“The Nazis didn’t just kill the Jews; they made use of every inch of them. Women’s hair was shaved off and weaved into blankets for Nazi soldiers. Fat from Jews’ bodies was used to make soap. Gold teeth were pulled out to make gold bars for the Reichsbank. 384,000 pairs of men’s shoes were sent to Germany from Auschwitz. 646,000 men’s suits. 184,000 pairs of eyeglasses. The most frightening thing is not the gas chambers or the crematoria. It’s the rooms piled to the ceiling with children’s shoes. That gives you have an idea what the Holocaust was. Shoes. Once worn by real people.” – via jewishhistory.org
In the Holocaust Museum in DC, they have a room just for the shoes and hair of the victims. It’s really startling to see it so up close since it makes you realize the sheer scale of this. The pile of hair in the museum weighs several tons, and bear in mind that this several ton pile of hair is only but a small fraction of all of the horrible things found in the camps.
Somewhere in those shoes were the shoes of my great aunts and their children.
Same with eyeglasses.
It’s something I can never, ever forget.
The above are photos I took at Auschwitz. The shoes and suitcases were each encased in a hallway – kept behind glass on both sides. And again comprise only a fraction of what the Nazis took.
Now the significance of these collections can not be understated or undermined, the horrors of the Holocaust, the Shoah, are embodied in these piles of stolen clothing and cases.
We look at them and recoil, promising that we’ll never forget and yet the systematic slaughter of human beings continues around the world.
In different places, for different reasons. Who didn’t learn the lesson? Who still needs to be reached? Who needs to be protected?
Do not forget. Remember and react. Radical evil is not a memory of the past, it is a present and continuous force.
It’s International Holocaust – Shoah Remembrance day again, but this year the remembrance feels weighted with the fear of repetition. With more and more stories springing up of violence against Jews in Europe and the potential of candidacy for the US president by a proto-Hitleresque Trump who is targeting Muslims and immigrants in the place of Jews.
This history is still so fresh and clearly not relegated to the backs of history books. There is still bonedust intermingled with the dirt at Auschwitz. We cannot forget, we must not repeat.
Annual reblog of remembrance. But this year I also have a plea, forgive me if it is a little Christian-centric, but I feel it is U.S. Christians who most need a note of reminder or this day considering our current political situation.
Today we remember the price paid by the victims of racism, anti-semitism, ableism, homophobia, anti-intellectualism, nationalism, apathy, and hate. 6 million+ Jews, 250,000+ disabled people, 200,000+ Roma, millions of prisoners of war plus thousands more of Jehovah’s witnesses, Catholics, homosexuals, intellectuals, etc.
It has been said: “ Never Again” – what good is that if we do not back it up with actions?
Love more than we hate, open our arms to refugees fleeing in terror, longing for peace and welcoming. Open our minds to the truth of science which is the uncovering of the fingerprints of God on our universe. The truth takes nothing away from faith. Loving those who pray differently than you or not at all, or who love differently than you, or who experence the world differently than you takes nothing from you except your fear.
Leave your fear behind and seek the path of radical love which requires actions over words. Be hot, be forceful, do not wait for heaven on earth, make heaven on earth where there is neither male nor female, gentile or Jew, slave or free. The world is steeped in blood, and bone, and ash, the only recompense for our hate. Imagine how much greater the recompense of our love will be.
Today we remember the more than 11 million people, Jewish and Gentile, who were slaughtered in the death camps, who succumbed to disease and the elements in concentration camps, who were sterilized to prevent the “dilution” of the “Aryan race,” who were worked to death, or nearly, in the works camps, who were imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs, who were sterilized or killed for being considered disabled, who were gassed to death in the Einsatzgruppen mobile gas chambers, who were shot into graves they had been forced the dig, and those who managed to survive all of that and were forced to remember the horrors they had seen and experienced.
May they rest in peace, may their memory be a blessing, may peace be upon them, and may we all say Never Again.
Sorry about this being in Twitter format but it was too good not to share. (x)
Boy, I remember when all of this seemed* like a mostly abstract consideration and not something we’re going to have to take to the streets over and over again to combat.
*(rightly or wrongly [probably the latter], and I am fully aware this also speaks to how privileged my existence is)
Getting real sick of hearing from people who are fretting ABOUT PUNCHING MOTHERFUCKING NAZIS.
Remember, when in doubt: Punch. More. Nazis.
PUNCHING A NAZI IS ACTUALLY A SUPREME ACT OF DEMOCRACY BECAUSE IT WILL NOT TOLERATE A DIRECT AFFRONT OF A FELLOW CITIZEN’S CITIZENSHIP.
If so, you should be aware of some great Nazi-punching opportunities coming to communities near you. The Trump administration has announced plans to publish weekly lists of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities. This policy amounts to government weaponization of alt-right harassment techniques – a weekly list whose sole function is to give white supremacist mobs targets.
What this is going to mean, in practice, is that there are going to be families in your community who are going to become the targets of mob violence. They are literally going to need people to set up lawn chairs on their sidewalks at 3am and scare off Nazi lynch mobs.
So if you’re really into punching Nazis, figure out what local groups are organizing to protect people on these lists and get involved. Because there are an awful lot of Nazis to punch beyond Richard Spencer.
correction: not just undocumented ones, but any non-citizen:
“To better inform the public regarding the public safety threats
associated with sanctuary jurisdictions, the Secretary shall utilize the
Declined Detainer Outcome Report or its equivalent and, on a weekly
basis, make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by
aliens and any jurisdiction that ignored or otherwise failed to honor
any detainers with respect to such aliens.”
this is the direct descendant of the “black crimes” lists on breitbart.
I know I keep re blogging this and I will continue to whenever I see it.
We are magnificent
“It was an impulse. I was so angry, I just went out into the street,” Asplund told the Guardian. “I was thinking: ‘hell no, they can’t march here!’ I had this adrenaline. No Nazi is going to march here, it’s not okay.”
The paper reported that Asplund stands just 5’2” and weighs about 110 pounds — yet she stood in the path of some 300 marching neo-Nazis, one of whom shoved her out of the way.
The man-free sanctuary will offer up a range of typical beauty services such as hair, waxing, facials and manicures and pedicures, while providing unique services like henna and halal nails and eyebrow shaping.
“We want women to be able to come in and feel completely relaxed,” ~ Quhshi said.
Quhshi also noted that while Le’Jemalik was created with Muslims in mind, “women of all faiths, races, and ethnicities” are welcome.
This store is in Brooklyn, please support if you can; this is such a huge need for us muslim women.
Trump has been president for literally 4 days and he’s already settling us into our new authoritarian regime. A few updates in case anyone hadn’t been keeping up:
At least twice now he or a member of his staff have made completely false claims that have been proven wrong already and offered no evidence to support what they were saying, then refused to take questions about it
This is such irresponsible thing to tell young women. You fucking liberals are going to get us all killed like shame on @rookiemag for posting this crap.
LOL I thought I might as well check out the interview just to see if it’s really as bad as the illustration suggests and yep, it’s fucking terrible:
We all think that we’re right and everyone else is wrong. Which is an awful way to go about politics! There’s no right or wrong, there’s just what you believe and what other people believe.
Jiminy Crickets, is that what we’re teaching kids these days? That there’s no right or wrong, just free-floating opinions in some vague political void?
I think we need to be very clear: there exist literal facts, about which people can certainly have differing opinions, but to suggest that there’s nothing concrete in politics and that everything can just sort of be shrugged away by agreeing to disagree is both absurd and dangerous at the best of times and frankly reprehensible right now
I’m so tired of this magic marker feel-good fake feminism
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