#nazi camps

[kungseyesfr]

Wedding Bands that were removed from Holocaust victims prior to being executed, 1945. Each ring represents a destroyed family. 💔 Never forget.

[7amaspayrollmanager]

Idk why I took so long but I just watched Jonathan Glazers full speech and the man literally says "victims of October 7th" and "refutes his jewishness . . . Being hijacked" like did zionist twitter make someone up to be mad at. His speech was middle ground all around sympathies. Was it a crime that he said what's happening in Gaza is a result of dehumanization? Whoops i guess they don't want to start to think of the people of gaza as worthy of life as any other person but I digress

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Ukrainian refugees work as shoemakers in a displacement camp in Germany after World War II.

Millions of Ukrainians were taken by the Nazis as slaves during the war, and hundreds of thousands were left stateless as their land was absorbed into the Soviet Union.

[secular-jew]

Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day

In memory of the six million Jewish men, women, the elderly and children who were starved, tortured and mass murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Also remembering the millions of non-Jewish victims, Russian, Polish, Serbian, Roma etc. that were exterminated based upon Germany’s virulent genocidal racial policies.

Let's also remember that Islam also attempted to kill as many Jews as possible and partnered with Nazi Germany. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem went to Berlin and trained Islamic troops with the Nazis in order to kill Jews wherever they could find them in the indigenous Jewish homeland.

[waitineedaname]

"Amestris is an allegory for nazi Germany" you fool. Amestris is not an allegory for just nazi Germany -- it's an allegory for genocidal, fascist, militaristic governments as a whole. Yes, it has parallels to fascist Europe, but it also has parallels to xenophobic militaristic US and imperialist Japan. The point is not "look at this outlier of a country committing atrocities," the point is that the country committing atrocities might be your country and you might be complicit in it no matter how morally upstanding you might think you are. To act like only one government is capable of committing genocide blinds you to the potential that any other government might commit genocide too.

[clevervonskelli]

Meanwhile, in a prison camp for air force personnel:

"I need these parts for a radio, think you can get them?", a beautiful nerd asks.

Morally flexible bff with just the right shady connections: Say no more, babygirl!

*cue WWII MacGyver montage*

[ohsalome]

The audacity of being a puppet thug inserted by kremlin and talking about "when we win"

Also, the translation missed gubarev accusing ukrainians of "besovshchina" - posession by evil spirits (not literally, hopefully, but who knows - ru military elite is known for their weird fascination with spiritualism)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dave Maass and Patrick Lay’s “Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis”

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

"The Emperor of Atlantis," is an opera written by two Nazi concentration camp inmates, the librettist Peter Kien and the composer Viktor Ullmann, while they were interned in Terezin, a show-camp in Czechoslovakia that housed numerous Jewish artists, who were encouraged to make and display their work as a way of proving to the rest of the world that Nazi camps were humane places.

Of course, it was all a sham. Like nearly all of Terezin's inmates, Kein and Ullmann were eventually shipped to Auschwitz to be murdered. "The Emperor" was never performed during their life, but the manuscript, written on scrounged paper (including the backs of other inmates Auschwitz transfer papers) survived.

In the decades since, "The Emperor" has been mounted a few times, with varying degrees of faithfulness. But those live performances were limited to the people who could attend them during their limited run. Now, a new graphic novel called Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis, brings the work to us all:

https://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/3726/berger-books-and-dark-horse-comics-present-death-s

Death Strikes was adapted by my EFF colleague Dave Maass, an investigator and muckraker and brilliant writer, who teamed up with illustrator Patrick Lay and character designer Ezra Rose (who worked from the Kein and Ullmann's original designs, which survived along with the score and libretto).

The tale is set in the mythical kingdom of Atlantis, where the reclusive emperor has been holed up in an armored tower for decades, directing a forever war, greeting each battlefield report with fresh orders, all the while carefully scheming to maintain his grip on power by prolonging the war footing among his people.

But the Emperor has a problem: he's won the war. Every enemy has fallen. Without endless war, his system of social control will shrivel and he will be vulnerable to his people. So the Emperor declares a new war of all against all, announcing that it is every citizen's duty to make war on their neighbors. Problem solved!

But the Emperor goes too far. In announcing his new war, he directs his messengers – drum-beating automata who march through the streets of Atlantic rapping out his edicts – to claim that Death himself has blessed this new war, and "when the final drum sounds, our old friend DEATH, our flag-bearer, will raise his sword in salute to our great future!"

For Death – a swordbearing skeleton in a soldier's greatcoat and shako – this is too much. The Emperor's endless wars have already tried Death's patience. Death brings mercy, not vengeance, and the endless killing has dismayed him. The Emperor's co-option drives him past the brink, and Death declares a strike, breaking his sword and announcing that henceforth, no one will die.

Needless to say, this puts a crimp in the Emperor's all-out war plan. People get shot and stabbed and drowned and poisoned, but they don't die. They just hang around, embarrassingly alive (there's a great comic subplot of the inability of the Emperor's executioners to kill a captured assassin).

The Emperor will not be denied. He embarks upon a war of wills with Death, to see who will give in first. The surreal tale plays out among the people of Atlantis, the living and the undead, as they struggle to fight a war where no one can die. The tale cuts between these people, the Emperor, and Death, who is in company with Life, a sad harlequin who is even more demoralized than Death by the Emperor's long war.

What follows is a tale of revolution and love and hope snatched from despair.

Maass discovered "The Emperor" through a bargain bin CD of "degenerate music" he found in a suburban Best Buy in the 1990s, which was accompanied by illustrations by Art Spiegelman:

https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-music-survives%21-degenerate-music-music-suppressed-by-the-third-reich-mw0000711660

Maass found a six-panel cartoon Kein drew "expressing his frustration with the evolution of his libretto." Over the years, Maass turned this little strip over and over in his head, until he found himself travelling to Prague with Lay, where they were able to handle the surviving manuscript pages. After consulting with experts all over the world, Maass and Lay and their collaborators created this extraordinary graphic novel, updating it, queering it, and lavishly illustrating it.

While this is clearly an adaptation, Kein and Ullmann's spirit of creativity, courage, and bittersweet creative foment shines through. It's a beautiful book, snatched from death itself.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/23/peter-kien-viktor-ullmann/#terezín

[jenovacomplete]

idk man, who can say why the main antagonists of the thousand year blood war arc are commonly interpreted as allegorical nazis. it's a mystery

[jewishvitya]

CW - talking about antisemitic depictions and about the house elves and the depiction of slavery in the books.

I'm having a frustrating day with a lot of physical pain, so I'm not the best at judging currently if I should be posting all of these thoughts. It's a response to multiple arguments by rude anons that I blocked (not for being rude, for being transphobic), but the arguments themselves stay on my mind and I just. Need this out. Ignore this, it will be all over the place, I'm basically venting. Hoping it'll be the last bit of HP criticism I post.

I'll tag it for you to block, as usual.

I've been asked what I expect of Rowling, since my criticism of the goblins included the books. She already wrote the books, they're printed and they're out there. She can't just change them, criticism does nothing because she has no path to correct her mistake.

First of all, with her transphobia - as far as I'm concerned she has blood on her hands at this point. The way she emboldens transphobia endangers lives and erodes queer rights. Anyone who contributes to the current push against trans people is complicit in trans genocide - and she made herself a symbol of that movement. Even if she did a 180 on her issues with Jewish stereotypes, she wouldn't redeem herself.

But she isn't the only one who wrote a story and then realized that her story has deep issues. What does it look like, if an author doesn't want to perpetuate those?

From what I know of Tolkien (and I know nothing LOTR or anything, just heard this from other Jewish creators who discussed this issue, treat this paragraph like I'm repeating a rumor) - Tolkien did stumble on an antisemitic depiction while writing his dwarves. Then he course-corrected by creating a more complex and nuanced picture of the society in his future works. Basically, he leaned into the idea of his dwarves as a Jewish allegory and made it a better and more respectful allegory. They have wonderful cultural details, like having foreign-language names used outside of their community - and names in their own native language that they call each other. Half of my family comes from France, and my mom was born there. She had a Hebrew name and a legal French name. That's extremely common among Jews in some areas of the world.

This response is what I would have expected if an author cares about being respectful of Jewish people. Acknowledge the issue, and try to do better.

But what if the issue was brought to your attention after you completely finished your story? In that case: "Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was writing an antisemitic narrative with my depiction of this fantasy race." Support the voices criticizing your work, and apologize. Let it be an example of tropes to avoid, and encourage others to be careful of the same pitfalls.

What you don't do, is act horrified and say "Oh, how could you, I never intended to make the goblins an antisemitic allegory! Surely if I don't mean it, it can't be hurtful!"

Also, if you truly care, you don't then abuse the memory of the holocaust when you write spin-offs of your original story, including its imagery to support a bigoted villain's argument.

Marginalized people understand that not everyone knows what we do. The stereotypes and the harmful ideas that weaved themselves into popular culture are about us. We know that it's invisible to people who aren't the target, and as a result aren't forced to learn these things. To many people, it's just a trope they're used to seeing. Like villains have hooked noses - it's practically a shorthand for an evil character.

All the stories we tell are based in some measure on stories we heard. Narratives and tropes feed off each other between different pieces of media. It's easy to pull together a harmful narrative without realizing, when the tropes that make it up usually go together, and are so common they're everywhere. So we know a person who means no harm can create something really hurtful, without knowing it.

That's why we criticize media: we want you to see and be aware.

In addition to this, I've been accused multiple times of ignoring the fact that these books discuss bigotry and condemn it. I'm not ignoring it, I know they do - or they try to. But Rowling wrote a story against racism without understanding it and without interrogating it in herself. She only knew to condemn it when it's rude and violent and outright hateful. Not the foundations of it.

So, sure, say she didn't mean to write something harmful. What does she do when she learns she did? Nothing. And not just about the issue of the goblins - about everything. I detailed the problems with her depiction of lycanthropy, but she did the same thing with the house elves.

There's lore about creatures called brownies. They'll perform chores for you, but they'd rather not be seen while they do. If you try to pay them, they'll get offended. If you give them clothes, they'll leave. This is a very partial description, but you can see the inspiration here.

And then she turned them into a slave race. They're bound to their enslavers, possessing powerful magic but using it in their service, forced to punish themselves for disobedience and endure extreme abuse. Kreacher actively wishes to have his head put on display when he's too old and weak to be of use.

To show the reader the horrors of freedom for an elf, JKR turned poor Winky into a depressed drunk with no purpose in her life. Winky's story is horrifying.

Only Dobby takes care of Winky for that whole year. She never recovers during it. Then she's made to witness the interrogation of Barty Crouch Jr., which upsets her and causes her distress. As a result, she hears about Crouch's death through a toneless forced confession - and the interrogation continues around her. That same day, she watches the last member of the household she loved have his soul taken by a dementor, and then she's left alone with the body while Dumbledore argues with Fudge. Only after, he sends Madam Pomfrey to do what she can for Winky, and take her to the kitchens where Dobby will take care of her again.

And Rowling wrote all of this. Did she think this is an example that even compliant house elves suffer and get neglected, even by the sympathetic wizards? Was this a lesson that even those who don't seek freedom suffer and lack agency in this system?

No. Rowling turned it into a cautionary tale against freeing slaves. Unless they're "weird" like Dobby.

Maybe she didn't try to be racist, but this fits disturbingly well with the arguments against ending slavery in reality. That enslaved people will turn into aimless drunks. That they need to be enslaved to have purpose. That those who want freedom have something wrong with them.

And I know this was criticized. What was the response to the criticism? Nothing direct as far as I know, but after all of this - there was an article published on Pottermore to argue that Winky's story is a warning against freeing the elves. It was taken down fortunately, but after this article the arguments against freedom are no longer the opinion of characters within the world - it's a message given to us by real people.

She doubles down. Every time. People keep yelling that she had nothing to do with Hogwarts Legacy, she's not responsible for the way it builds on her original canon. Well, she seems to approve of it. It continues painting the same line with the same brush - just bolder.

She doesn't care about the racism, she doesn't care about antisemitism - she just wanted to use the nazis as her easy villains. She doesn't have the imagination for any other kind.

[quotesfrommyreading]

The East is also where the Nazis had most vigorously pursued the Holocaust, where they set up the vast majority of ghettoes, concentration camps, and killing fields. Snyder notes that Jews accounted for less than 1 percent of the German population when Hitler came to power in 1933, and many of those managed to flee. Hitler's vision of a “Jew-free” Europe could only be realized when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, and eventually Hungary and the Balkans which is where most of the Jews of Europe actually lived. Of the 5.4 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, the vast majority were from Eastern Europe. Most of the rest were taken to the region to be murdered. The scorn the Nazis held for all Eastern Europeans was closely related to their decision to take the Jews from all over Europe to the East for execution. There, in a land of subhumans, it was possible to do inhuman things.

  —  Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (Anne Applebaum)

[soryualeksi]

The first German media is carefully starting to report on our Foreign Minister "warning against" the absolute bloodbath "humanitarian challenge" of an all-out Israeli attack on the refugees in Rafah.

And I found myself baring my teeth against the radio like a weirdo because I can't contain my disgust and fury.

You.

Were all cheering this on UNTIL NOW.

You.

Were persecuting anyone who raised the alarm about the ON-GOING humanitarian catastrophe as an "antisemitic terrorism supporter". People lost JOBS. People lost social standing. PEOPLE WERE SUED.

Everyone with a human heart WAS SCREAMING ABOUT THIS FOR FOUR MONTHS but you were too fucking racist and arrogant to listen, because "who can trust these Muslims and anyone who lets themselves by MANIPULATED by them amirite".

And NOW that 30 THOUSAND bodies are counted and MANY will follow, NOW that EXACTLY WHAT PEOPLE SAID WOULD HAPPEN IN RAFAH IS HAPPENING.

Now you're getting scared because those people who kept screaming about human rights might ACTUALLY have been onto something, and you're seeing yourself unable to wiggle out of the fact that YOU TOO cheered on this ethnic cleansing, you see yourself in some DEEP SHIT of I don't fucking care "public opinion" or something, because CERTAIN AS HELL IT'S NOT SUDDENLY GROWING A CONSCIENCE.

And now you try to fucking quickly get up some "plausible deniability" defence, so that you might be protected from the full brunt of "The world is watching the targeted massacre of refugees on livestream and YOU personally told the perpetrators that it's fine, go ahead, no red lines, do as you wish because PER DEFINITION your ends are pure of heart and justify ANY means physically possible" UNTIL THIS FUCKING MOMENT WHEN IT BECAME TOO OBVIOUS TO FURTHER DENY REALITY.

I fucking hate everyone.

I hope their stories haunt you to the end of your days, awake and asleep.

Germany is complicit and was ENTHUSIASTICALLY so until THIS moment, where now everyone is trying to wiggle out.

"We just didn't KNOW! UwU"

FUCK THIS ENTIRE FUCKING NAZI COUNTRY

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

  Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In honor of this observance, watch this video to learn more about the history of Auschwitz and hear powerful stories from some of the survivors.

[ink-the-artist]

That rabbit comic is brilliant because it can apply to more than just to terfs and misogyny:

During WW2 there were Jewish people of privileged status who sided with the Nazis, hoping to be spared only to be turned on. Same with homosexuals, communists and any who thought surely they would be spared if they cooperated. They met the same fate as all the others if not worse.

There have been many times in which PoC became class traitors who helped pass legislation hoping it wouldn't affect them only to be hurt by the changes as well.

The list goes on and on, in which instead of standing in solidarity, some would try to selfishly try to save themselves by throwing their brethren to the wolves only to perish along with the rest.

Sadly the cycle continues because by the time the wolves are done eating, there are few if any that survive to pass on the story.

Oh for sure, I’ve heard of the gay Nazis before they are probably one of the most extreme examples of this I can think of. I believe they justified themselves by referencing how the Greeks, who were their ideal aryan civilization or whatever, were famously gay. Didn’t work for too long they were eventually killed by the other Nazis

[nickysfacts]

It’s important to remember how the Holocaust targeted many groups of people, with LGBTQ+ individuals being one of its first victims.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

[obsxssedwithstuff]

I've seen pro palestinians and pro hamas argue that "israel is just as bad or worse than the nazis" a couple times now... and to that i can just say, please watch any documentary on the Nuremberg trials/WW2 - or if you dont have that much time - the film linked below starting minute 45:30

WARNING (corpses/disfigurement)

This documentary's commentary is NOT neutral

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm8bRc9B7d8