So, there's this photo nagging at me.

[Sapphocrat]

So, there I am, digging deep into the Library of Congress online photo archives, searching for some specific WWII images I want to use in my currently-in-progress video, and I come to the concentration-camp pictures. I hesitate; I'm vaguely aware that my heart rate has gone up. I take a deep breath.

Even though I can look at the worst crime scene photos without batting an eye, I have an over-the-top reaction to Holocaust pictures. Many years ago, I taped "Schindler's List" off cable while I slept, and in the morning I took the tape out of the VCR, labeled it, put it back in its box, and slid it onto the shelf. I knew when I taped it that I wasn't ready to watch it, and I didn't know when I would be ready. I thought perhaps six months, maybe a year.

That tape sat on the shelf for ten years before I finally watched it.

No doubt my uncontrollably visceral reaction to Holocaust images has much to do with the fact that when I was in the third grade (third grade! eight years old!) they had us watch that torturous footage taken after the liberation of the camps -- that grainy, black and white film of the bones in the ovens, the decaying corpses being carried by the defeated captors to the mass graves, the bodies of would-be escapees left hanging on the barbed-wire fences right where they had been shot, frozen in the exact moment of death.

But I have a job to do, and that's more important than my gut reaction. So I swallow, grit my teeth, pour a glass of wine, and dig in.

And there are the all-too-familiar photos of the gaunt, emaciated Jews with barely enough strength to look up from their packed-like-sardine bunks, and there are the bones in the ovens, and...

And the real thing makes "Schindler's List" look like a Disney movie.

But those pictures I was prepared for (as best as one can be prepared to revisit one's nightmares). And then I came across this relatively innocuous-sounding link described as:

"Prisoners in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, December 19, 1938."

So I click the link, and promptly burst into tears -- partly because of what jumps right off the screen at me, and partly because the description (which I'm sure was written at the time the photo was taken) ever-so-judiciously avoids mention of the very thing that sends a sharp, stabbing pain through my chest.

Why do I want to share this with you? Because I think that you may find a use for it at some point in the future. Because it is proof that it did happen, and we are not making shit up. Because sometimes people people don't believe it happened on such a scale. Because so many are in such denial it could ever happen again. Because I'm so very angry at those who dismiss our very real fears. Because I can't sleep until I show this to someone else. Because... Just because.

But maybe I don't need to explain why. Just bookmark it for future reference, will you? I have -- and I am considering scaling it down and using it in my sig line.

Don't worry -- there are no dead bodies in this picture. But the facial expressions... Death would have been so much easier.

If you're ready, click the link:

The picture that won't let me sleep

[dubeskin]

1. Now I'm curious, but afraid

My. Wow. Now I don't want to go to sleep. That is a powerful image. One can only imagine, and yet not, what those men were thinking when that photo was taken...

[sui generis]

11. my "would have been" uncle

died in Dachau at 14 of "pneumonia" in a medical experiment. A lonely boy who suffered from depression, he had told a school counselor that he thought he preferred the company of men, and they wrote that down and at some point they rounded up the "inferior" students and hauled them off.

My grandfather survived Dachau twice. Ironically, my ex's grandfather was at the liberation of Dachau.

It should humble each of us that relatively decent Germans throughout Germany heard rumors, sometimes incontrovertible proof, about what was really happening and blinked and went on with their daily lives, just as we do today when we hear about 655,000 Iraqis dying.

[readmoreoften]

2. If that pic bothers you I don't suggest the documentary Paragraph 175

German men (Jews and non-Jews) discuss being raped, brutalized, and watching their lovers die. The Jewish men are, oddly enough, more well-adjusted because when they escaped the camps, they had the support and understanding of their families and communities. The German men were absolutely destroyed. They escaped to their Nazi families who were ashamed of them, and then, after surviving the camps, undergoing medical tests, torture and watching the mass murder of their friends and loved ones, they had to go live in silence among the Nazis and never speak of their torture for the rest of their lives.

The sight of 80-90 year old men discussing their torture in the camps for the first time in their lives, breaking down into convulsive sobs, one even screaming about in french "my ass still bleeds every from what they did to me!" It is not for the faint of heart.

I grew up with a Jewish father who was completley traumatized by the Holocaust to the point of mental breakdown so I'm not naive to it, but Paragraph 175 was one of the hardest things I've ever had to watch.

[Sapphocrat]

5. I haven't watched it, and I don't think I can.

I've read endlessly about Paragraph 175, but I don't think I will ever be able to bring myself to watch the doco.

I used to think I was copping out by not watching such films -- it was a should feeling -- but I realize I'm not one of those who needs to; I already get it, in an innate way (know what I mean?)... even though my family was out of Europe long before even the Austrian beer-hall takeover. (And thank goodness they were, or half of them would have been drafted into Mussolini's army -- and then imagine my guilt!)

Geez, Jewish father and you're queer. Talk about a double hit. (If I may ask, RMO, was your father's experience firsthand, or was it his parents...? No reason -- just interested.)

Shaking-head-reflection moment: I don't know if I'm sadder or angrier right now over those who cry victim when they have no idea what real victimization is. No idea. None. *deep sigh*

[AIJ Alom]

3. I wish in my heart of hearts I could say never again...but it has

happened again and again. Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and dozen other times. Wholesale genocide that unintentionally sells our humanity along with it.

[unsavedtrash]

4. someone made you watch Night and Fog in the third grade?

I have seen college aged kids who were unable to sit through it. I am curious about the project you are working on as my undergrad is in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. As for those who do not believe, ask IBM, ask Henry Ford. Remember S. List was presented commercial free by the Ford Foundation, well there was a reason. The work that I do, and the nightmare I have about the films, and pictures I have seen are fine if I can help educate others about genocide so maybe one day when someone says, "Never Again" it will actually be true.

[Sapphocrat]

7. Yes.

I started to write you a long, involved reply, but realized my perspective on all this is probably best kept to PMs or email, so if you'd like the full story (which involves an impressionable little girl's experience with the American branch of the "Magdalene Sisters"), PM me and I'll give you my email.

Suffice to say, it seems very strange in retrospect, but the truth is that no matter how sheltered I think I was as a Catholic-school kid, the nuns never shielded us from the harshest truths. And so at the tender age of eight, we sat, jaws on our chests, through the whole film. It was neither the first nor the last such shockfest; I'm sure we might have emerged less scarred after a John Waters/Sam Peckinpah double feature.

Anyway...

As for my current project: I'm not a professional videomaker, by any means; after a lifetime of messing with experimental video, I realized I could put my voice out there in a series of shorts, the first two of which are currently on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMKcqSjmF8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9JPzvJDCn0 (my favorite)

I have about a dozen ideas in the queue; the theme of the current one in progress has to do with the futility of war, and the urgency of bringing the troops home before even one more is slaughtered.

I have a gay-slaughter video in line after that.

But enough about me. I am VERY interested to hear about your undergrad work, and where you're taking it.

[ewoden]

6. I can remember several years ago . . .

When my father was still alive. I asked if he wanted to go to the movies and see Schindler's List. Dad's response was "No thanks". When I queried him about why not he said:

"Son I liberated a concentration camp. You'll look at that screen and repond to those flickering images with some sort of emotional response. I'll look at that same film and smell the bodies, see the grisley erands of a million flies, hear the slap,slap,slap of corpses flung into pits, feel the burning of quick lime in my nose. My response will be emotional too, only the faces I'll see never had make-up, didn't get to break for lunch during filming, weren't from a willing pool of extras. In short you son may come to fancy yourself as some sort of participant in an awakening of sorts. Unfortunately I struggle every day trying to put it back to sleep."

Some things just humble a guy.

[NMMNG]

8. A very disturbing photo

All the more disturbing considering the current political climate. I can understand why you can't sleep after seeing that. :-(

[xchrom]

9. so often gay folk are isolated when relating to the world about

being brutalized.

wwII offers evidence of our faces and treatment -- so often lacking in history -- and it happened as a group.

the sories cannot be denied -- except by lunatics.

it's so important not to see thiss as a one off -- but part of our heritage -- a link in a chain.

[MuseRider]

10. Thank you.

My husband is Jewish, his family was long gone by that time thankfully but they carried it with them anyway. I have heard and witnessed enough to know that as someone with no relation to the experience I can no longer look at any more films or museums. Now this. I knew about this but only a tiny bit, I just knew it had happened. I did not know the extent but I will now be on a search to learn about it. The reason I want to learn? Here in my community one of the hardest things to overcome is the population who believe there should be no "special rights" for GLBT's. These people would never ever say that about the Jewish because of that "ahem, well you know that time". I will print this picture out, it is very effective (made me shiver with fear and sadness), and carry it with me. This is very important and I thank you for it if only because it may bring more people around, it might make them think.

My husband showed both of our boys "Memories of the Camps" when they were quite young. He did it while I was gone or it never would have happened at their tender ages. I spent many nights up with them and their nightmares over it. I suppose in one way it did help shape them in a good way, they never mistreated another person or taunted other kids in school and they have become very compassionate and empathetic young men. Still, I would think this sort of this is too disturbing to view for a youngster but the teaching of it should begin early and it should include all those that suffered in the camps and elsewhere.

[nofurylike]

12. .

:cry:


ty

[closeupready]

13. At Auschwitz in one of the camp administrative buildings

which was turned into an onsite museum, a long hallway is lined with headshots of thousands of prisoners who would later be murdered. These were real people - Jews, gays, blacks, political dissidents, Americans, Mexicans and others. (Kind of like how the Khmer Rouge photographed their victims. Sadists enjoy their trophies/mementoes?)

For me, the power of those photos lies in realizing a couple facts - there is no way anyone could "stage" such an exhibit with thousands of fake victims (who are in fact actors or were hired to pose for headshots) in such an infamous place and not have the scam blown by people who know who these models "really" are. In other words, if you doubted that the Holocaust happened before visiting such a place, there is no way in hell you could doubt it having seen this exhibit. And if you never doubted it happened in the first place, seeing this exhibit brings it home like few other things can.

Thanks for posting this photo, sapphocrat.

And another thing: so pardon me if I sometimes decline to cooperate with schemes which are "for your own good." :mad:

[HockeyMom]

14. My father-in-law was with unit that liberated Buchenwald

As my mother-in-law said, he came back a changed man. For the rest of his life he would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Only once in the entire 15 years that I knew him, did he ever talk to me about his experience. He said, "As an American of German descent, the blood of those monsters flows through my veins. But for the grace of God, I could be one of them".

Hopefully, he rests in peace now. May we never forget.

[donco6]

15. Read excerpt from the commandant's trial:

http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/Camps/SachsenhausenEng.html

[Rhythm]

16. Took me a while to 'get it'...

I came from a family who just "didn't talk about such things" when it came to things like racism, genocide, war, etc... even though my dad was the career soldier of a career soldier (dad a vet of Korea and 'Nam... grandpa a vet of WWII and Korea).

In school, the Holocaust was barely mentioned. Correction: i don't remember it even BEING mentioned until high school, and even then it was a pitiful footnote among a chalkboard full of mindless 'who won which battle' trivia.

It wasn't until i married a man of Jewish heritage, met some of his relatives, and heard stories about many others, that i learned anything more than the basic footnotes about that particularly dark period of history.

I don't think i really 'got it' though, until February of 1990, when he and i made an impromptu side trip to the newly-opened Holocaust Museum in Miami Beach while on vacation to see his mom in the Ft. Lauderdale 'burbs.



This sculpture stands almost 50 feet high, and the emaciated figures are all life-size. It's surrounded by polished black granite walls upon which are reproduced dozens of gut-wrenchingly saddening photos from the ghettos, the trains, the camps, and the death chambers, as well as a written history of this mass extermination.

That particular day, we were the youngest people (by decades) there at the memorial... and i caught sight of several stoop-shouldered seniors, cheeks shiny with tears, still branded with the fading indigo of those hideous camp tattoos.

I still break down thinking about it.

[sniffa]

17. i'm quite often stunned

by the amount of weLL-read, peopLe who have no idea where the pink triangLe came from.

it's a shame to see this portion of the genocide repeatedLy ignored by history.

i think it's a huge reason why certain (segments of, not aLL of course) minority groups seethe with rage at the gay community for even daring to compare their persecution, or their struggLe for civiL rights to the struggLe of the african american, or the european jew, or...

on this point aLone, pictures Like these need to never be forgotten.

[Rhythm]

18. I was even more ignorant about the pink triangle symbolism...

...until i came out, and got involved in the GLBT community where i lived.

I'm sure that the majority of straight folks are ignorant of it's history.