructed by states to alter the story and diminish and negate the experiences of the actual victims, the way the suffering is externalized from those who faced it, the way we are taught to focus in on the tragically flawed character of hitler and restrict the theatre of genocide to germany and german state actions, the way all of this is depicted in a way that pays no respect or recognition to all the players in this horrific atrocity of atrocities, is nothing short of holocaust denial. and it’s a denial that is played out in mainstream culture daily and diversely. 

make no mistake, the holocaust was much bigger and much scarier than anything you have been taught, and its effects will likely continue to be felt for generations to come. this was a cataclysmic process with many components, and the way it is taught makes it easy for those who are not effected by it to forget and to silence those who are.

anti-faschismus:

“Jews did not join the partisans as a normal act of choice. We were forced to fight the Nazis to save ourselves from extermination. We took the gun in our hands in a desperate situation, when our parents, brothers and sisters were murdered, when children were grabbed from their mothers and sent to their gruesome death. We fought in order to survive; we fought against fascism, which was our enemy, the enemy of all democratic forces and the enemy of Lithuania.

The activity of the Jewish partisans was self-defense — in the face of the most overwhelming instance of genocide in human history. In contrast to Lithuanian collaborators, who volunteered to put to death their unarmed civilian Jewish neighbors, and Soviet collaborators, who also volunteered to kill and oppress the Lithuanians, the Jewish partisans’ aim was not to kill anyone, not to ‘inherit’ the property of a murdered people, but to fight our common enemy.”

–Sara Ginaite, a native of Kaunas, was incarcerated in the Kovno (Kaunas) Ghetto and lost almost her entire family in the Holocaust. She escaped into the forests and joined the anti-Nazi partisans. After the war, she was a professor of political economy at Vilnius University for almost twenty-five years before emigrating to Canada in 1983. She published ten books in Vilnius and another two in Toronto,where she taught social science at York University. She was instrumental in arranging for Yad Vashem to honor a Lithuanian family that saved a Jewish child during the Holocaust and has recently negotiated exchange student agreements between Vilnius and Toronto Universities. Her best-known work on the Holocaust is Resistance and Survival: The Jewish Community of Kaunas, 1941-1944 (2005).

It’s almost Yom HaShoah

animatedamerican:

hodlensblahg:

cardozzza:

hodlensblahg:

And I just want to remind everyone that it’s a day that antisemites will be coming out of the woodwork to harass us

Nazis will send us threats and abuse

Leftist goyim will remind everyone that we weren’t the ONLY ones killed

Goyim of color will call it a white peoples genocide

Black goyim will compare it to slavery

Everyone will agree that we bring it up too often, and everyone will find a reason to bring up Israel

These things happen all The time already, but you can bet it’s going to increase dramatically on Yom HaShoah. If you dont think you Can handle it, i highly recommend staying offline on the 15th

Take care!

I would really love for my non-Jewish followers to read through this and make sure they don’t contribute to it, please. This is already a very painful day for us, please don’t make it any harder.

Yes please! Non Jewish followers, I urge you to please read this carefully and reblog it

Just a quick scheduling correction here: Yom HaShoah starts the evening of the 15th and goes through to sunset on the 16th, to correspond with the Hebrew date of the 27th of Nisan.  Please be careful both days.

adhdtommyshepherd:

if u are white and u hold up the holocaust as “proof” that white people can be discriminated against

  • the holocaust uniquely targeted Jewish and Rromani populations
  • we’re not one of you
  • if you had been in europe you would have survived but we would not have
  • stop using the genocide of our people for your racist white supremacist bullshit 
  • go fuck yourself

But even here, the story is not complete, since portraying the Farhud as a pogrom against helpless Jews ignores the fact that Jews in Iraq fought against the Nazis and their influence. They wrote articles – in Arabic – about the crimes of the Nazis in Germany and of the Fascists in Italy. They collaborated with anti-Nazi Arab liberals and socialists. They voiced their opposition against teachers who spread Nazi propaganda at school and demanded they be fired. Germany was not able to screen propaganda films in Baghdad because the movie theaters – which were owned by Jews – refused to screen them. Jews resisted during the days of the Farhud as well. They poured hot oil on the rioters, threw stones, and hopped from rooftop to rooftop to save their lives.

And there’s another story from the Farhud that deserves telling: the bravery of Muslims during the crisis. The wealthy Jewish neighborhoods were not targeted in the onslaught. Those who were hurt were the poor Jewish neighborhoods. Those who were saved lived in mixed neighborhoods – often because their Muslim neighbors risked their lives to save them. Recollections of Jews, letters by Zionist emissaries, and police reports praise those neighbors and friends. A 70-year-old woman who called on all her Jewish neighbors to stay with her; Muslims who pretended to live in Jewish homes to protect Jewish property; a neighborhood hoodlum who not only hid Jews but also forced the grocer to bring them food; Iraqis who bribed rioters and threatened them with weapons – all in order to rebuff the mob. The stories show the Farhud was not only characterized by looting, murder and incitement but also by the keeping of certain social norms by which Jewish friends and neighbors were seen a precious family members, as well as by heroic and touching stories of rescue.

Orit Bashkin’s foreward to “The Farhud” on +972

phosphorescent-naidheachd:

Remember those who were murdered in the Holocaust, but also remember those who died in its aftermath:

Remember those who survived the Holocaust only to go “home” to communities that still wanted them dead; communities often filled with former Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Many of these Holocaust survivors were murdered in pogroms and riots. According to Yad Vashem, “Antisemitic gangs murdered approximately 1,500 Jewish survivors in Poland alone, in the first months after the liberation.”

Remember those who survived torture and medical experimentation in the Camps, only to die some time post-liberation of the aftereffects.

Remember those who survived the Holocaust only to die of illnesses previously contracted in the Camps; or to die, in their weakened state, of starvation and exposure to the elements.

Remember that liberation was not the end of the story.