#Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State

[girlactionfigure]

From late 1941 through 1942, with the full knowledge of the Allies, the #Nazis methodically worked out a quieter, cheaper, and more efficient manner of killing the #Jews of #Europe.

The Nazis would use a prussic acid-based pesticide called #ZyklonB (bottom left) that would be released in large gas chambers to be built in death camps, mostly in #Poland. 

Using this process, the Nazis would be able to “cleanly and quietly” murder masses of Jews all at once, in a matter of minutes, and without a single shot fired.

After successful small-scale testing of Zyklon-B, the Nazis held the #Wannsee Conference in #Berlin on January 20, 1942, to discuss implementing the plan.

Surviving protocols and notes from the conference show high-ranking Nazis (including Heydrich and Eichmann, among others) discussed the use of short-term #Jewish #slave labor for the able-bodied who would be worked and starved to death, the separation of Jewish men from Jewish women at the camps, the mass deportations to the camps from across Nazi-occupied #Europe, and the mass gassing of the Jews to ensure an efficient and quiet “Final Solution to the Jewish problem.”

The less than 90-minute conference laid out the plan and gave the orders to carry it out. 

With at least 1.5 million (probably more) #European Jews already dead, the Nazis had now marked for death the remaining Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe, which they estimated at 5-6 million.

And so, the #gaschambers and #crematoria were built while Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of logistics for the mass deportation of Jews to the camps.

On July 15, 1942, the Nazis had made enough progress for the first deportation train to leave from #Holland to #Auschwitz (by Sept 1944, more than 100 trains would deliver more than 100,000 Jews of Holland to the death camps).

The very next day, on July 16, 1942, the occupied #French submitted to their Nazi overlords and began the roundup of #France’s Jews en masse with 13,152 Jews, including 4,051 children, in what is known as the “Vel ’d’Hiv.” 

All 13,152 French Jews of all ages were transported by train to Auschwitz in southern Poland while trapped inside locked, cramped cattle cars without food, without water, and without toilets.

These “round-ups” were not quiet, and Allied sources were well-placed in Holland and France. So, the Allies knew almost immediately about the mass deportations of Jews to the east.

Meanwhile, Eduard Schulte – one of the most powerful, prominent, and successful #German industrialists, who also enjoyed a career of unrivaled political access – secretly wanted to see #Hitler and the Nazis gone from power. He kept his intentions quiet while repeatedly using his access (which included Hitler’s headquarters) to gain useful information to pass along to the Allies.

In late July 1942, Schulte was once again inside Hitler’s headquarters when he heard Nazi leadership discussing the progress of the “Final Solution” including the status of the mass deportation of Jews to the camps in the east and the preparations for mass usage of gas chambers to exterminate all remaining Jews with Zyklon-B.

Schulte decided to bring this information to Gerhard Riegner, a representative of the World Jewish Congress who was living in neutral #Switzerland on August 1, 1942.

Riegner knew Schulte was a serious man. And Riegner was able to ask around and learn that Schulte was already a trusted Allied informant who had repeatedly passed them useful and truthful information (including the exact timing of the German invasion of the Soviet Union).

So, Riegner went to his friend, Paul Chapin Squire, the #American consul in #Geneva, and asked to use the #StateDepartment’s cable facilities to send a message to #Rabbi Stephen Wise – the head of the American Jewish #Congress and the most prominent American Jew at the time who was also friendly with several government officials, and who even met with FDR from time to time.

By using the State Department cables, it ensured Riegner both that his message would be sent securely and that the U.S. State Department would be an immediate recipient of his message.

The following text comes directly from Reigner’s cable of August 11, 1942:

Received ALARMING REPORT that in #FUHRER’S HEADQUARTERS plan discussed … according to which ALL JEWS IN COUNTRIES OCCUPIED OR CONTROLLED BY #GERMANY … should after deportation and concentration in east be EXTERMINATED … to resolve once and for all the Jewish Question in Europe … Methods under discussion including PRUSSIC ACID … Informant stated to have close connections with HIGHEST GERMAN AUTHORITIES and his REPORTS … [are] RELIABLE.

By this time, the State Department already knew of the mass deportations of Jews from #Paris, Holland, #Berlin, #Vienna, and #Prague to Nazi camps in the east. And, just four days later, on August 15, 1942, they learned of another mass round-up of Jews in France with 7,000 more Jewish men, women, and children being arrested and handed over to the Germans.

The U.S. government also knew by then that a minimum of 1-1.5 million Jews had already been killed over the last year during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

In other words, the Reigner cable describing the purpose of the mass deportations of Jews eastward seemed a logical, if horrifying, explanation of the Nazis’ intentions.

The State Department then confirmed from its own intelligence sources that Riegner was “a serious and balanced individual and that he would never have come to the Consulate … if he had not had confidence in his informant's reliability.”

After sending the cable, Riegner next went to the British Consulate where he provided the same information and issued the same cable.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department discussed what to do with the information. By consensus, they decided to ignore the cable and also to suppress it to ensure it did not leak out to anyone else, and they marked it “unconfirmed information” to let everyone know it was to be ignored. Therefore, the U.S. State Department never gave the cable to Rabbi Wise.

The #British Foreign Office, however, made the opposite decision. While they ultimately deferred in many ways to the U.S., the British would (at least initially) not suppress or ignore the Riegner cable, and they even delivered it to the London branch of the World Jewish Congress on August 17, 1942, as requested by Riegner.

In fact, that’s the only way Rabbi Wise found out about the existence of Riegner’s cable. He received it from the London World Jewish Conference on August 28, 1942 – 17 days after Riegner had tried to send him the cable.

When Rabbi Wise read the words, “ALL JEWS,” “EXTERMINATED,” “PRUSSIC ACID,” and “RELIABLE,” his heart skipped a beat, and then he immediately got in touch with Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles – a man who had previously seemed sympathetic to the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

But, though he did not say so at the time to Rabbi Wise, Welles was already very familiar with the Riegner cable, and he was even among those in the State Department who approved the plan to ignore the cable, suppress the cable, and ensure the cable did not reach Rabbi Wise.

Now realizing Rabbi Wise had found out anyway, Welles immediately instructed Rabbi Wise that he was not to share this information with anyone or allow it to be leaked to the press, at least until the U.S. government could “confirm its validity.”

Meanwhile, Riegner had been pacing the wood off the floor in his home in Geneva waiting for some sort of response. Since August 13, 1942, “neutral” Switzerland had begun forcing Jews, mostly French refugees that had escaped to Switzerland, back across the border to be included in the mass deportations.

Riegner had immediately done what he thought was the best thing to do to try to save as many of the condemned Jews as possible. The complete silence that followed his cable would later be described by Riegner as “my great agony.”

Meanwhile, during this same moment in the war, mostly British troops (and, increasingly, American troops) were facing off against the Nazis’ most decorated, successful, and respected general, Erwin Rommel, in the campaign in North #Africa.

This was one of the most dangerous points in the war when the scales could have permanently tipped in the Nazis’ favor.

Rommel was closing in on the #SuezCanal and eventually the entire #MiddleEast. Such a Nazi victory could have been enough to “checkmate” the Allies by cutting off their oil supply while leaving the Germans flush with as much oil as they could ever need along with control over the means to move it.

The British and American dependence on a #Soviet victory over the Nazis was, at that time, also very much in doubt.

The Soviets were locked in the most bitter fight of their lives with the infamous Battle of #Stalingrad beginning on August 23, 1942.

The British and Americans knew that the fall of the #SovietUnion to the Nazis meant the end of the eastern campaign, and a Nazi windfall of Russia’s vast territory, resources, and military capacity.

One could argue this was the most dangerous point in the entire war.

But the Allies received other horrifying news in August 1942. Only this news was horrifying enough to the Allies to cause them to take humanitarian action.

Specifically, the Nazi-occupied Greeks were running out of food and were facing a famine of biblical proportions that could have killed upwards of 2 ½ million #Greek citizens.

The Americans and the British took decisive action to save the Greeks from starvation despite all of #Greece being occupied by the Nazis.

Even in this decisive moment, the Americans and the British gave their time and diverted their resources to ensure 35,000 tons of food would be delivered into the hands of the Greek people (and not just stolen by the Germans) every month without fail for the next two years.

Great Britain was ultimately in charge of shipping the food, and it was all paid for by the United States to the tune of $30 million per year ($60 million in total).

Remember what the Allies did to save 2 ½ million Greeks “at risk” of starvation as you continue to read about the Allies’ reaction to the continued receipt of more and more corroborating and irrefutable information and evidence of the deportation and mass slaughter of the Jews of Europe.

Then ask yourself:

· What did the Allies do to help, as they did the Greeks, to save the Jews in Nazi concentration camps who were starving to death?

· What did the Allies do to save the enslaved Jews who were being worked to death?

· What did the Allies do to save the millions of Jews being marched to their deaths in the gas chambers?

The simple answer to all three questions is, “nothing.”

These Jews were not “simply” human beings “at risk” of starvation. They were Jewish men, women, children, and babies who were all marked for systematic, industrialized death by gassing simply because they were born Jewish; and both the Americans and the British knew it.

$60 million and countless diverted resources were spent just to feed the Nazi-occupied Greeks – a noble humanitarian gesture. But, in contrast, $0 was spent and no resources were diverted to save any of the condemned millions of Jews.

Even once the political pressure finally turned (after at least 4-5 million Jews were already dead) and #FDR finally acted in January 1944, his action was limited to setting up the small and dramatically understaffed War Refugee Board with the goal of saving at least some of Europe’s Jews.

After more than a year and a half in operation, the War Refugee Board received total funding in the amount of $11 million (a meager 18% of the amount the U.S. spent just feeding the Nazi-occupied Greeks).

And over the course of that same year and a half, the War Refugee Board save maybe as many as 200,000 Jews. And this is wonderful. But it does not change the fact that 6 million innocent Jewish men, women, children, and babies were dead, and they certainly did not all have to be.

In comparison, the Americans and the British fed the starving Greeks for two years and are said to have saved around 2 ½ million Greeks while a comparatively meager 200,000-300,000 Greeks were dead.

Meanwhile, the small group of Jews in Washington and London who were “in the know,” but who were sworn to secrecy, waited in nervous limbo to hear something, anything, from their governments about the truth of the Reigner cable and what great plans the Allies might have to help save the Jews of Europe.

They waited. And their days of waiting turned into weeks. Then their weeks of waiting turned into months.

During these months of waiting, the U.S. government was receiving report after report from all different sources – each one confirming the fate of Europe’s Jews, and each one ignored and suppressed along with the Riegner cable.

The deafening silence continued.

As one example, on August 26, 1942 (two days before Rabbi Wise even received the Riegner cable), U.S. ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile and a close personal friend of FDR, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., wrote an 8-page, single-spaced memorandum directly to President Roosevelt, which he marked as having the “highest importance.”

Biddle wrote in painstaking detail of the deportations of Europe’s Jews and of Hitler’s Final Solution that would see the entire Jewish people annihilated. A few sentences from his memo sent directly to FDR follows:

"There is no precedent for such organized wholesale dying in all Jewish history, nor indeed in the whole history of mankind."

"This war is not being waged with bombs and guns alone, nor will the nature of the coming world be determined only by the outcome of battles. The victory of morality is the issue in this war. Should we succeed in no more than mitigating the enemy's foul design against his most hated victim it would amount to partial victory."

The memo was ignored. The memo was suppressed.

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. government received confirmation from another source who had just returned from a different European country.

Dr. Donald A. Lowrie was a well-respected American with close contacts in the federal government, and he had just returned from assignment in the unoccupied portion of southern France doing work for the #YMCA.

Lowrie had seen the deportation process of the Jews first-hand that was being performed by French #Vichy collaborators. And he understood those Jews were likely being shipped to their deaths.

Lowrie recalled with tears the way the Nazis tried to calmly reassure the French Jewish adults that they were merely being resettled to the east where there would be more room for them to live and more food for them to eat; and they were told their children would join them shortly, and together they could start new lives.

Then, Lowrie broke down as a recalled the agony on the faces of the Jewish parents who were tempted to believe the Nazis, but who were also terrified both of leaving their children behind and of helping the Nazis by bringing their children along to the likely certain death they faced.

The Jews who wanted to believe the Nazis, believed them. After all, it had been well-established for the prior 1,000 years that Jews were commonly expelled from their host European nations – it had happened many dozens of times, and each time the Jews managed to start over again.

But the French Jews were not stupid, and all of them had heard the rumors. They all knew of the Nazis’ brutality and their desire to rid the world of every Jew.

Deep down, most of them – whether they admitted it to themselves or not – knew that the only thing awaiting them to the east was death.

Lowrie recalled watching as these French Jewish parents agonizingly debated which fate was more likely and what to do with their children. Lowrie would later write that he would “never forget the moment when these truckloads of children left the camps with parents crying in one last gaze to fix an image to last an eternity.”

Lowrie’s story was ignored. Lowrie’s story was suppressed.

Meanwhile, all throughout these months of silence during August, September, October, and November of 1942, Riegner continued to receive further details on the fate of the Jews from reliable first-hand witnesses. Each time, he went to the U.S. Consulate and delivered a cable with the new information.

Every cable was ignored. Every cable was suppressed.

Next came information directly to the U.S. government from yet another trusted source. Specifically, a minister stationed in Berne, Switzerland named Leland Harrison ensured delivery of four sworn statements from direct eyewitnesses to the extermination of Jews every day in the death camps by the thousands using Zyklon-B gas.

After nearly four months of ignoring and suppressing the details of the Jews’ extermination, the U.S. government finally realized that the details were coming in too quickly and from too many different sources in too many different countries. The U.S. could not suppress the information any longer.

On November 24, 1942, Welles asked Rabbi Wise to come to his office, which he did at once.

Mr. Welles sat Rabbi Wise down and confirmed the truth of the systematic slaughter of every Jew in Europe was happening. 

Specifically, he told Rabbi Wise, the U.S. government had received enough documents and information (some of which he held in his hand as he spoke) that, “I regret to tell you … that these [documents] confirm and justify your deepest fears.”

Welles told a stunned silent Rabbi Wise, “For reasons you will understand, I cannot give these [documents] to the press, but there is no reason why you should not. It might even help if you did.”

No longer actively suppressing the information about the Jews’ extermination, the American government was still not ready to officially admit to it.

So, Rabbi Wise sat for a moment in thought. He wondered how many hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazis as he sat quietly waiting to hear back from the U.S. government. And then he realized that even after all that time, the only thing the U.S. government was prepared to do was “permit him” to tell the press what he knew.

Rabbi Wise hastily called for a press conference where he announced that the State Department had confirmed to him that all of Europe’s Jews were in the process of being systematically slaughtered. He also reported his belief that at least 2 million European Jews were already dead (the number was actually much higher by then), and that at least 4-5 million more were in immediate peril.

The following day, on November 25, 1942, newspapers across the U.S. finally informed the American public that the Nazis were systematically murdering every Jew in Europe using gas chambers in death camps located mostly in Poland.

For example, the 

@washingtonpost

 headline read, “Two Million Jews Slain.” But this news was not big enough to make it above the fold. It was not even front-page news. The Washington Post did what so many others did. They buried the story on page 6.

Captain Allen

#WW2 #Shoah #1941-1942 #Nazis #Jews of #Europe. #Zyklon-B

[harrison-abbott]

For the scenes filmed inside the house in Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer placed cameras around the building in stationary spots and let them record throughout the day – for the actors to them move around the place as they saw fit. Many of the indoor scenes were therefore unscripted and improvised.

This was in order to give a ‘natural’ element as to life inside the household. Glazer later analysed the footage that had been recorded all-day across each span, and selected the parts he thought would work best for the movie’s inclusion.

The scene where Hoss is stroking and kissing his horse is actually based on a biographical aspect of Hoss himself. He was known as being very kind to animals, and concerned with animal welfare.

As for the sounds that we hear in the background, beyond the walls of the camp: Glazer actually used the same technology, vis a vis ammunition and machinery, that were used by the Nazis in WWII. I.e., the gunshots that we hear in the distance were fired by the same weapons used back then, to add to the sense of realism.

In a similar sense, the scenes where we overhear the drunken German guards were taken from real drunken people in Hamburg. And those of when the French prisoners are released from the train where taken from recordings of the Paris riots in 2021.

Most of the film was actually shot next to Auschwitz. And Hoss’ house is still a real house that exists; although when Glazer visited this building, it was obviously very old: so he bought and refurbished a similar building nearby to give it a modern feel.

The garden was planted in the spring before shooting began, so that it would bloom in time for the summer, again for a sense of freshness.

Glazer spent around nine years putting research into the film before he shot it.

As for the real Hoss – he was tried at Nuremburg after the war and was executed by hanging. But nothing happened to his wife. She emigrated to the United States and lived into her 80s.

#the zone of interest #jonathan glazer

[dweemeister]

The Zone of Interest (2023, United Kingdom/Poland)

Over the last decade, English director Jonathan Glazer questioned whether it was appropriate for him to make a Holocaust movie from a Nazi perspective. Glazer, who comes from a Jewish family in north London, said that his family never spoke about the Holocaust at home, but it nevertheless loomed over their lives. His late father, when learning about Glazer’s decision to adapt Martin Amis’ novel The Zone of Interest, expressed disapproval. Yet Glazer forged ahead, his vision now complete.

I am no expert in the area of Holocaust cinema (of which there is a growing and always-controversial history) and do not profess to be a specialist of the Holocaust or Nazism. Nevertheless, I do believe it is possible to make a moral Holocaust narrative film from a Nazi point of view. Does Glazer succeed in doing so? That is a question that still perplexes me, and I am not sure if I can provide any satisfying answer. Given Glazer’s moral agonizing while making and within the visuals of this film, I am not sure if he knows either. So while I will still attempt to engage with the morality of The Zone of Interest (which, by many accounts, resembles little of Amis’ novel), this write-up’s premise will concentrate on two of the film’s goals as stated by Glazer himself.

The first is to immerse the viewer into the psychologies of Auschwitz concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel; Rudolf Höss was the longest-serving commandant of the camp) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and understand how their mindset is similar to how the viewer compartmentalizes modern-day atrocities. In these respects, Glazer succeeds. Just. Secondly, Glazer, “wanted to remove the artifice of filmmaking” in order to make as natural a film as he could, so that the audience can pay stricter attention to what is occurring on-screen. This is where The Zone of Interest falters.

It is 1943 in Nazi-occupied Poland. The Höss family lives in an estate just outside the walls of Auschwitz. Some days, the five children and their parents spend a lazy outing at a nearby riverbend, swimming and enjoying nature. At home, the Höss parents shield their children from the ugliness of the Second World War and the mass human suffering occurring just beyond the walls of the camp next door. Hedwig’s perfectly manicured garden, replete with flowers for decoration and herbs for cooking, is her escape – a world without wants. A small pool in the spacious backyard provides the children plenty of swim time. On a clear day, we can see the smoke stacks of an approaching train in the distance, soon to drop off its passengers to a place worse than hell itself. At night, Auschwitz’s crematorium spews an unearthly red – piercing the sky and sneaking past the drawn curtains of the Höss estate. And at all hours, we hear gunfire and screaming emanating from inside the camp.

Never do cinematographer Łukasz Żal’s (2014’s Ida, 2018’s Cold War) cameras show any glimpses of life within Auschwitz’s walls. None of the human suffering wrought by the Nazis appears directly in the film. We have a fleeting glimpse, obscured by foliage and for purposes unclear, of chained prisoners walking outside the camp’s walls under military escort. In another moment in the Höss household, a female prisoner comes to Rudolf Höss’ office for what is presumed to be forced sex; we never see or hear from her again, as we witness him wash his genitals (filmed from his backside) after their encounter. The particulars of what the Nazis did to the inmates of Auschwitz and the other concentration camps is for another film, Glazer says, a self-admission that he cannot hope to capture that suffering in narrative or documentary form. The decision not to show any Holocaust cinema has precedent, as seen in Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah (1985, France) – largely seen as the 566-minute magnum opus of Holocaust cinema.

Instead, Glazer is more interested in something that has become a cliché in all writings on The Zone of Interest – what philosopher Hannah Arendt deemed the “banality of evil” – in order to allow modern audiences understand their own complicity in contemporary atrocities. Writing on the 1960 trial of Adolf Eichmann (one of the crucial facilitators of the Holocaust) in Israel, Arendt’s definition of the “banality of evil” stemmed from her subject’s lack of ideological fanaticism towards Jews, coupled with his inclination towards professional progression if it meant not having to think critically about any moral issues tied to said progression.

Arendt’s definition of the “banality of evil” has been controversial ever since the publication of 1963’s Eichmann in Jerusalem – a common accusation that Arendt was trying to diminish the severity of Eichmann’s guilt (she was not). Controversies aside, The Zone of Interest, on a cinematic surface, adopts that same “banality of evil”. The Höss parents never engage in explicit anti-Semitic language or refer to Auschwitz’s inmates as subhuman. Though Rudolf washes his genitals after the presumed sexual encounter with the prisoner and Hedwig seems uneasy when going through the luxury clothes of incarcerated/deceased camp inmates, life otherwise appears normal. In a scene where Rudolf is meeting with a private contractor on a more efficient crematorium system, both Rudolf and the contractor speak not with genocidal terms, nor carefully-worded innuendos. Instead, their meeting covers only the mechanics of the proposed system, in numbers and cold engineering efficiency. Without the historical context of The Zone of Interest, that discussion might eerily fit in a plain industrial meeting (not so much a later meeting with other concentration camp commandants as they discuss an imminent influx of Hungarian Jews to their camps).

To what lengths can a person accept the rationalizations of a leadership bent on the mass slaughter of innocent people on an industrial scale? Similarly, how does one reckon with their ostensibly peaceful existence when that peace is made possible only by revolting violence just a stone’s throw away? For these questions, we never receive any answers from anybody in the Höss family or their associates depicted within this film or from history itself. They live life without examining themselves, with no hints of regrets.

With the Höss parents not providing potential answers, it then turns to the viewer to ask themselves those same questions. I do not wish to come off as a youth-basher, but younger (American) viewers will need additional context for this film, if generational rates of Holocaust denialism are to be believed. For the rest of us, can we imagine ourselves turning a blind eye or going about our daily lives knowing that our happiness rests on the oppression, subjugation, or mass murder of a people? What do you share, personally, with Rudolf and Hedwig Höss? Does The Zone of Interest, in reaction to popular Hollywood Holocaust dramas of the 1990s and 2000s (see: 1993’s Schindler’s List, 2002’s The Pianist), paint the Holocaust as a non-unique event? This is a provocative work from a filmmaker who, in the absence of a grander narrative or intentional moralizing in his work, turns all of the introspection onto the audience. Beyond that, the film in and of itself is ideologically hollow.

The other half of Jonathan Glazer’s aims for The Zone of Interest was to create a film with minimal cinematic artifice. Łukasz Żal’s unobtrusive compositions and mostly-still camera certainly help in this regard, but too often some of the interior shots of the Höss household appear as if they are coming from the corners of the room, like anachronistic security camera footage. Most anachronistic of all are the black-and-white scenes in night vision for exterior shots of a young girl leaving apples around workplaces at Auschwitz. How jarring that the most humanistic moments of The Zone of Interest appear in the most visually artificial scenes of the film. The use of a night vision camera broke whatever hold The Zone of Interest had on me, cinematically. It comes off as a needless artistic flourish, as if to impress a captive audience.

Worst of all is Mica Levi’s horrific and unlistenable score. The score, for the ten to fifteen minutes it plays (hardly a score given a 106-minute runtime), is an atonal howler that shares a close relationship with the sound mix* – to the point where numerous other film critics have conflated the two. If Glazer is attempting to dissociate his film from the artifices of cinema, I cannot think of a better encapsulation of how quickly he fails than with this collaboration with Levi. In a time when many directors are telling their composers that they do not want noticeable music (in most instances, a fundamental misunderstanding about the dramatic and emotional capabilities of film music), Levi’s score is inescapable. Its heavy sonic distortions; complete dismissal of any familiar intonation (one of Levi’s primary influences is experimental composer Harry Partch, whose music obliterates the familiar seven pitches of a diatonic scale in favor of a 43-tone scale with uneven intervals); and bizarre use of electronically-manipulated choral screaming (a kitschy musical decision that borders on the insensitive and tasteless) might perfectly set the tone for some viewers. For myself – especially the scenes shot in night vision and the moment the screen fades to red – it was a discordant distraction that, again, only served to take me out of the movie.

The best film scores have several disparate but heavily interdependent and coequal qualities: they empower, but not overtake, the comedic/dramatic and emotional power of a movie and its narrative (if a narrative is present); they should typify exemplary musicianship (in composition and performance); and the viewer should be able to hear the music. Levi and Glazer share the failure on the the first two aspects. It is only on this third aspect that Mica Levi’s work truly contributes to The Zone of Interest – a film that would be better treated without a score.

The Zone of Interest raises pertinent questions of culpability and human responsibility in reckoning with humanity at its worst. There are moments in here – mostly scenes in which the reality of the Holocaust leaves its terrible shadow over the Höss family, moments where you expect them to possibly recoil from what they are doing – that stick with me, and haunt my ruminations over how I rationalize living in a society built on violence. Crucially, The Zone of Interest is not unique in inspiring such thoughts in a person, as some are suggesting. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) and Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) also provoked a similar introspection in me – these films depict two episodes within the context of the two original sins of my home nation. And though neither of those films centralize the goodness of others (far from it), if one looks close enough, one can find the banality of good (amid more naturalistic filmmaking).

In the end, Jonathan Glazer’s treatment of The Zone of Interest buckles underneath the weight of his promise to forego the conventions of art cinema. His objectives conflict with the artistic trappings – in its cinematography, music, sound mix, and an intellectual remove from human nature that I am unsure is appropriate for this subject matter – found within. It leaves his promise utterly broken.

My rating: 5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog. Half-points are always rounded down.

* You hear nearly everything in this film. Sometimes, a little too perfectly. There are several moments in The Zone of Interest in which you hear the screams of Auschwitz’s prisoners or gunshots and they sound as if they are far too close to the Höss household than they should be. It reminded me, to paraphrase Larry Mantle on the December 15, 2023 episode of FilmWeek, of stage plays using off-stage tapes to play sounds for activities ostensibly not occurring "on stage". While that might work in a stage play, that is not the sort of comparison I wish to be making when writing on a film.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#The Zone of Interest #Jonathan Glazer #Christian Friedel #Sandra Hüller #Ralph Herforth #Daniel Holzberg #Sascha Maaz #Martin Amis #Łukasz Żal #Paul Watts #Mica Levi #Tarn Willers #Johnnie Burn #A24 #31 Days of Oscar #My Movie Odyssey

[intriguingpeoplebyangelafloyd]

IRMA GRESE

IRMA GRESE

1923-1945

GUARD AT NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS

            Irma Grese was born in Wrechen, Germany, and grew up on a farm in a hardworking family. Her mother committed suicide after she found out her father was having an affair. As a teenager, Grese became a devoted Nazi supporter after her father joined the Nazi party in 1937. She left school when she was 14 and worked on a farm, worked in retail and then as an assistant nurse. Grese and her sisters joined the League of German Girls, in the Hitler Youth even though her father forbade it. She later started working in a guard position at a concentration camp.

            Grese worked as a SS guard at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz, and served as a warden in the women’s section of Bergen-Belsen. Grese would get out of bed at 7am every morning, seven days a week, and wore a man’s SS uniform.

            During a break from work she returned home and her father beat her senseless after learning she was working for the SS and expelled her from the family home.

            In April 1945 she was at Bergen-Belsen when she was captured by the British with those who did not flee.

            Grese was one of those accused of war crimes at the Belsen trial, survivors of the camps testified against her. She was accused of torture, selecting people for the gas chambers and described as a sadist. She would walk around the camp with a plaited whip in and a gun and would kill victims for no reason. She would half starve her pet dogs so her dog would savage prisoners. She was nicknamed ‘The Beast of Belsen’.

            During the Belsen Trial, Grese stated, ‘Himmler is responsible for all that has happened, but I suppose I have as much guilt as the others above me.’ She had no regret or remorse. She listened and didn’t react to survivors testimonies. Grese was convicted of ill-treatment and murder, she was sentenced to death by hanging. She was the only prisoner to remain defiant when the verdicts were read out and her appeal was rejected.

            The night before her execution she sang Nazi hymns until the early hours of the next morning. On 13 December 1945, she was led to the gallows and her last word was, ‘Quickly’, and was executed at the age of 22 in Hamelin, Germany. She was first buried inside a prison courtyard near the execution chamber. In 1954 she was reburied in Am Wehl Cemetery, Hanover, Germany with others, in an unmarked location.

#irmagrese

#irma grese #irmagrese #history #world war II

[djacks001]

The Holocaust

The summer of 2022 marked the 80th anniversary of the first Nazi deportation of Jewish families from Germany to Auschwitz.

Welcome to candlelight Narratives, Today I am speaking on a really hard subject, one of the darker moments in world history, please don’t let these atrocities go forgotten as History likes to repeat itself.

The word Antisemitism means prejudice against Jews.

In 1879, Wilhelm Marr a journalist originated the term antisemitism, denoting the hatred of Jews, and also hatred of various liberal, cosmopolitan, and international political trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The trends under attack included equal civil rights, constitutional democracy, free trade, socialism, finance capitalism, and pacifism.

The Holocaust is history’s most extreme example of antisemitism with the persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazi regime. The Nazis, came to power in Germany in January 1933, they believed that Germans were "racially superior" and wanted to create a “racially pure” state. Jews, deemed "inferior," were considered an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

During that time German authorities also targeted and killed other groups, including their own children at times, because of their perceived racial and biological inferiority: Gypsies, Germans with disabilities, and some of the Slavic peoples (especially Poles and Russians). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

Because the Nazis advocated killing children of “unwanted” groups, children were especially vulnerable during the nazi regime.

Sadly Calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task. There is no single wartime document created by Nazi officials that spells out how many people were killed in the Holocaust across Germany much information about the tragedy has been forever lost to time, Some stories were passed down while others never got to be shared.

“Kristallnacht: what happened on the night of broken glass?

Herschel Grynszpan carried a revolver and thoughts of revenge with him as he walked through the streets of Paris on the morning of November 7, 1938. The 17-year-old German refugee had just learned that his Polish-Jewish parents, along with thousands of other Jews, had been herded into boxcars and deported from Germany. From the day Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, Antisemitism had become encoded in the governmental policies of Nazi Germany. For years, Jews experienced state-sponsored discrimination and persecution, and Grynszpan had seen enough.

The young man who had emigrated to France two years earlier walked into the German Embassy on Rue de Lille in search of the German ambassador. When Grynszpan was informed that the ambassador was out on his daily walk, he was brought in to meet with diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Pulling out his revolver, Grynszpan fired five times at vom Rath and shouted, “You are a filthy kraut, and here, in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, is your document!”

Hitler sent his personal physicians to Paris to treat vom Rath, but two days later the diplomat died from his wounds. The Nazi regime found the murder to be a welcome excuse to launch a vast pogrom against the Jews living inside its borders. Until then, Nazi policies toward the Jews, such as boycotts and deportations, had been primarily nonviolent, but that all changed in the hours after vom Rath took his last breath.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels orchestrated a “spontaneous” reaction to the political assassination. He sent a teletype message to state police stations and secret service headquarters with detailed instructions on organizing and executing a massive attack on Jewish properties. Goebbels ordered the burning of Jewish houses of worship, businesses and homes. He ordered the storm troopers to arrest as many Jews as the prisons could hold—“especially the rich ones”—and to prepare the concentration camps for their arrivals. Firemen were told to do nothing to stop the blazes unless the fires began to threaten Aryan-owned properties.

Starting in the late hours of the night of November 9, 1938, and continuing well into the next day, Nazis in Germany and Austria torched approximately 1,000 synagogues and vandalized thousands of Jewish homes, schools and businesses. Nearly 100 Jews were murdered during the violence, and approximately 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Following the night of terror, the shattered windows of vandalized Jewish businesses littered the sidewalks of Germany and Austria, which led to the rampage being known as Kristallnacht, German for “crystal night.”

After ruining their property and their temples in a murderous attack, the Nazis then made their victims pay for all the damage from the “night of broken glass.” The insurance companies paid the Jews in full, but the Nazi government confiscated all the money to pay back the insurance companies to prevent them from bankruptcy due to the catastrophic losses. The Nazis also fined Germany’s Jews $400 million for their “abominable crimes,” including the killing of vom Rath in Paris. Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, said the sanctions would ensure “the swine won’t commit another murder.”

Foreign countries issued statements of condemnation. Hugh Wilson, the American ambassador to Germany, was summoned home for “consultations” and never returned. In spite of the words, though, most countries, including the United States, kept their restrictive immigration policies against European Jews in place, and there were few ramifications for the Nazis.

A week following the assassination in Paris that was used as a pretense for the state-sponsored “spontaneous demonstration,” vom Rath’s coffin, draped with the Nazi swastika flag, was paraded through the streets of Dusseldorf as thousands of mourners raised their arms in salute of the murdered diplomat. Grynszpan was transferred from prison to prison in France until the Nazi invasion during World War II when he was extradited to Germany where he was incarcerated in a concentration camp. His ultimate fate is unknown, but he may well have been among the 6 million killed during the Holocaust, the genocide was foreshadowed on the “night of broken glass.” in November.

Although the Nazis deported hundreds of thousands of Jewish men and women, for many places where those tragic events happened, no images are known to document the crime. Surprisingly, there’s not even photographic evidence from Berlin, the Nazi capital and home to Germany’s largest Jewish community.

The lack of known images is important. Unlike in the past, historians now agree that photographs and film must be taken seriously as primary sources for their research. These sources can complement the analysis of administrative documents and survivor testimonies and thus enrich our understanding of Nazi persecution.

“JANUARY 30, 1939

Amid rising international tensions Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler tells the German public and the world that the outbreak of war would mean the end of European Jewry.

Inspired by Hitler's theories of racial struggle and the supposed "intent" of the Jews to survive and expand at the expense of Germans, the Nazis ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, staged book burnings, and enacted anti-Jewish legislation. But it was the nationwide pogroms (Kristallnacht) in 1938 and the outbreak of war in 1939 that marked the transition in Nazi racial antisemitism toward genocide. To justify the murder of the Jews both to the perpetrators and to bystanders in Germany and Europe, the Nazis used not only racist arguments but also arguments derived from older negative stereotypes, including Jews as communist subversives, war profiteers, hoarders, and as a danger to internal security because of their inherent disloyalty and opposition to the Reich.”

Jewish Deportations continued until the war started to look bad for the Nazis as the Soviets and The Americans made a push towards Berlin. Some Germans even into the Nazi ranks aided the Jews in escaping the reach of The Third Reich, Many books, and a few movies have been made about these events. As the Allies closed in on the heart of Germany. The Final solution was issued by the Nazi Party leading to the outright murder of most survivors in the work camps because Nazi leadership already knew what gruesome end awaited them all. They had watched Mussolini in Italy tortured and killed. Their former Ally The Soviets were closing in with vengeance and the only defence force remaining were The old or members of The Nazi youth, After Adolf Hitler Committed Suicide Many remaining Nazis surrendered while some Fled Germany altogether.

Investigating photos of Nazi deportations

Between 1938 and 1945, more than 200,000 people were deported from Germany, mainly to ghettos and camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.

To make pictures of Nazi deportations accessible for research and education, a group of universitys in Germany and the Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research at the University of Southern California launched the #LastSeen. This effort aims to locate, collect and analyze images of Nazi mass deportations in Germany. The deportations started with the forced expulsion of around 17,000 Jews of Polish origin in October 1938, right before the widespread antisemitic violence of Kristallnacht, and culminated in the mass deportations to Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1945.

The mass deportation targeted not only Jews, but also people with disabilities as well as tens of thousands of gypsies.

the #LastSeen Project has three main goals: first, gathering all existing pictures. These images will then be analyzed to identify the victims and perpetrators and recover the stories behind the pictures. Finally, a digital platform will provide access to all the images and unearthed information, both enabling a new level of study of this visual evidence and establishing a powerful tool against Holocaust denial. I am making this video to hopefully inform someone who may not know or perhaps remind those who know that this sad time in history did in fact happen and we must keep informed to prevent anything of the sort from happening again with any luck

When the project began, the partners were skeptical of whether they would find a significant number of never-before-seen images of mass deportations.

But after addressing the German public and querying over 1,700 German archives, the group has sense received dozens of unknown images, more then doubling the number of German towns, from 27 to over 60, where now they have photographs documenting Nazi deportations.

Many of these photos had been collecting dust on shelves in local archives in Germany while some were found in private homes. In the future, the project hopes for discoveries in archives, museums and family possession in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, South Africa and Australia. We know that liberators took photographs with them from Germany at the end of the war, and survivors received them later in various ways.

The project has already located photos in the United States. In two cases, survivors had donated them to archives, Simon Strauss gave an image to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum depicting the deportation in his German hometown of Hanau. He wrote on it, “Uncle Ludwig transported.” The second photo was at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, which had received the hitherto only known picture from the Nazi deportation of the Jews in Bad Homburg.

Naming and recognizing victims

The identities of deportees and perpetrators in the existing images are often unknown. Most photographs show groups of victims whom project staff aim to identify so they and their stories can be acknowledged. This is very difficult, since there are seldom close-up shots.

This is but one example of how scholars desperately need the public’s help to recover the stories of countless unidentified victims of the Nazis.

 I hope this presentation proves to be informative, Thank you so much for watching the video. If you enjoyed please like and subscribe to show your support.  Later guys.

Sources:

Berenbaum, Michael. "Holocaust". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Sep. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust. Accessed 2 October 2022.

The Video is right here: https://youtu.be/RcqMJJ_MhIg

[swldx]

6195Khz 0458 24 JAN 2023 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from WOOFFERTON. SINPO = 55444. English, dead carrier s/on @0458z then ID@0459z pips and newsday preview. @0501z World News anchored by Gareth Barlow. President Joe Biden is urging protests in Tennessee to remain peaceful as officials plan to release video of an arrest that led to a motorist's death. Five Memphis police officers have been fired and are facing murder charges after Tyre Nichols, 29, died three days after a traffic stop on 7 January. Bodycam footage of the encounter is expected to be released on Friday evening local time. Lawyers for the Nichols family said it will show him being severely beaten. Palestinian militants on Friday fired two rockets from the Gaza Strip towards southern Israel that were intercepted by missile defenses, and Israel then carried out strikes in Gaza. The cross-border fire came after an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday that led to the largest single death toll in years of fighting. Rebel police officers rioted in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on Thursday in protest at the killing of more than a dozen colleagues by criminal gangs. The rioting officers blame the government for not taking action. Scores of civilians and angry police officers took to the streets in Port-au-Prince to denounce the violence following the murder of two officers inside a police station in a town in northern Haiti and the execution-style killing of four more on the street outside. Some of them reportedly went to the official residence of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, Vant Bef Info said. Tracking what shoppers buy, via loyalty-card data, can help spot those with early signs of cancer, doctors who have been running a study say. Frequent purchases of over-the-counter painkillers and indigestion tablets revealed a higher risk of ovarian cancer, they found. Ovarian cancer is often diagnosed late. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the appointment of a special representative on combating Islamophobia that will advise the federal government on how to better fight discrimination against the Muslim community. Human rights activist Amira Elghawaby will be responsible for serving "as a champion, advisor, expert and representative to support and enhance" the government's efforts, the federal government said in a statement. An asteroid passed by Earth a short while ago. About the size of a minibus, the space rock, known as 2023 BU, whipped over the southern tip of South America just before 00:30am GMT. With a closest approach of 3,600km (2,200 miles), it counts as a close shave, closer than some communication satellites. Roadblocks set up across Peru by demonstrators demanding the resignation of the country's president will be dismantled, officials have said. Supporters of former President Pedro Castillo took to the streets after he was impeached and arrested for trying to dissolve Congress in December. They want his successor Dina Boluarte to quit and hold fresh elections. The ministry of the interior tweeted that "blocking communication routes is a crime" and said that 10 people had already died because ambulances could not get through roadblocks. On January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945, the world commemorates the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other Nazi victims. @0506z "Newsday" begins. MLA 30 amplified loop (powered w/8 AA rechargeable batteries ~10.8vdc), Etón e1XM. 200kW, beamAz 160°, bearing 47°. Received at Plymouth, United States, 6312KM from transmitter at Woofferton. Local time: 2258.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.30

637 – Arab–Byzantine wars: Antioch surrenders to the Rashidun Caliphate after the Battle of the Iron Bridge. 758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates. 1137 – Ranulf of Apulia defeats Roger II of Sicily at the Battle of Rignano, securing his position as duke until his death two years later. 1270 – The Eighth Crusade ends by an agreement between Charles I of Anjou (replacing his deceased brother King Louis IX of France) and the Hafsid dynasty of Tunis, Tunisia. 1340 – Reconquista: Portuguese and Castilian forces halt a Muslim invasion at the Battle of Río Salado. 1657 – Anglo-Spanish War: Spanish forces fail to retake Jamaica at the Battle of Ocho Rios. 1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Convinced that he is facing a much larger force, Prussian General von Romberg, commanding 5,300 men, surrenders the city of Stettin to 800 French soldiers. 1817 – Simón Bolívar becomes President of the Third Republic of Venezuela. 1831 – Nat Turner is arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history. 1863 – Danish Prince Vilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes. 1864 – The Treaty of Vienna is signed, by which Denmark relinquishes one province each to Prussia and Austria. 1888 – The Rudd Concession is granted by Matabeleland to agents of Cecil Rhodes. 1905 – Czar Nicholas II issues the October Manifesto, granting the Russian peoples basic civil liberties and the right to form a duma. (October 17 in the Julian calendar) 1918 – World War I: The Ottoman Empire signs the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies. 1918 – World War I: Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen, a state union of Kingdom of Hungary and Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia is abolished with decisions of Croatian and Hungarian parliaments 1920 – The Communist Party of Australia is founded in Sydney. 1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing a massive panic in some of the audience in the United States. 1941 – President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations. 1941 – Holocaust: Fifteen hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi are sent by Nazis to Bełżec extermination camp. 1942 – World War II: Lt. Tony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier drown while taking code books from the sinking German submarine U-559. 1944 – Holocaust: Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die from disease the following year, shortly before the end of WWII. 1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the baseball color line. 1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the foundation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is founded. 1948 – A luzzu fishing boat overloaded with passengers capsizes and sinks in the Gozo Channel off Qala, Gozo, Malta, killing 23 of the 27 people on board. 1953 – President Eisenhower approves the top-secret document NSC 162/2 concerning the maintenance of a strong nuclear deterrent force against the Soviet Union. 1956 – Hungarian Revolution: The government recognizes the new workers' councils. Army officer Béla Király leads an attack on the Communist Party headquarters. 1959 – Piedmont Airlines Flight 349 crashes on approach to Charlottesville–Albemarle Airport in Albemarle County, Virginia, killing 26 of the 27 on board. 1961 – The Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated. 1961 – Due to "violations of Vladimir Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin Wall with a plain granite marker. 1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus for the second time. 1975 – Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain becomes acting head of state, taking over for the country's ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco. 1975 – Forty-five people are killed when Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 450 crashes into Suchdol, Prague, while on approach to Prague Ruzyně Airport (now Václav Havel Airport Prague) in Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic). 1980 – El Salvador and Honduras agree to put the border dispute fought over in 1969's Football War before the International Court of Justice. 1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina, after seven years of military rule, are held. 1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission. 1991 – The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Madrid Conference commences in an effort to revive peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. 1995 – Quebec citizens narrowly vote (50.58% to 49.42%) in favour of remaining a province of Canada in their second referendum on national sovereignty. 2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project. 2014 – Sweden is the first European Union member state to officially recognize the State of Palestine. 2014 – Four people are killed when a Beechcraft Super King Air crashes at Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita, Kansas. 2015 – Sixty-four people are killed and more than 147 injuries after a fire in a nightclub in the Romanian capital Bucharest. 2020 – A magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, triggering a tsunami. At least 119 people die mainly due to collapsed buildings.

#Events

[confessions-of-a-paramedic]

“No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.” ~ Art Spiegelman

One of the best parts of this job, is that we get to see people at their homes from all different walks of life. Different cultures, religions, creeds and past experiences. A group of patients I have always loved speaking to, are those who served in World War II (WW2). I could sit for hours and listen to the different stories. I’ve been to patients that fought on the beaches at D-Day, flew spitfires during the Battle of Britain, Lancaster bomber crew members flying missions into Deep Germany, not forgetting those at home, children, parents civilians having to take cover in bomb shelters and the London Underground as the Luftwaffe carried out multiple bombing runs day and night. The most memorable of the lot. An Auschwitz survivor.

We got called to a flat by the patients mental health team for a concern of welfare as the patient was refusing to speak to them and hadn’t been taking his medication among other complaints. When we arrived their case worker informed us that they were a survivor of the most horrific event in world history. The holocaust. The case worker told us that the patient was terrified of people in uniform especially men in uniform. We tried to speak to the patient through the doors letterbox. While attempting to speak to the patient the police had arrived for the same reason as we were called. Thankfully, the patient opened the door and allowed us entry before the police had to resort to forcing entry and terrifying the patient. On entry I will never forget the minimalistic flat. Opening the door there was a small square corridor with 5 doors leading off. As you stepped in on the left was a small box room. Inside was a single bed perfectly made with a beige cover and cream sheet with a single pillow. On the left side as you walked in was a small dressing table and on the right was a wardrobe. On the dresser was a pair of gloves laid out with the left glove pressed on the left and the right on the, well the right. Next to them was a sock one on the left one on the right. Around them was dust clearly indicating everything has a very specific spot these items have to be laid out. In the wardrobe hung up was, a single tweed jacket, 2 white shirts and a pair of light navy trousers. The next room was the bathroom toilet, sink, bathtub. There was a small glass on the left side of the sink, a well used toothbrush laying flat in between the taps and a tube of toothpaste on the right. The bath tub had one bar of soap in a soap tray on the right side against the wall next to the tap. The next room was another bedroom but the patient used this for storage. Boxes filled the room with a small pathway filled with old newspapers, files some dated during the war years some after. Some about the holocaust and some about the Nazis being captured for their roles in the war crimes committed by the third reich. The next room was their sitting room. A single well used armchair on the right side close to the doorway wall with a old small black and white tv in the middle of the room. The far wall contained a single China cabinet with some very old and dusty China inside. The next room was their kitchen a small long room barley enough for two to walk side by side. The cupboards contained very little food just enough to get by day by day. Around the flat pined onto the walls in every room were typewriter written notes. Some states their wishes after death, some were notes about the war. An eerie but unique item.

I will never forget the moment I noticed the distinctive tattoo that was given to the people who got forced into Auschwitz. You could still make out the each individual number etched permanently into their flesh. After checking the patient over for their physical health ruling out organic causes of the presenting symptoms. We turned to manage their mental health. The patient needed to attend hospital due to their symptoms. They were a danger to themselves and risked further harm due to their own neglect. The reason the mental health team and case worker were there was to issue a mental health section. However there was no way I was forcing this person out of their property using any amount of force. I had fully committed staying their until I could convince them to come with us at their own free will. The patient started telling us about their experience during the war.

Like many they were hiding in an attic in nazi occupied territory, with their mum, dad, sister and another family. Everyday, they said they woke up feeling like this was the last day, today is the day we get caught. Unfortunately, one day the gestapo found them. The patient recalls the moment the gestapo broke down the door that lead to their hiding place as they came running into the room guns drawn pointing at them shouting at them, calling them all filth. They forced them out into the street and into trucks. The patient tells me that was the last time that they ever saw their family and the others that were in hiding. Eventually, they were loaded into a train and taken to the infamous camp. They got the famous tattoo and forced into labour. They watched multiple get murdered in front of them and the bodies left for days rotting away until the guards forced prisoners to move the bodies. They recall seeing the smoke coming from the chimneys of crematoriums daily. Wondering each day if they would be selected. Finally, they recall how the guards started shouting many people after leading large groups out of the camp. They told us how they hid in one of the cabins when the shooting stopped. They laid their for what felt like weeks until they heard Russian soldiers outside when they liberated the camp.

I have watched multiple documentaries on the holocaust, visited museums and who hasn’t watched Schindlers List. All have had their different impacts but hearing a first hand account face to face is quite frankly a privilege. The horrors endured by the victims should never be forgotten and never repeated. 

#ambulance #ambulance service #health #health care #medical #medicine #nhs #paramedic #mental health #auschwitz #world war 2 #wwii history #ww2 germany #history #genocide #concentration #culture #background #jewish

[kvetchlandia]

(In Order, Top to Bottom) Saul Loeb, Evelyn Hockstein, Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Shay Horse, Tess Owen, Uncredited, Mike Thieler, Win McNamee    Washington DC     Jan 6, 2021

A few snapshots of the charmingly pro-life, family values, law and order Trump-supporting fascist putschists who held such a heart-warming coup d’etat party at the Capitol a couple of days ago.  Lest anyone doubt their racism and their anti-Semitism please note the Confederate flags they're flying and the tee shirt proclaiming "Camp Auschwitz," and below quoting the nazi slogan that was found at the entrance to Auschwitz and other extermination camps, "Work Brings Freedom."  The dude wrapped in green in front of the Capitol is wearing the KEK neo-fascist flag around his shoulders.  In case anyone doubts the planning that went into this attempted coup d’etat, please note the image of the fascist putschist inside the Capitol Building carrying flex cuff zip ties, used to restrain people and clearly intended for hostages, not exactly an indication of spontaneity and of getting caught up in the moment.

Just another day in Trump's United States.

[lagren0uille]

I BELIEVE I’VE FAILED to mention that Democratic Kampuchea kept its seat at the United Nations until 1991, and that Pol Pot died in the jungle in 1998. In the jungle, and in his bed. And it seems so hard to try five of the regime’s top leaders, currently incarcerated in Phnom Penh, with any sort of vigor. France has yet to establish what happened inside the very walls of its embassy in April 1975 or to explain why it handed over to the Khmer Rouge various leading Cambodian officials clearly destined to be put to death. As for the United States and China, will they ever reveal the ties they maintained with that criminal regime for so long, and why?

In May 1980 the CIA produced a “demographic report” on Cambodia which denied that there had been any executions in the last two years of the Pol Pot regime. (The toll from executions in 1977–78 had in fact been around half a million people.)

I find these terrible lines, translated into French, in a book entitled Le génocide au Cambodge, 1975–1979: Race, idéologie, et pouvoir. The author, Ben Kiernan, an Australian professor at Yale University, is  the founder of the remarkable Cambodian Genocide Program at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies.

I READ CHARLOTTE DELBO’S ACCOUNTS, magnificent in their simplicity, of life and survival in the Nazi concentration camps. Here are the last lines of “The Measure of Our Days,” the final volume of her trilogy, Auschwitz and After:

A man ready to die for another that’s something to look for don’t say this any longer Beggar don’t say this anymore

I would have liked to know her. To film her. I would have liked to make a portrait of her. I believe her presence would have encouraged me. I know she carried her camp number—31661—tattooed on her forearm. I know she survived Auschwitz as well as Ravensbrück. But I came too late: she died in 1985.

ONE DAY DUCH quietly remarks, “God says that courts and tribunals are the things of men. My flesh and my blood—men can do with them what they will. As for my soul, God has already recognized my soul.” Duch’s eyes are raised to heaven. I see the young man he was, at the Lycée Sisowath and in the jungle. While my camera’s rolling, his voice is soft. The killer’s never far away.

JACQUES LACAN: “The world is hell for the man who doesn’t believe in the devil.” Duch is neither devil nor god. But the fact that he’s man, entirely man, subtracts nothing from his uniqueness. On the contrary. He’s a man who can’t be anyone else, and nobody else can be him. 

Extrait de Rithy Panh, with Christophe Bataille, The Elimination. trans. from French by John Cullen

#tw: genocide #cambodian genocide #holocaust #rithy panh #testimony #history

[girlactionfigure]

With blonde hair and blue eyes, Haika Grosman was a member of a six-woman cell whose members disguised themselves as Poles, conveying information and arms, and helping fellow Jews escape from the ghettos.

Haika had become involved in Jewish youth movements as a girl. After the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, she joined the underground. 

She was no longer living in her hometown of Bialystok when it fell under German control in June 1941. A pact between the Germans and Soviets initially placed the town under Soviet control. But the Germans broke their agreement. Two months later, the Germans forced more than 50,000 Jews into the Bialystok ghetto.

Members of the resistance inside Bialystok began planning. But factions within the group could not agree on a strategy and were warring with each other.

Haika, a natural leader, was asked to help. At age 23, she returned home and negotiated a truce. The members elected her as one of their leaders. 

Haika lived a double life, posing as a Polish Christian so she could acquire information on the “Aryan” side of the city. As “Halina Woronywicz,” she gathered weapons and smuggled them into the ghetto. She also traveled to meet with leaders of the underground in other ghettos.

In 1943, the Germans began deporting the occupants. By August, the Germans began their final push, transporting thousands to killing centers and concentration camps. Among them were more than 1,000 Jewish children who were later killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The members of the resistance inside Bialystok would not go “like sheep to the slaughter,” Haika later said. She helped lead a revolt. On the morning of the final deportation in mid-August, the resistance staged an uprising. Fighters carrying rifles, pistols, and grenades hid themselves among those carrying pillows and blankets. As the Germans surrounded the ghetto, the resistance held out for nearly a week. Hundreds of Jews died in the battle. Haika was one of more than 100 who escaped. 

She survived the Holocaust and became a leader in the newly created state of Israel. She served more than 15 years in the Israeli Knesset.

Photos: Wikipedia, Moreshet Mordechai Anilevich Memorial

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

[summahsunlight]

Worth the Risk, Part 12

Rating: Mature(18+only)

Word Count: 1707

Pairing: Army Pilot!Poe Dameron x Nurse!Reader (1940s AU)

Summary: It’s the 1940s, Army pilot and Captain Poe Dameron is flying on missions for the United States Army in Europe.  After being shot down off the coast of France, Poe wakes up in an Army hospital in England, to find you, a nurse, taking care of him. Throughout the process of his recovery, Poe finds himself falling for you, and even though you, for the most part, maintain a professional relationship with him–you’re falling for him as well. Both of you know the risks of falling in love during a war, but then again, both of you have never cared much for being cautious.

Warnings: Angst, Holocaust imagery (not graphic)

Start from the beginning!

Taglist: @fanfic-addict-98​, @thescarletknight2014​, @blushingwueen​, @americasassromanoff, @ginger-swag-rapunzel​, @spider-starry​, @totelpoedameron, @captain-america5, @liadamerondjarin​, @m1rkw00dpr1ncess​, @paintballkid711​, @justanotherblonde23​, @castiel-barnes​, @itspdameronthings​

Hello readers, I am so sorry that this part took this long. I hope you enjoy reading it! Remember the taglist is open, just comment here or send me an ask/message if you would like to be added!🥰 As I mentioned in the warnings there is some mention of the Holocaust, however it is not graphic imagery but I wanted to warn readers. 

August, 1944

It was quiet now. Earlier that day the streets of Paris had been lined with citizens cheering the Allied Forces as they rode into the city. Poe had collected so many roses from the adoring crowds that he had enough to give you two dozen.  You’d found a glass jar and they were now sitting on the small table besides your cot, the sweet smell permeating the air. 

Currently your head was resting on Poe’s bare chest, listening to his heart beat, as well as the drunk Frenchman singing outside your window.  In a few days he’d be moving out of Paris with his unit, while you would be staying behind and treating the wounded. You knew that this was coming at some point--the Army was going to station your unit in a more permanent place--and Poe would be on the move. Because of this you clung a bit more tightly to one another tonight.

“I’m gonna miss Paris.”

“Why? Because all those random girls wanted to kiss you?”

Poe chuckled and pressed his lips to your temple. “It did give a whole new meaning to French kiss.”

You playfully hit him on the shoulder and laughed. Someday, you would get to lounge in bed like this, without a care in the world--without the war right outside your window. “You’re an idiot.”

“Arana says I’m a lovable idiot.”

“True. And you’re my lovable idiot.”

His finger ghosted over your cheek, his brown eyes softening as he gazed at you with so much love in them. “Do you know for the first time since this war began I actually feel hope that we might win this? That I might actually walk away and be able to go home to the ranch and build a life with you.”

It was so easy to feel hopeful when he talked like that, you realized. Softly you played with his hair. “What’s the ranch like?”

Poe smiled, softly. “Hot.”

You returned his smile. “Hotter than the South of France in August?”

“Much hotter.”

“Can you see for miles?”

“Miles and miles of blue skies and rolling hills.”

“Are there horses?”

“Lots of horses.”

Closing your eyes you tried to imagine the ranch where Poe had grown up. You’d grown up in the city--there had been no wide open spaces or horses--other than the ones pulling carriages or police officers rode. “I always wanted my own horse when I was a little girl.”

Poe ran his fingers through your hair, heart softening at the thought of you as a child wishing for a pony.. “Do you know how to ride? I could always teach you.” 

Even thought you had not been able to have a pony when you were growing up, your parents did provide you with riding lessons. “I know how to ride but it’s been a few years--I might need a refresher course.” 

“Something to look forward too then.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I know the perfect spot on the ranch to ride out to.”

Placing a kiss on his shoulder, you smiled. Tomorrow morning both of you would be back in the thick of the war, but for now, it was just the two of you, dreaming about the future. 

Poe wrapped you tightly into his arms and kissed your temple. He was dreading having to say good-bye to you tomorrow morning but he would at least have peace of mind knowing that you were safe in Paris while he pressed on with the Army deeper into Europe.  Since taking back France there was a new sense of hope resonating with the boys--they were going to see this through to the end--they were going to win.

You fingers brushed his hair back. He’d gone back to trimming his curls since he’d left the hospital in England, but you still loved how incredibly soft his hair was. “What are you thinking about?”

A gentle smile spread across his face as he looked at you. “Just feeling incredibly hopeful.”

“Me too.”

“A year from now we’ll be on the ranch--you’ll see--it will be over, finally.”

--------

September, 1944

It wasn’t often in the last few weeks that you got to leave Paris. There was still heavy concern about Nazi troops inciting guerrilla warfare in the forests and along the country roads that led to towns and villages outside of the city. You had already been injured thanks to one sniper before--you didn’t want to go through that experience again.

However, a few volunteers had been asked to assist with the medical needs of some prisoners that had recently been freed from a Nazi camp. 

There was far less destruction out here in the countryside, although there was still evidence of war, of the Allies heavy bombing runs. Poe couldn’t talk about those, at least not with you and you weren’t sure if it was because he was sworn to secrecy or if the very idea that he could kill innocent people rendered him speechless. You surmised it was both. 

His letters that last few weeks had been short, upbeat; he would let her know if Arana was fine--still a pain in my ass, but I love him--Poe had written. 

“Lieutenant,” the driver said, pulling your attention away from daydreaming. “Did the Army give you any forewarning about what you’re going to see?”

“No,” you said with a shake of your head, suddenly feeling a pit forming in your stomach. “Is it that bad?”

“Treated them worse than animals,” the driver mumbled as pulled down a long, narrow drive that led to a stone farmhouse. “And they’re not soldiers ma’am--civilians, French civilians. The French Red Cross has been caring for them, but with the war still going on, it’s overwhelming. They asked for some help.”

Something inside of you sparked, the conversations you’d heard your father have with other men in the neighborhood when he thought you were not within earshot.  What had you agreed to expose your nurses too? Already they had seen so much--too much. 

The jeep came to a stop in front of the farmhouse. You glanced at it for a moment, a picture of the French countryside at the onset, but you knew inside.... it was a much different story. Stealing yourself, you took a deep breath and got out of the jeep. With your medical bag in hand, you headed inside to find the doctor in charge. 

It was eerily quiet. Beds lined walls with far too thin men, women, and children.  A French nurse handed you a mask, told you to put it on because they were dealing with an outbreak of influenza. Judging by the condition of the patients, this came as no surprise to you; they had no immune systems to combat even a cold. 

Slipping the mask on you, you buried your emotions and got to work. Later, when you sat down to write a letter to Poe, you’d let them all out. But for now, you had work to do.

------

Eight hours later, you found yourself hugging a toilet bowl. In all your lifetime, you had never seen people so sick, so frail, or so thin. Not even when you and your mother had traveled to rural parts of New York to help people in need during the Depression had you seen such horrendous conditions.

The Army private that had driven you to the farmhouse had been right--these people had been treated worse than animals. 

“Lieutenant?” Jess called from the other side of the door. “You okay?”

“No,” you answered, truthfully before vomiting again.

“Can I come in?”

“Enter at your own risk.”

Slowly, the. door to the bathroom opened and Jess stepped inside. She closed it behind her before speaking. “I know this probably means nothing to you--but the way you held it together today, it really helped all the girls. I don’t know how you did it.”

Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, you answered her, honestly, “I’m not sure how I did it, either. My parents helped several families get out of Germany before the war began, they told us stories but I never...I never thought it would have been like this.”

Jess sat down next to you, pressing her back against the vanity. “I don’t think anyone could have imagined it was like this, Lieutenant. How could anyone sane imagine this?”

You had to agree. Dropping back on your feet, you glanced exhausted at your friend. She looked just as drained as you; the pair of you had spent the entire day helping treat patients and listen to the ones that could communicate with you what they had been through--ripped away from their families, losing everything they owned. None of them were sure if members of their families were even alive--they had been sent away to other countries--you had heard the word Auschwitz a few times. 

“Do you think Captain Dameron is right?”

“About what?”

“The war being almost over.”

“I think he wants it to be almost over.”

“Me and him both.”

Sighing, you swallowed the sour tasting bile in your throat, wishing you could unsee the sick and dying people today. Suddenly you were feeling Poe’s absence harder than ever--you wished he was here so he could pull you into his arms and just tell you that it was going to be okay. 

Jess reached for your hand and gave it a squeeze. “Maybe you should go write to him.”

You glanced at her, incredulously. “How did you know I was even thinking about him?”

“Because if the man I was gonna marry was that good looking--I’d be thinking about him all the time as well,” she said, with a big smile.

“He is pretty cute,” you said, returning her smile. And then you both started laughing. When the laughter had died down, you rested your head on Jess’ shoulder. “Thanks, Jess. I feel better.”

“Anytime, Y/N,” Jess said, softly. “You don’t have to shoulder all this alone, especially if we’re going to be here helping these poor people for a while. We’re going to need each other to lean on.”

#my writing #star wars imagine #poe dameron imagine #poe dameron x reader #WW2 AU #100 followers celebration #worth the risk

[popolitiko]

A noose is seen on makeshift gallows as supporters of US President Donald Trump gather on the West side of the US Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021. - Donald Trump's supporters stormed a session of Congress held today, January 6, to certify Joe Biden's election win, triggering unprecedented chaos and violence at the heart of American democracy and accusations the president was attempting a coup.

The Putsch of January 6, 2021 

BY James D. Zirin | January 8, 2021

The rioters who assaulted the Capitol on January 6 were better organized than the police who were charged with protecting the imposing building, which Biden called the “citadel of liberty.”

These were not just a group of people who happened to be in Washington that day to protest Biden’s victory. There was the woman named Elizabeth from Knoxville, her eyes smarting from mace, who said she came as part of the “revolution.” There was Jake Angeli of Arizona, an actor and singer, both a QAnon and Trump supporter, carrying a bullhorn and an American flag, who, in 39-degree weather, appeared inside the building shirtless and tattooed, wearing a horned helmet and red, white and blue face paint. There was the other bearded rioter wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the chilling rubric, “Camp Auschwitz, Work Brings Freedom,” the nazi slogan that greeted arrivals at the death camp.  There was a fair share of white supremacists and racists. Someone erected a gallows with a noose in front of the Capitol Building.

This was not a demonstration; it was a desecration of our sacred democracy, a violent insurrection, aided and abetted by Trump and certain of his enablers.

Five people died as a result of the assault.

This was a well-planned enterprise.

Who financed these people?

Was it Trump’s “Stop the Steal” PAC?

Who paid their travel expenses, their hotel expense, their sustenance?

Who were the organizers?

Who assembled the small group that would storm the building, scale its hallowed walls and invade its chambers where the laws that rule us are made?

Who instructed the trespassers on how to do it, and where to go?

Many carried or wore Trump or QAnon paraphernalia. “Trump 2020” banners  or MAGA hats, the uniforms of their seditious enterprise.

Few of the male rioters were clean shaven. Was this planned also to make identification more difficult?

There is more to this than Trump’s incendiary innuendo in front of the White House exhorting the mob: “You will never take our country with weakness.” There is more to it than Trump saying to the mob of criminals, “We love you, you’re very special.”

Or Donald Trump, Jr. warning Republican members of Congress who were deserting the ship, “We’re coming for you.” Or Rudy Giuliani demanding of the same crowd “trial by combat” to settle the election.

True, Trump Jr., Giuliani, and Ivanka Trump, who had previously tweeted that the  mob were  “patriots,” denounced the violence. But all that was too little too late. It was moving a log after they had poured gasoline on the fire.

Who put up the crusty Congressman from Texas, Louie Gohmert, to start the frivolous and almost unimaginable lawsuit against Mike Pence seeking to empower him to throw the election Trump’s way?

Who crafted the wild Ted Cruz scenario to advocate a special commission to investigate an election where countless lawsuits, recounts and challenges had unearthed no evidence of the “massive fraud” Trump falsely claimed had vitiated the election?  The enablers like Cruz and Josh Hawley, the pallid senator from Missouri who wants to be president, know it is not true. Joe Biden won in a fair election. The American people rejected Donald Trump. How long do they intend to perpetuate this falsehood?

And what of our security forces?

Why was the National Guard so late to the party?   The DC and Capitol police were no match for the rioters.

One of their number posed for a selfie with the mob;

another escorted an intruder down the steps of the Capitol;

And these are but a few egregious examples. Thugs bearing flagpoles, and undoubtedly concealed weapons, breached the security of the building without serious challenge. The officers involved from the top down who were derelict in their duty must be held fully accountable.

Someone must investigate the riots and find out who was behind it, who organized and financed it and who plotted to launch this shameful attack on the institutions of our democracy—perhaps more fragile than anyone ever thought.

Is this the end? Are we to assume that the buffoons and domestic terrorists looking more like Visigoths than civilized human beings have had their fun and will now go home from their all-expense paid trip to Washington? Or will they be back?

Something like this happened not too long ago, in 1923 in Munich. It was called the “Beer Hall Putsch,” an attempted coup d’état by Hitler and his followers, which was calculated to seize the power of the Bavarian state government (and thereby launch a larger “national revolution” against the democratically elected Weimar Republic). The attempted coup failed after four police officers and 16 nazis were killed. Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for “high treason,” but was out with a pardon after less than a year. In jail, he wrote Mein Kampf. The next time round, Hitler sought election to the chancellorship. He lost, but became chancellor anyway, and the rest is history.

So what have we here? Another Beer Hall Putsch? To paraphrase Churchill, is this end of the beginning of the hooliganism and thuggery we saw in Washington, or are we in the twilight of our democracy -  the beginning of the end?  

We have a rule of law in this country on which we pride ourselves. Serious crimes were committed here, and they merit vigorous investigation and prosecution. Title 18 United States Code §1752, among other things, makes criminal disorderly or disruptive conduct with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business in any building where a person entitled top Secret Service protection is visiting…when or so that such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions. The penalty is severe, up to 10 years imprisonment. There are other more draconian criminal statutes that may be applicable as well.

But so far, relatively few of the putschists have been arrested. The new Attorney General, the distinguished jurist Merrick Garland, has vast experience prosecuting domestic terrorism cases. When he was in the Justice Department years ago, he supervised the prosecution of Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

There must be full accountability for all those responsible for this day, like another in American history, “which will live in infamy.”

https://billmoyers.com/story/the-putsch-of-january-6-2021/

#Putsch of January 6 #Capitol Insurrection

[seymour-butz-stuff]

A rioter who stormed the US Capitol Wednesday wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the phrase "Camp Auschwitz" has been identified as Robert Keith Packer of Virginia, according to three sources who spoke with CNN.

An image of Packer inside the Capitol, whose sweatshirt bore the name of the Nazi concentration camp where about 1.1 million people were killed during World War II, has evoked shock and disbelief on social media. The bottom of his shirt stated, "Work brings freedom," which is the rough translation of the phrase "Arbeit macht frei" that was on the concentration camp's gates.

Packer did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.One Virginia resident, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, described Packer as a long-time extremist who has had run-ins with the law. 

"He's been always extreme and very vocal about his beliefs," the resident said.Another source familiar with Packer described him as an "off-beat" character who has expressed frustrations with the government, though this source did not recall Packer ever talking about President Donald Trump or false allegations of voter fraud. A third source said Packer previously worked as a welder and pipe-fitter. 

Virginia court records show that Packer has a criminal history that includes three convictions for driving under the influence and a felony conviction for forging public records. In 2016, he was charged for allegedly trespassing, though that case was dismissed.

Gee I wonder why taking pictures and video of yourself while committing crimes is a bad idea.

You know, for a group who loves to pre-judge every person murdered by police by their criminal or and non-criminal history, they seem to have a lot of people with criminal records.

#2 #trump #maga #trump derangement syndrome #q #qanon #wwg1wga #camp auschwitz #currentevents

[exhaustedace]

No we are not okay. 

We saw multiple groups of nazis marching in the US capitol

We saw the police let them in and allowed nazis to take selfies with them

We saw a US representative praise hitler

We saw people wearing shirts saying 6MWE (6 million weren’t enough) and camp auschwitz 

We have seen these people attack minorities time and time again in front of the cops and the cops turn away and do nothing.

No I am not okay.

My brother has to walk in to work across the street from the state capitol building where nazis proudly stood two days ago

I am seeing people everywhere actively defending it

I do not see people speaking out of the blatant antisemitism, or see people actively telling Jews to stop talking about the antisemitism

Evangelicals and Christian groups took one of our most sacred religious items and used it to venerate Trump, the same item that we have been killed for centuries by Christians for using. 

I have had 10 people tell me to stay inside next weekend, to take down my mezuzah, to hide

Check in with your Jewish friends, your Romani friends, your LGBT friends, your POC friends. We are not okay; we are scared.

#the jews are tired #Hello yes i am pissed #tw: nazi #tw: terrorism

[andrewmoocow]

Steven Universe: The Fantastic Mutants chapter 5: Never Again (originally posted on November 16, 2020)

AN: Good to see you all again my dear readers! How have things  been? Am I being too intrusive? Well, doesn't matter! It's good to be  back in business after a few weeks, so let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

--

"So  how much of this show is actual camping?" HYDRA Bob asked Peridot as  they, along with Deadpool & Lapis, watched Camp Pining Hearts  together at the X-Mansion while surrounded by massive amounts of snack  foods and garbage. "A fair bit, but pretty much everyone comes for the  romance," Peridot answered. "Yeah," Wade stated. "like your crippling yaoi addiction."

"What is yah-oy?" Lapis asked while  mispronouncing this new word just as Pearl came in with a broom. "You really should learn how to pick up after yourselves as guests." The Gem  grumbled while sweeping up crumbs off the carpet. "Hey, wise up Pearl,  I'm basically an honorary member!" Deadpool remarked. "Hey, Flat-Top,  gimme a refill on my coke here!"

"And you should also treat the  people housing you like friends, not your servants." Colossus reminded  them, just as disgruntled as Pearl, while he gave the Merc with a Mouth another bottle of pop when suddenly, Xavier came in. "Ah, Professor!  Would you be so kind as to help us teach Wade here some manners?"

"It's alright, Piotr." Xavier calmed the metal mutant down. "Although Mr.  Wilson here can be a bit of a nuisance, we do need all the help we can  get to rescue Steven and Kitty."

"Thanks for the save Cap'n." Wade  grinned at the aged mutant when someone knocked at the window. "Hey,  anyone in there?!" the voice of Spider-Man called from outside, latching  upside down onto the glass. "Peter!" Pearl exclaimed. "Long time no  see. How are the other Avengers doing?"

"The big six are off in  space right now, and the reserves are holding down the fort for now."  The web-slinger answered as he opened the window and leaped through it.  "When your message reached us, I was the first to take it and brought  along a few pals who might be useful."

As Peter finished talking, a  silver and blue blur burst through the front doors, stopping to reveal  itself as Quicksilver. "Pietro, good to see you!" Colossus exclaimed.  "Must mean Wanda isn't too far behind, da?"

"You are correct."  Scarlet Witch answered as she followed her brother. "Hello again Crystal  Gems." She greeted the Gems. "Hello to you and Pietro too, Wanda,"  Garnet replied as she stepped into the room. "It certainly has been a  while since Thanos. I hope you both are well."

"Oh, never better  Garney!" Quicksilver responded as he sat down between Peridot &  Lapis to watch Camp Pining Hearts with them. "Ooh, I love this show! I  always felt Pierre & Percy have really good chemistry."

"Thank  you for agreeing with me good sir." Peridot added pridefully. "Oh, quit with the shit already!" Wade interjected crossly. "No one ever talks about Pierre and Paulette!"

"You take that back, you crimson clod." Peridot snarled threateningly at the mercenary and soon, an  intense shipping debate between the two began. "Oh, this could take a long while." Pearl sighed in exhaustion.

"I just watch for all the crazy shenanigans these campers get up to." Spider-Man gave his opinion while snatching some snicker-doodles from the ottoman.

--

"Come on, work!" Kitty groaned in frustration as she continuously tried and failed to break her and Steven from their imprisonment without using her mutant powers. "If only I could find a way to break this collar, then  we'd get outta here easier."

"Why don't I give it a shot?" Steven  suggested, deciding to use his shield to cut the bars apart. However, that failed as well. "It's hopeless. If I didn't come, then maybe we wouldn't be stuck here."

"Hey, don't beat yourself up like that  Steven." Kitty comforted her fellow mutant. "I'm sure the Gems are  already on their way to save us, so try and keep your chin up until  then." She implored Steven, but he remained downtrodden. "Let's face it;  we're here because of my mom."

"Oh, mother issues?" Kitty  realized. "I get it. That's perfectly normal. But you can't always let  the sins of the parent bring you down." She assured him. "Yeah, sins  like taking part in universal genocide before realizing that wasn't good  and instead doing things far worse than that." Steven grumbled, much to  her surprise. "Whoa okay, didn't see that coming!" Kitty exclaimed.  "Far worse how? Did she actually murder someone?"

"She  deliberately left tons of Gems and other races to die for her just  because she was bored of being Pink Diamond, let two of my friends to be  imprisoned for thousands of years, forced Gems who cared for her to  suffer from her faked death and who knows what else!" Steven complained.  "And then there was that whole thing with Magneto."

As if on cue,  the aforementioned leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants stepped into  the brig to interrogate them. "I see you've been making yourselves at  home while you could." He declared before grabbing Steven by the shirt  collar through the cell bars. "Tell me boy, why do you have her  gemstone? Was it passed down to you?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."  Steven answered. "When I was born, my mom died to give birth to me, and I  got her gemstone and all her powers as a result. She also left me with  all her baggage from ages ago, including when she was once a member of  the Great Diamond Authority."

"Great Diamond Authority?" Magneto  wondered, and Kitty seemed just as confused. "Yeah, I have to agree.  There are more Diamonds out there?"

"That's not important right  now," Steven said before Magneto set him down. "Still, why go after me in particular? We're both mutants. We should be on the same side!"

"You already know about how Rose abandoned me at Auschwitz, but the Gems only told you half the story," Erik revealed, turning away from Steven  & Kitty in the process. "My part of this tale is far more complex  than you realize. Like many a Jew during the war, I was prosecuted by  the Nazis for my religion and sentenced to death. But I was a special  case."

--

Heavy rain poured upon  Poland in 1944 as a large group of imprisoned Jews marched sorrowfully  through Auschwitz, their world nothing but drab colors aside from the  bright yellow Star of David on their clothes signifying their religion.  All around them, more of their people were forced to perform possibly  lethal jobs for their superiors and be treated horribly should they fail  to work or try to resist.

One young man in particular named Erik  Lehnsherr watched just as miserably as his fellow Jews and began to  notice that many of the other prisoners had brands on their arms. As  soldiers began coldly leading their prisoners away from the group,  Erik's parents Edie & Jacob were forcefully separated like the rest  from their son, with Edie being particularly hysterical about having to  leave her child.

Erik raced after his parents in an effort to see  them one last time, but the gates closed before he could get a chance,  and another Nazi grabbed the boy to keep him under control. However,  something miraculous happened. When Erik fruitlessly reached out towards  the gate, it began bending towards him. Another Nazi aided his fellow  soldier in detaining the boy, and two more raced towards him as the  fence began twisting more and more.

Erik's mutant powers awakened  that day as the gates were ripped open with a mere stretch of his hand,  but he was quickly stopped with the butt of a gun to his head from a  fifth soldier. "Bring ihn zu Dr. Schmidt." that soldier commanded his  subordinates. The four Nazis nodded and dragged the unconscious boy  away, to where his destiny would soon be realized.

--

"And  that's where you first met his mom, right?" Kitty asked her captor.  "Yeah, I don't think we need to hear how she ditched you again."

"As I stated, the story is much deeper than that," Magneto said. "Allow me to continue."

--

Soon,  HYDRA had come to assist the Nazis in stopping the Howling Commandos  and the Crystal Gems from instigating the Auschwitz breakout. As Rose  began fighting off soldiers, she began counting off the fleeing Jews.  "Let me see how many we got," Rose muttered while trying to do a  headcount. "Agh, there's too many of them! I can barely keep count when  I'm surrounded like this!"

"Less than a million!" Garnet counted  for her leader with her future vision. "However, there are still a few  that we were too late to save, namely the Lehnsherr family. Klaus  Schmidt is holding their son Erik."

"Klaus?" Rose soon came to a  realization. "That was the boy in the office! I have to go ba-" Before  Rose could finish, a HYDRA enforcer took advantage of her letting her  guard down and fired with an anti-Gem weapon, poofing her form.

"Rose!"  Pearl exclaimed while rushing to the deactivated gem lying on the  ground. While Captain America covered for them with his shield, the Gems  made a hasty retreat. "But what about those other Jews?!" Amethyst  exclaimed. "A few prisoners should take this from here." Garnet  answered, just as the Sonderkommando charged at their captors with guns,  knives, axes, and grenades.

Inside the building where Klaus  Schmidt was stationed, the mutant Jew slithered around the hall to avoid  being caught again. Nazis raced outside to combat without once taking  notice of the boy making his escape. Taking a moment to peek outside the  window, he noticed the Gems escaping the concentration camp and  furrowed his brow angrily. "Sie haben mich verlassen."

As the  warfare continued, Erik quietly made his getaway with his newly awakened  mutant powers and used a wrecked chain fence to fly himself away from  Auschwitz.

--

Many years later in  1963, Magneto was holding a demonstration in New York to make a speech  about the superiority of mutants when she showed up again. Rose Quartz  had decided to show her face to him again after leaving him to rot all  those years ago in Auschwitz, and only now, she shows up with an excuse  to try and make peace.

"You can try to rope yourself into my good  graces all you want Gems," he growled, preparing to fight the Crystal  Gems. "But nothing can ever change the past!"

Ripping a nearby  water tower off its supports, Erik prepared to smash it on top of Rose,  Garnet & Pearl, but then came a loud shriek coming from the Irish  mutant Sean Cassidy, aka Banshee. "Top o' the mornin' to you ladies!"  Banshee exclaimed and let out another scream that brought the master of  magnetism to the ground. "Now Neal!"

"I got you!" the Indian  pyrokinetic Neal Shaara, or Thunderbird to his teammates, boomed while  turning his body into plasma and landing a few hits on Magneto, but the  German fought back by expanding a force-field that pushed him back.  "Longshot, Angel, Mimic, it's all you now!"

"You got it!" Longshot  replied while standing on a rooftop with Mimic and Angel Salvadore and  preparing to throw a large knife at Magneto. "Just got one shot at  this." He muttered to himself just as Amethyst hopped up behind him.  "Hey, what you guys doing?" she asked the three mutants, catching  Longshot off-guard. "Do you mind squirt?!" Longshot barked, but then he  noticed her gem. "Say, you wouldn't happen to know those three, right?"

"We  can discuss it later!" Angel said while sprouting fly-like wings and  flying off. "Hey, wait for me!" Mimic exclaimed, copying his teammate's  power by growing insect wings of his own and soaring after her.

"You  guys wouldn't happen to be like ol' Maggy over there?" Amethyst  continued asking Longshot, who harshly shushed her while trying to keep  his concentration. "Okay, sheesh!"

"Now Longshot!" Banshee  exclaimed as he let out a loud shriek at Magneto to knock him  off-balance, allowing Longshot to fling his knife at the evil mutant.  But Erik stopped the blade before it could reach his face with his  powers and threw it right at Pearl with a wicked grin.

"Pearl,  no!" Rose cried out as she dove in front of her confidant, letting the  knife stab her instead, causing her to ultimately poof and retreat into her gem.

"Rose!" the remaining Gems shouted, racing to protect  their leader's inactive gemstone from Magneto. "Well, that should do  nicely for now." He snidely muttered. "But know this Crystal Gems, we  shall meet again someday soon. Even if we have to wait years to do so!"

With  that, Magneto zoomed off into the sky and left the Crystal Gems &  the X-Men below. "So, sorry about letting your boss end up like this."  Longshot nervously apologized. "That was my knife he threw at her after  all."

"It's alright. Rose will recover soon." Garnet assured the mutant. "By the way, I didn't get your name."

"Call  me Longshot, leader of the X-Men!" Longshot proudly replied. "These are  my teammates; Banshee, Mimic, Angel Salvadore, and Thunderbird. We're  all mutants."

"It is a pleasure to meet you." Thunderbird greeted,  extending a hand to Pearl. "Mutants? I think I remember meeting one, centuries ago." Pearl replied, shaking Neal's hand. "You wouldn't happen  to know anyone named En Sabah Nur?"

This revelation caused the  X-Men to gasp in shock. "Wait, you met Apocalypse?!" Mimic cried. "Let  me guess, you guys know him as a real bad guy?" Amethyst quipped. "Yeah,  he's about yay tall, superiority complex, total Darwinist." Angel  replied. "Come along. We can tell you more about him."

"And maybe  we'll introduce you to the professor too." Banshee added happily. "We'd  be glad to meet your professor." Pearl agreed, and Garnet & Amethyst  nodded as well.

--

"So that's how the  Gems met Xavier!" Steven realized. "But how come you remember that last  bit happening? You left after poofing Rose."

"Don't think about  it." Magneto assured him. "And now that I have you in our clutches,  watching Doctor Doom experiment on you will be so satisfying."

"But still, you can't just vent your vengeance on a kid!" Kitty exclaimed.

"Yeah,  this isn't what Xavier would want!" Steven replied, forcing Magneto to  drop his stoic façade. "He knows you can be better than this, barring  the terrorism. You're both on the same wavelength when it comes to  protecting mutants, but kidnapping one of your own for your own sake is  just wrong!"

"Y'know, that does seem like something Charles would  say. Though he would've said it better." Magneto relented, pressing a button on the cell to let Steven and Kitty out. "Fight them off while  you still can children. I shall take the blame myself."

"Okay Steven, let's get outta here!" Kitty declared excitedly. "And no matter what happens, I got your back!"

"Actually  Kit, I think I got yours." Steven replied, just as another door opened,  and Mystique stepped into the brig. "Erik! Why have you let the  prisoners out?" she asked Magneto. "It was the boy who convinced me."  Erik revealed. "As it turns out, he's quite good at turning people to  his side."

"Well, you're too late child." Mystique said to Steven. "We have finally landed in Latveria."

--

The  Crystal Gems, X-Men, Fantastic Four, X-Force, Spider-Man, Scarlet  Witch, and Quicksilver all marched to the Blackbird, ready to go out to  Latveria and save Steven & Kitty. Human Torch and Cyclops were in  charge of piloting the plane while Xavier planted his wheelchair in the  back.

"So tell us what we're in for Reed." Garnet asked Mister  Fantastic, who gave a sharp sigh of regret. "You should know by now that  Doctor Doom is our family's greatest adversary. Intelligence on par  with my own, mastery of the mystic arts, psionic abilities, the works."  Reed explained. "But what I'm sure you probably don't know yet was that  we knew Doom long before he turned out like this."

--

"Victor,  have you gone mad?!" a younger Reed yelled at his college classmate  Victor, who was standing in front of a large machine generating an  unstable portal. "This machine is highly unstable and could explode at  any moment!"

"I do not care what it takes, Richards!" the man who  would be king of Latveria cried as the machine was on the verge of  self-destructing. "This is the only way I can see my mother again!"

"Hey  Stretch, we got everyone outta here!" Ben Grimm, back then a normal  human being instead of a large rock creature, called for his classmate  while he, Johnny and Sue burst into the laboratory. "You gotta come with  us!"

"No Reed, we can see our mothers again, together!" Doom  tried convincing his rival. Reed hesitated for a moment, weighing his  options between escaping with his friends or getting to see his late  mother Evelyn again. But as he made his decision, he turned away from  Victor. "I'm sorry Vic. But I've moved on."

"How dare you?!"  Victor screeched, while his four contemporaries fled the scene. "Don't  you dare run away! We could've been something more!" Just then, the  portal machine has just about reached its boiling point, and caused the  lab to explode with Doom inside. The last thing he said before the room  collapsed on him was a scream of "RIIIIIIIIICHAAAAAAAARDS!"

--

"Never  saw him again after that incident. Ol' Iron Mask got expelled, then he  just vanished offa the face of the planet." Ben regaled in the present  day. "That is until he re-emerged as some young upstart billionaire  named Victor Domashev, who funded the space flight that made us into the  Four we are today."

"Hey guys, less backstory, more blasting  off!" Amethyst snapped her fingers. "Pretty sure Steven might be on his  way to being dissected by now!"

"Yeah, and a certain author friend  of ours wants to get this out as quickly as possible." Deadpool agreed,  his medium-aware comment inciting odd stares from the others. "Can we  move onto the next scene already?!"

--

As  Mystique had declared, Steven was now in the European country of  Latveria, famously ruled by the Fantastic Four's arch-nemesis Victor von  Doom. He and Kitty were led through the aesthetically medieval capital  city Doomstadt, where its citizens whispered in German, Hungarian and an  unknown third language reminiscent of the latter dialect.

"Victor, we have brought the child. And an unwanted guest." Mystique announced  in front of Doom's castle as they crossed the drawbridge. The castle was  guarded by numerous robot soldiers that bore Doom's face, all of them  giving Steven cold and unfeeling glares as he was finally brought before the man who's face the robots bore.

"Steven Universe." Doctor  Doom boomed, resting on his throne while the boy was handcuffed in front of him. "I have heard much about you these past few months child. Erik,  I must commend you for getting the job done, although I've heard of  your possible betrayal and won't tolerate it." Then Doom turned to  Mystique. "Thank you Ms. Darkholme for alerting me of this before you  arrived.

"You are most kind Doctor." Mystique thanked him with a bow. "We hope you return your end of the bargain and grant us mutants  sanctuary in Latveria."

"Raven, you must listen!" Magneto cried to  his second in command. "This boy calls himself a mutant, just like us!  We can't just let Victor experiment on him like this. What if he has  something else planned?!"

"SILENCE!" the king of Latveria roared.  "It seems this child has made you soft Mr. Lehnsherr. No matter." He  rose from his throne and stepped towards Steven & Kitty to give them  a good look. "He shall become useful to me soon. And as for the girl, take her away."

"Yes your Highness." Mystique complied, snapping her fingers to have Juggernaut take Kitty away.

"Hey,  put me down!" Kitty hissed, struggling to break free from the massive  mutant's hands, which was easier said than done since her powers were  still restrained. "Don't worry Steven, I'll find a way to save you!"

"Ah  shaddup!" Juggernaut groaned loudly, stuffing a big finger inside the  smaller girl's mouth to keep her quiet when Mystique put a hand on his  bicep. "And what do you want Bluey?"

"It's about Erik. We may  resort to terrorism to fight for mutant rights, but I think allowing a  child to be experimented on may be going a bit too far." Raven whispered  to Cain while they moved farther away from Doom. "Besides, he is a  mutant much like us."

"So I've heard." The Juggernaut muttered. "But shouldn't he count more as an alien because his momma was one?"

When  the Brotherhood mutants left the throne room, Steven was left all alone  with Magneto and Doom. "What do you want with me Doom?" Steven asked the king. "Was it really necessary to have the Brotherhood kidnap me  when you could've had your robots do it?"

"Why I couldn't have  just sent my Doombots doesn't matter." Doom declared. "But what does  matter is what I want to do to you. You see, you're special Steven, as  you probably know. A being who's a mixture of human and alien DNA, and  that alien DNA might prove very important to me." He explained to  Steven. "I wish to use those genes for my own ends. Perhaps make an army  of similar beings, or perhaps become part-Gem myself to gain ultimate  power! Which is why I chose you in particular."

"Doctor, an  invading ship is approaching Doomstadt." A Doombot announced as it  walked into the throne room. "Shall we send out the reinforcements you  selected?"

"You may, #1961." Doom replied, pressing a few buttons on his arms that opened a door, and behind it were four supervillains.

Trapster, a man in goggles with a container of glue-like substance on his back, attached to a hose with a gun at the end.

Mole Man, a deformed midget in a green suit with a blue visor who was holding a staff in his hand.

The  Puppet Master, a bald, dark-skinned man accompanied by a pair of  human-sized marionettes in the shape of the Human Torch and the Thing,  that he controlled with a special remote.

And the Wizard, a purple armor-wearing supergenius who floated in the air with special anti-gravity discs.

"Frightful  Four, it seems we have some uninvited guests." Doom revealed to the  four villains. "I insist you deal with them at once, while I make my  little guest here at home."

"Yes Doctor." The Frightful Four said  in unison, then the marched out of the throne room to battle. Once again  Steven was alone in the throne room with Victor & Erik, and the  former was all too eager to get things started.

"Now then, shall we begin testing?" Doom asked Steven maliciously, and Steven replied with a very nervous gulp.

--

After  three months of work, it's finally done! We're getting close to the end  of this guys, and I couldn't be more excited. But for now, I think I'm  gonna take a little break to focus on college stuff for a bit, and I'll  be back soon with not just a new chapter, but also a brand spankin' new  Steven Universe tale I've had on the brain for a while. It's an AU  rewrite of Steven Universe Future aptly named Steven Universe: Alternate  Future. If you want to know more about this upcoming series, I've  already got an entire episode list on my DeviantArt page along with  drawings of some original characters created for it. Until we meet  again, toodle-oo!

In Loving Memory of Sean Connery

1930-2020

& Alex Trebek

1940-2020

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