By any means necessary

[sarisataka]

?

[Ms. Toad]

1. Context? n/t

[madaboutharry]

2. Those are the shoes of dead Jews.

That’s the context.

[Ms. Toad]

6. They could just as easily have been the shoes of Palestinians,

The shoes of children lost to gun violence.
The shoes in support of climate change activism

Or any other number of memorials or protests I am aware of which have relied on shoes to represent people whose lives have been lost.

That's why it's important to include context, not just images.

[madaboutharry]

7. They are shoes that are 80 years old.

One can easily see they are shoes from the 1940’s and the shoes of the Jews murdered by the Nazis.

Your response speaks volumes.

[Ms. Toad]

8. Posting a picture without providing a single word of context

says volumes.

No you can't easily see the shoes are from the 1940s. They are certainly distressed shoes - and being 80 years old is certainly one explanation for their state, but hardly the only one. Nor does anything about the style of the shoes scream 1940s.

It's pretty rude to expect people to be mind readers.

[MineralMan]

17. Is it ridiculous to expect people to be familiar with

iconic photos taken after the Holocaust? I don't think it is.

[Ms. Toad]

23. Yes it is ridiculous to expect people to make assumptions about what the photo is that you are posting (or why)

Not every photo is what it appears to be.

It is particularly ridiculous when you pair it with another photo that is obviously not from the holocaust.

[MineralMan]

26. And yet, many people in this thread, like me, recognized

that image for what it was. You did not. You could have searched on that image and discovered immediately what it was, but you did not.

Instead, you scolded the poster for not explaining to you what the symbolism of the two photos was supposed to represent.

I cannot imagine anyone who is over about 30 years old who has not been exposed to that and other photos that are symbolic of the Holocaust. I suppose it's possible, but I can't imagine it. It was one of the most important events in modern history, and something we all need to fully understand. I hope you understand better now.

[Ms. Toad]

29. I requested context. That is hardly scolding the OP..

The comments I made suggesting that I did expect some context were in response to people, like you, who scolded me for not making assumptions (or doing independent research.

I understand the holocaust perfectly well. And I have not only seen photos of holocaust shoes before, I have seen them in person.

That does NOT mean that I am going to assume they are the subject of the photo posted by the OP, when I have seen similar shoes that were not connected to the holocaust, or when the OP connected the image to a different photo that had no apparent connection to the first photo (or to the holocaust). In those circumstances, I am going to politely ask for context - as I did.

On a discussion board, it is very reasonable to expect that a person posting a thread with apparently random photos unconnected to each other provide some context - what they are (at a minimum) and preferably also what they were trying to commuicate with them.

As for others who recognized them - maybe, maybe not. They were all (or nearly all) posted AFTER an explanation was provided. My request for context was the FIRST response to the thread.

[Wednesdays]

25. I had no idea what that was beyond it was a bunch of shoes.

And I've sung the Kol Nidre at my local Temple at Yom Kippur.

[MineralMan]

27. You haven't read any books about the Holocaust that

included photos? Oh, well...

[Happy Hoosier]

10. But they aren't

They are the shoes of Jews systematically murdered.

[Ms. Toad]

13. Unfortunately, the OP chose not to provide any explanation of the images posted.

I'm not a mind reader, so I asked for context.

[Happy Hoosier]

14. And lthat's the source of much of the difficulty

Too many people have forgotten or falt out do not know thew context of what was happening in The Madate of Palestine in 1948.

The Jews were fleeing Europe.... not "colonizing" Palestine. 6,000,000 of them had been systematically murdered and most of the rest of Europe didn;t want them.

Too many people forget that, or never knew it.

[MineralMan]

18. Apparently not a student of history, either.

How can you not have seen that photo before, if you're over 30 years old?

Here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=auschwitz+shoes

or https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/auschwitz-shoes

[Ms. Toad]

20. I don't make assumptions about what photos are, even if I have seem similar photos in the past.

The two photos have no obvious connection to each other given the absence of any explanation by the OP, and the second was obviously not a photo of the holocaust. I zoomed in on the second and wasn't able to read any explanation in the second on any of the signs at what appears to be a protest that would have connected it to the first photo. And, as noted, shoes (including old, distressed shoes) are often used as stand-ins for people in memorials or protests. I've seen a few in person, as well as being aware of several others.

How hard is it to explain what it is you are posting (or including a link, as you did) so readers aren't required to guess?

[MineralMan]

21. Yes, Clearly You Don't.

However, if you think about what the protest was about and who it was about, it might have rung a bell in your mind. It did in mine.

[Ms. Toad]

24. At the time the thread was posted I had no idea what the second photo was about.

It appeared to be a protest, although looks could be deceiving there as well. As I noted, I zoomed in and there was nothing in the second image that told me what the event that I assmed was a protest was about - and the OP didn't bother to provide an explanation for that image either. And, as noted, there was no obvious connectoion between the two images.

[sarisataka]

4. The shoes are a display

In one of the Holocaust museums. You probably know what happened to the owners.

The lower photo is from the protests at Columbia University

[brooklynite]

5. This is from the anti-Israel protests at Columbia University...

They're not being subtle.

[MineralMan]

22. Exactly.

[MineralMan]

16. Well, I recognized that photo of those shoes. Immediately.

I've seen the photo before. However, if you haven't, just right click the image and do a Google image search. That will immediately identify the photo and lead you to more information.

That you did not recognize the photo does not mean that it is not widely known and understood. It only means that you have never seen it before, perhaps.

It is a photo that is famous, regarding the Holocaust.

[stopdiggin]

3. this kind of language makes the skin crawl

precisely because there are always a handful that truly believe it.

[Celerity]

11. By any means necessary is an English phrase or a translation of a French phrase that has been attributed to at least

three famous sources. The earliest of these three sources is French leftist intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1948 play Dirty Hands where he used a French equivalent of the phrase. The second is Martinican anticolonialist intellectual Frantz Fanon who used another French equivalent of the phrase in his 1960 address to the Positive Action Conference in Accra, Ghana. The English phrase entered American civil rights culture through a speech given by Muslim minister Malcolm X at the Organization of Afro-American Unity's founding rally on 28 June 1964 in Manhattan, New York.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_any_means_necessary

Jean-Paul Sartre

Frantz Fanon

Malcolm X

This poster, based on a famous photograph from Ebony, popularized the slogan.

[stopdiggin]

12. and yet, so easily understood (and more to the point, co-opted)

by every dead-ender, fascist and fanatic - from here to kingdom come.

[TexasDem69]

9. Hamas is a spiritual descendant of the Einsatzgruppen

And promotes the precise same goals using the same tools—rape, murder and kidnapping.

[sarisataka]

15. And an alarming number of protesters

Are reviving the spirit and methods of the Sturmabteilung

[MuseRider]

19. That is the point

I left the museum in D.C.

I was teetering from the beginning but the piles of teeth, jewlery etc. towards, I guess the middle of the museum, was really getting to me but when I came upon the piles of little childrens shoes I looked at my husband and told him I would be outside waiting.

Piles of blankets stolen from the tribes leaving them to freeze or taken after they were wiped out. How many of these situations have happened? Pictures and stories about women who died because of their health care issues in this country. Children ripped from their parents and put in detention with little to no hope of ever being reunited. I posted without the last situation I wanted to mention. Being the wrong color. How in the hell did we ever and do we ever react like we do? It seems that more and more I have to sign out or quit watching or listening because it makes me shake and feel the desire to react like they did. Gotta go, I made myself upset again.

There is something seriously wrong with us, no matter who it is that is "enemy" this will never fix the problem.

[MineralMan]

28. Ignorance of history is what is wrong with some of us.

That's inexplicable to me. How can so many not know? Ugh!

[JustAnotherGen]

30. Deliberate Ignorance

I think people choose NOT to understand. They've remembered a fact - but never let the horror in.

[MineralMan]

31. I remember seeing Holocaust images in magazines

like Look and Life and Saturday Evening Post as a child in the 1950s. In fact, I cannot forget them. My parents, bless their hearts, never hid anything from me, so I looked through every magazine that came to our door. That's how I learned to read. Images like those are burned into my brain.

That's why I'm so surprised when an adult appears to be unfamiliar with such things. How can that be?

[JustAnotherGen]

33. I don't know

After spending my formative years in West Germany, and coming back to the USA and watching a documentary on the Holocaust when I was about 7 or 8 . . . my parents had to bring up to me that some of those elderly drinking club buddies of my dad were involved in it. And that the nice man who would give my brother and me oversized gummies went to prison for his involvement, as well as the club purchased German Shepherd (Duke) they gave our family because they were terribly worried about the Communist threats and terrorism directed towards American Military in West Germany at that time.

I'm 51 - born well after the Holocaust - and had direct interaction with its perpetrators as a kid. My two nieces that live in Germany (14 and 11) have this as basic history from a very young age.

I'm stunned that this cultural 'reference' is lost on anyone. And this goes to WHAT Millenials and younger have been/were taught.

[MineralMan]

34. Yes. Maybe we have stopped teaching children about it now...

I don't know. I certainly learned about it at an early age, but then, my father was a B-17 pilot during the war...Didn't like Nazis one bit.

[Behind the Aegis]

32. Deliberate? Yes. Ignorance? Feigned.