#shoah reference tw

[positivelybeastly]

Uncanny X-Men #299

I honestly don't have a ton of commentary to add here, other than that I love Hank. Even at the very height of respectability, he is such a goofball.

Graydon Creed is so mad. He's SO mad! He's shaking his little baby fists!

Also, we missed out on a blue moon?! God damn it!

[discworldwitches]

what do you mean art became a commodity because of genocide? (genuine q)

tw for discussion of the shoah/holocaust

.

while ofc people bought and sold art, commissioned art, and there were art houses like christie's, art didn't really become an investment commodity until the 1960's, after world war ii and the holocaust/shoah.

during the shoah, nazi's stole a tonne of art from museums + nations but also individuals--mostly from jews many of whom were the subjects of paintings, art collectors, friends w artists, art dealers, etc. some of these works were burned, some went into nazi + collaborators collections such as goring's , some of them were lost, some were kept in caves and were ultimately damaged beyond repair, some of them eventually entered into museums like the belvedere (that's a reference to the story of the bloch-bauers), and a large amount (1.5 k) were marked destroyed and then kept by this war profiteer and art "dealer" hildebrand gurlitt.

after the holocaust, a lot of art was missing, destroyed, or missing provenance (which verifies that that piece is real + authentic and is what gives art its value on the market--without provenance, art loses values in huge amounts). some of the art stolen from jews ended up in the hands of collectors and art houses like sotheby's. then in the 1950's the impressionist and modern art dept. in sotheby's opens (which is the type of art chiefly being stolen from jews). then in 1958 there is the huge record-breaking sale of the goldschmidt collection--a collection auctioned off by the nazis in the 40's and somehow ends up in england at sotheby's...

here's a quote abt this famous 1958 event:

It has often been said that the modern art market was born at 9:30 pm on 15 October 1958, a time and date which corresponds to a sale that ended with a total of almost $20.2 million in today’s money, an impressive record at that time. On that evening, the traditional way of auctioning artworks was transformed into a glamorous and ‘modern’ event. Peter Wilson, Sotheby’s newly appointed chairman, literally stage-managed the sale of seven paintings from the Jakob Goldschmidt collection. It was not only the first evening sale, but also the first “Gala sale”, i.e. by invitation only, with ball gowns for the ladies and dinner jackets for the men. Moreover, the television cameras, also newly invited, focused on socialites and movie stars.

x

so basically this event launched the modern art market. following that in the 60's, art becomes an investment and something that celebrities/people of acclaim definitely want to get their hands on. art shoots up in prices. much of the art on the 50's-60's market that's costing millions of dollars is art stolen by the nazis.

art only continued to grow in value in the 60's and on. christie's and sotheby's competed to break records of how big the sales could be. i found this cover on sotheby's when refreshing my memory on these events:

[id: image of andy warhol on the cover of newsweek next to one of his pop-art portraits of marilyn monroe. the contents advertised next to warhol are typed out in white font: Art for Money's Sake; On the Block: the Warhol Collection; The Booming Art Market. end ID]

x

i learned about this in uni so a lot of this is from my memory and a brief review of notes/articles linked above. sorry this is so long lol.

if you want to learn more i'd look at herman goring, the degenerate art exhibition, hildebrand gurlitt + his son cornelius, and the book the lady in gold by anne-marie o'connor just to get started.

i also wasn't referring specifically to this but generally a lot of art pieces, artifacts, ritual objects, etc. in trade, in collection or at museums, are there bc of colonialism + genocide.

anyway feel free to ask more questions!!

[queering-the-binary]

Yom HaShoah this year is from sundown on April 7 to sundown on April 8. It is also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a Jewish holiday, specifically to remember the lives of the 6 million Jews that were lost in the Shoah. That is 2/3 of the entire population of European Jews, and 1/3 of the entire Jewish population. (International Holocaust Remembrance Day is different, it is on January 27, and commemorates all 11 million victims of the Holocaust.)

In honor of Yom HaShoah, I want to share a poem with you. It was written by Hannah Szenes, a young Jewish woman who moved from Hungary to Mandate Palestine (which later became Israel) and in 1943, at the age of 22, was one of 37 jewish recruits from Mandate Palestine who were Special Operations Executives. They were parachuted into Yugoslavia to save Hungarian Jews from going to Auchswitz. She was discovered, tortured, and killed a year later in Hungary, in 1944, only a year before the war ended. May her memory be a blessing.

She is known as a hero and a poet, and this poem in particular is well known. She wrote it in 1942, two years before her death, and in 1945, a year after her death, David Zehavi put it to music. It is haunting and sad, whether you understand the meaning of the words or not. It is the most commonly played song on Yom HaShoah in Israel.

It is written in Hebrew, so I will give you the transliteration of it (the Hebrew written in the English alphabet), and then a translation of the poem into English. Eli is pronounced as ay-lee.

Eli Eli, or Halika LeKaysarya

Eli, Eli

Shelo yigamer le’olam:

Hachol vehayam

Rishrush shel hamayim

Berak hashamyim

Tefilat ha’adam.

Translation:

A Walk To Caesarea

Oh g-d, my g-d

I pray that these things never end:

The sand and the sea

The rush of the waters

The lightning in the sky

The prayer of Man.

(Please note that there are other translations of it, some containing slight alterations so that it can be sung to the same tune as the Hebrew. I grew up singing the line “the lighting in the sky” as “the crash of the heavens” and the line “the prayer of Man” as “the prayer of the heart”. This is just one translation of it, and I tried to stay more true to the meaning of the poem rather than the format or style, so you can understand what is being said most clearly.)

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

Hey, I saw the tag 'tw shoah' a few times today, is it alright to ask what that means? Like Yom Hashoah?

Shoah is the Hebrew word that is used to refer to the Holocaust. If I remember right the origin of Shoah means something like horrible destruction where holocaust is a Greek word that means “burnt offering,” so a lot of Jews perfer to use Shoah instead.

Yom HaShoah is Holocaust remeberance day on the Hebrew calendar. I use “tw shoah” or “shoah tw” to tag posts in case people have it blocked because they don’t want to see it on their dash

[glassheartedboy]

Nakam (Six Million Germans)

(Some background for this piece- I was in the comment section on the song Nakam, which details the story of an attempted revenge plot on post-war nazi germany, and I realized most people didn’t seem to have the context that would make such a plot understandable. So, here’s some context.) TW for post-Shoah stuff, references to drug abuse

The camps are liberated, sure, but what does that mean for you? This is the first time in years you’ve had solid food, and your stomach can’t hold it. You shamble back to your home, pick at the smashed ruins of what was once your family’s living quarters, photo albums torn apart by your neighbors who were rooting for valuables. Your neighbors. You gave them sugar to make their daughter’s 7th birthday cake, back when they started rationing staples.

Your family. You’ve been trying to track them down. Most of the news has been grapevine, friend-of-a-friend-of-a-cousin. You took two trains, a boat, and walked three miles on a tip from a stranger in a train station on the whereabouts of your mother. It turned out to be a stranger with the same last name. You think the not knowing is worse than anything.

Avi, your highschool buddy, class clown, returned to your town. He’s different now. Gaunt, haunted as the rest of the survivors. He hardly whispers. He hasn’t been sleeping. You hear him crying for his little sister at night, begging for the nazis to take him instead. When he goes downstairs for coffee in the mornings, eyes rimmed with black, you do not mention what you have heard.

Everyone has nightmares, everyone’s been drinking too much. You saw the town doctor rummaging in his cabinets for painkillers, and you know it’s not for Shayna’s leg. You do not mention this to him. There are too many ghosts here.

You’ve heard that some people are planning to move to the newly formed state of Israel. Seems like a good idea, leave this haunted continent behind, try to build a new life somewhere the soil is not irrigated with your family’s blood.

The image of your little brother being ripped from your mother’s arms is burned onto your eyelids. Before you leave, you suppose, you should do something. Take them down with you, in the name of the family members you can’t track down. Revenge. If you can’t muster up the strength to get out of bed in the name of simply living, carrying on, at least that’ll give you a reason. Revenge. You want, no, need to make them pay. They will pay for every woman, man, and child they murdered. That’s what you’ll do. Make them pay.

@glassheartedboy

[anaxolotladay]

( big fucking word dump to get my thoughts together; TW for antisemitism and a lack of editing

tentatively titled, “Lucky”, ‘til i can edit it to the essay i want to write )

❝  We didn’t know much about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but wasn’t that guy Jewish, too? He wasn’t as lucky as I was.  ❞

it took a while for me to be able to joke about being the “token jew friend”. because really, what was so “token” about it? ever since i stopped wearing my star and keeping my hair tied up, it’s harder to tell. i’ve been teased about “pointed ears” and my family’s long-passed-down “jewy nose”, but with these thick rimmed glasses, it takes the attention away. i’m aware of the privilege my skin color affords me. nobody looks too hard; i’m passing. i’m lucky, something i’ve always been told by every generation of family i meet. i’m lucky, and i know it.

my elementary schooling was private hebrew schools (on scholarship for our low income large family, where my mom worked as a school employee) between two different states. i grew up in so many jewish communities and with such a large family, i never thought of it to be so different.

that was lucky.

fifth grade- the first year of junior high- we couldn’t afford private school any longer, nor could the majority of my sixteen-person grade level. three of us switched to the same public middle school. nobody knew where we came from, but that was alright until somebody asked. Dan H. in art class asked if we were “hebrews”, because “oh, i thought ‘jew’ was a bad word”. the three of us laughed! that was hilarious! until he started interrogating us, asking us if we knew it was OUR people who killed Jesus.

we didn’t know much about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but wasn’t that guy Jewish, too?

he wasn’t as lucky as i was.

throughout middle school, more and more students had just started to learn about the Holocaust and Hitler- aka my second grade history unit, aka my family history-- and all the jokes they’d heard and read about began to make sense. the “shoah”, the “fire”, the “ovens”. hilarious. the wise words of my old hebrew teacher echoed in my ears: as long as we don’t forget, it will never happen again. but i started wondering why we had to teach THESE kids about it, and fuel THEIR jokes. middle school, it was mostly all just poorly timed jokes in bad taste.

THAT was lucky.

come high school, i shared a bus with the only other jewish kid in my neighborhood, Ari J.-- a year younger than me, left our old hebrew school a year later than me. he was a bully and i hated his guts, yet, he was kin. we didn’t talk in all my four years of high school. but at the back of the bus sat another group of boys, the ones who wore shirts that read: “That’s nice, babe, now make me a sandwich”, and called eachother “f*gs”, and told jokes in racist accents. they were larger than Ari and i combined. we kept our heads down.

they dared not crack the same racist jokes in the hallways of school-- there were black, indian, AND asian teachers around, who could call their parents, god forbid!-- but the gays and the jews of the school? outnumbered and quiet. i heard nazi jokes shouted two hallways down. i heard the laughter that followed.

one day, boarding the bus about four seats in front of Ari, the ringleader of Back of the Bus Bad Boys waltzes up the steps and shouts, “HEY, you Jew in the back!!!” i felt my blood run cold, and sat completely still as he stormed down the aisle. i smelled his gym sweat as he breezed past my seat, and exhaled a relieved sigh. except, turning around to see who he was referring to, i couldn’t believe my eyes: the lot of them had slid into and behond Ari’s seat, were tousling his hair, were shoving his shoulders and laughing. “Pretty hot outside, but not as hot as those ovens, am I right?” i couldn’t hear if Ari replied. i didn’t know what to do. the bus lurched forward and the insults were hurled louder: “Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy, y’know? Just incompetent. He never carried through, but he had the vision.” when i got home that day, i cried and cried. the next morning, i reported them to the counselor, but begged her to wait a few days to take action; what if they thought it was Ari who’d reported it? what would they do to him?

would he be so lucky again?

a year later, i’m on a trip to New York City- the second time i’ve been, but the first time alone with my mom. it was a busy day over school break, and the city was bustling-- walking back to our lodging, there was a pro-palestine rally occurring about a block away. flags were waving! people were shouting for justice! it was amazing! we raised our fists in support and kept walking. but after packing our bags and leaving the same way we came in, we stepped to the sidewalk and heard louder noise down the road. the streets were stuffed to gills, police officers stood with their backs to the rally, face to the crowd. the proud rally had turned angry, blaming not israel for their troubles, but their “rabbinic leaders”. new flags were hoisted, depicting the magen david, star of david, crossed out in red. their faces were pink with righteous fury, shouting against the ears of the officers to let them march, to take vengeance on their jewish oppressors. my mother and i ducked to the back of the crowd, removed our star necklaces, and kept our heads down. i felt the points digging into my palm. i wore it a few times afterwards-- the star i’d fawned over at our Yom Ha’Atzmaut festival, supporting local israeli immigrants, bought for me in surprise by my bubbe-- but after the chain broke, i couldn’t find it in me to wear again. i’d never felt so scared, but i emerged unnoticed and unharmed.

that was the luckiest i had ever been.

during my first year of community college, i had a class with a nazi apologist. nobody thought about it too hard, since he was also the best designer in our group, but walking to our class, i’d hear him shout from behind me: “What’s up, you fucking kike?!” i’d never heard it out loud before. when i whirled around, it turns out he was greeting his “buddy” further up in front of me. i walked a little faster to class, hoping he wasn’t suspicious of me now.

he wasn’t. how lucky of me.

on that same campus, i heard more jewish slurs than i could even recognize at the time. some i’d only read of. others were learned of in hindsight. ignorance was bliss. past tense.

i told my family these stories, face burning. my zayde’s eyebrows would raise and my mother would shake her head, recounting her own stories. my siblings had never been familiar with these terms. i wish i could apologize for teaching them.

they were pretty lucky, too.

when i transferred schools, it was during election season. i never brought up my judaism until the high holidays-- early in the school year-- when i’d need to miss class, and would be returning home to NY for a few days. even then, i told my roommates and teachers, that was it. i was alone for some of those holidays for the first time ever, and there was no community to be found. it was an irrelevant secret.

during election season, however, were the pro-Trump rallies. the protests. the women’s marches and the mud slinging. some of my friends saw words on the news that they’d never heard of before. the mistake i had made was explaining them, outing myself. again, it was no big deal at the time, my friends were supportive.

but from then on, i was referred to as one of their “minority friends”. and that was annoying, because i didn’t have the right to claim that title. i wasn’t being “oppressed”. i had just started to learn about “privilege” and “oppression” and politics and diversity. i knew i was privileged, i never had the RIGHT to claim oppression. i didn’t experience racism daily and i never would. there were people of color who were harassed and discriminated against and denied service because of the way they LOOKED, things they could not change about themselves. i will never experience that. it was 2016, i was not oppressed!

multiple times, i was introduced to others as the “jewish friend”. and it stopped bothering me, because it wasn’t untrue. apparently, jews were a rarity in these parts. it was funny. it was part of my identity. and for the most part, people didn’t care. 

then, our 45th president was elected.

within three days, over four dozen synagogues, campuses, homes and vehicles had been vandalized with swastikas. jewish cemeteries were torn apart. hasidic civilians were punched in the faces. i couldn’t bring myself to call home for an entire week, because that would mean admitting out loud that i was scared. my research writing essay that semester was a small 8-page essay, analyzing and documenting the rise in jewish hate crimes, and where they happened. i had to stay in the know. i brushed up on jewish history. i listened to family stories. i relearned everything i could so i knew how to navigate arguments, debates, and accusations. afterall, i’d been pretty sure i was the only jew on campus.

within a year, i met another one. it shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but my excitement was tangible. we’d throw yiddish back and forth and tease eachother in brooklynese or russian-bubbe accents. he knew what holidays i would refer to. it wasn’t a big part of the friendship, but it was nice to have some familiarity.  i was brought into a new group of friends who were curious, and eager to learn. i’d never thought about judaism as a culture or history before that, until these discussions ensued and i realized just how MUCH my life was shaped by it. and it was fun to share stories and meals and holidays with people who wanted to celebrate with me.

this past semester was the first time i didn’t go home for the high holidays. i found a synagogue in the next city over, and two whole other jews who wanted to celebrate with me on campus! on yom kippur, we met up to break the fast. they were clearly as excited to meet another jew as i was.

unfortunately, i was a girl. a “nice jewish girl”, if you will. their view bled into the conversation. and on top of that, one of them wanted to chant the barucha, loudly, OUT LOUD, in the middle of a dinner-busy campus dining hall. the other guy and i mumbled it with our heads kept down. suddenly, we were tense. we were scared. my roommates asked me why that was. i told them that you can’t just chant hebrew in public in this day and age!  why was that? have you ever heard of muslims speaking arabic in public and being labeled terrorists? do you understand the kind of danger semitic languages entail?!

we had been ignored, but some folks aren’t so lucky!

a week ago, i was walking down the hall of my class building. it was mostly empty, save for one or two other students. out of the blue, i hear one of them say loudly, “Shalom!” i spun around. “excuse me?” the girl walking behind me laughed and said, “it’s just something he does”. we walked down the hall for a few more min, chuckling about it. i asked if she or he was jewish, she said neither of them were, but thought it was hilarious when i explained how the guy had managed to say “shalom” to the only jew in the department.

i let out a breath i hadn’t realized i’d been holding. funny, right? he never would’ve guessed.

yesterday, at 9:50 AM, a synagogue was shot up an hour and a half away from me. but not just any synagogue. one of the most well known conservative shuls in the Squirrel Hill area.  in particular, the one my pittsburgh family were members of. the one i had watched my two cousins become bat and bar mitzvahs on the bimmah of. the one i had, for the first time, met three branches of family from my adopted uncles’ side, family who had welcomed me to their congregation and introduced me personally to the rabbi: “Yes! She’s our brothers’ niece! Our family has come such a long way to celebrate with us, tonight!” and then-rabbi, Rabbi Chuck, laughed a booming sound and shook my hand with both of his, cracking jokes and telling me how happy he was i was here.

yesterday, at the Tree of Life--Or L’Simcha temple, there was a baby naming ceremony- a time in jewish tradition where a new baby of the community is spoken into the family and recognized by the congregation. the rabbi will speak its names-- english and hebrew-- and the world rejoices under them.  yesterday, there were twins to be celebrated. yesterday, three congregations had come together under one roof, so many families and friends supporting and celebrating the new arrival.

yesterday, a celebration of life turned into a vigil mourning death.

eleven shulgoers were not so lucky.

i have never met Rabbi Hazzan Myers, but i know he’s taken care of the community since then. i can’t imagine the fear he must have felt, after hosting the tight-knit community he’s helped build, harbor, and lead. i can’t imagine walking back into that building a week from now and continuing to read torah, the way i know he will.

Rabbi Hazzan will forever remember how lucky he was, to make it to next week’s torah portion. living in a community that has always been safe, and hospitable, and embraced eachother as neighbors, the remaining minyan will never forget how lucky they were, as well.

my family in pittsburgh-- aunt janice, uncle steve, and cousins hannah and tyler-- were so lucky to have stayed home, yesterday morning, and i am so lucky that we live in a day and age of cellular devices.

i was on the phone with my father and grandfather, both in florida, when dad received a group text between his brothers, their sister janice, and him, assuring everyone that they were home safe. he asked me to look up what happened in pittsburgh.

i never thought it would be my family.

i never thought it would be their home.

12 casualties could have been 16.

i’m so lucky it’s not my family sitting shivah, this week.