Tiedrich re: The Holocaust

[kpete]

Jeff Tiedrich
my uncle spent three years in a Warsaw basement, hiding from the Nazis. we should ask him if the Holocaust really happened. oh wait, we can't

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[agingdem]

1. My parents were Holocaust survivors..Auschwitz/Bergen Belsen

I still see and recite the numbers tattooed on their forearms..I still hear my mother's screaming night terrors, I still remember her sobbing pleas begging G-d to take her because the guilt of surviving when her family did not was soul crushing..I still remember my father hiding gold coins, money, jewelry, suitcases packed in anticipation of the next Hitler..the Holocaust really happened...

[70sEraVet]

2. And many American Jews are wondering today if your father had it right.

[Stargazer99]

3. They don't give a damn as long as it never happened to them-mostly Republican

[agingdem]

5. When I was a little girl

my father sat me in front of our small television and demanded I watch..I had no idea what I was watching but for some reason I was mesmerized..I asked my father who the screaming man was.."Joseph McCarthy", he said in yiddish "and this should never happen here in the United States"...but it has...

[wnylib]

15. I am so sorry over what your parents endured.

And that the effects of the evil perpetrated on them lasted beyond the events. I have friends whose parents and grandparents immigrated to the US before Nazi Germany and had no extended family left after the war.

I have a very vague memory of the televised McCarthy hearings. I was 4 years old and my mother was dusting furniture in the living room with the TV on, tuned to the hearings. I remember seeing men in dark suits speaking harshly to each other. At one point, my mother slammed down a knick-knack that she had just dusted and said, "Witch hunt. GD witch hunt!"

It was only years later that I learned what it was all about.

[yellowdogintexas]

38. my mom did the same thing with me. I was 8

she made sure I saw those hearings, and the reason why she insisted on it

[cilla4progress]

4. Oh my god agingdem...

Horrific! Blessings upon you and your family!!

[onecaliberal]

7. "The Holocaust really happened"

[barbtries]

13. My ex-MIL was a survivor of Aushwitz as well.

She told me a little about it once, because it was not spoken of in the home. Of 8 children, 3 daughters and one son survived the war. She had siblings with children and told me how the older people, like her parents, and the people with babies, like her sisters, were murdered right away. I can still see her face as she mused about how her dad was not healthy, but her mother "she was good."

She told me the nazis would come through daily and look at them to decide who would live and die that day, and her sister would pinch her cheeks to make some color show up, to keep her alive another day.

I remember that she had so much food at her house that a cupboard in the living room was full of it, and believe it was because she knew real hunger, hunger that nearly killed her. I believe she never lost that insecurity.

I remember her tattoo.

We did not get along. It was only after her son and I were divorced and she had retired from her job in NYC that she held for over 20 years, taking those subway trains daily from Brooklyn to Manhattan, that I ever saw her happy.

Then her first grandchild, the daughter she never had, was killed. I remember feeling that although I was entirely grief stricken, it actually seemed even less fair to her, because she endured so much. She was from Czechoslovakia and I either forgot or never learned what camp she was in when she was liberated. After the war she went to Palestine. My ex-FIL had been there through the war.

They had 3 boys and emigrated to the US in 1959 or so.

Yes the holocaust was real and anyone who denies it tempts fate to let it happen again. fuck them

[calimary]

29. Your last paragraph says it all, my friend.

“Yes the holocaust was real and anyone who denies it tempts fate to let it happen again. fuck them.”

My sentiments exactly, barbtries. And it forces one to wonder WHY the denialism. I sure don’t understand that. What’s that famous warning? I THINK I remember it - “Those who deny history are doomed to repeat it.”

[barbtries]

30. exactly.

without a doubt there are some who would welcome it.

[Lucinda]

6. ...

[republianmushroom]

8. It happened , the only ones who don't think are lying to us.

They know it happened but by denying it for the attention they get. That is the reason for their denial.

[erronis]

24. Agree. Rewording: The only ones who say they don't think so - know they are lying.

[ShazzieB]

28. I believe there are people who think the Holocaust didn't really happen.

At least not on the scale it actually did. A person doesn't have to believe none of it is true to be a Holocaust denier. Denying the true extent of it, the vast numbers of people affected, etc. are also forms of Holocaust denial.

Some of these people put a ludicrous amount of work into trying to "disprove" what history tells us, twisting themselves into ridiculous logic pretzels in the process. I've read enough about those people and their activities to be convinced that at least some of them are deadly serious about it.

Have you seen the movie "Denial," about how noted Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt was sued by a British Holocaust denier? I highly recommend it, as well as History on Trial, her book about the case that the film is based on. I don't think there's any question David Irving, the denier who unsuccessfully sued her, was (and still is) absolutely convinced that his view was the "historically " correct one.

Here's a video where Lipstadt talks about what she calls "hardcore" vs. "softcore" Holocaust denial.

A partial transcript of the video (and other info on Holocaust denial), is available here: https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion/explaining-holocaust-denial

EDITED TO ADD: Wikipedia also has a very informative article on the subject of Holocaust denial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial

[jaxexpat]

9. Just how desperate to be accepted into a club of morons does one have to be?

Holocaust denial is tantamount to sending me a check for $14.00 every week to ensure your place in heaven. Not saying it's much of a comparison but if enough people send me $14.00 every week, I could afford to deny just about anything. Comparison/Comshmarison.

But today and today only, for your weekly payment I'll throw in eternal life. Yep, that's right, for a mere token of its value I'm guaranteeing you your eternal life. But hurry, offer will not last long at this rate. The end of today is nigh!

[Whiskeytide]

10. You could even offer in person refunds ...

… to any subscriber who doesn’t receive eternal life. They can’t pass up that no-risk guarantee, right?

[jaxexpat]

14. Exactly, I'll sign anything. My word is my bond. You can bank on it. Hell, it's already in the bank.

On my mother's soul. I'd sooner cut off my hand. You callin' me a liar? Rest assured your interests are foremost, just read my corporate statement. Cross my heart and scout's honor, too.

Did I mention I'd sigh anything? I used to be a farmer.

[Richard D]

11. There was a time in my life . . ..

. . .when I had several patients who were survivors - their numbers tattooed on their forearms. That was enough to know it was real. But the look in their eyes, a look I have never seen since, was the kind of proof that the coming generations will never really see.

[agingdem]

22. My parents, particularly my mother, never recovered...

my parents married because it was time..both in their 30s..they had a child to replace the families they lost and I bear the names of both grandmothers.. they lived in the land of dread only finding joy in their grandchildren... when they passed I felt both loss and relief...

[Richard D]

27. So poignant.

Thank you for sharing that.

[Ford_Prefect]

12. When I was in 1st grade in Philadelphia I lived around the corner from a couple who had survived the

camps. I heard their stories. I saw their tattoos. It happened.

My father's infantry division liberated one of the camps. The men who were there told that story at every reunion. They often cried when they recounted who they found there and what happened when they arrived. It happened.

I have met the witnesses and seen with my own eyes the evidence. It happened.

There are people who live in my town who claim it is a hoax. I have no doubt the same people would light the ovens themselves the next time.

It happened. The whole world knows it happened. I know it happened.

It could happen again.

When it does happen it will not be primarily Jews who suffer. It will be anyone they don't like. Anyone who they fear. Anyone who is "different". Anyone they disagree with about facts, or religion, or class, or love.

[Red Pest]

16. The holocaust happened - my father-in-law helped to liberate Dachau

I have seen the pictures that he took of the camp and of those who survived and those who were killed. Their bodies were stacked up in boxcars, on the ground in heaps, and in the ovens. His pictures and testimony are on record in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. and are identical to the pictures that I saw on display in Dachau when I visited in 1999.

[plimsoll]

17. My stepfather got to clean up the camps when the US arrived.

I'm not going to minimize the suffering of the camp survivors, but I think that scarred him for life too. You could see him get visibly upset with holocaust deniers, an emotional state usually reserved for me (I was truly a smart ass.)

[flying_wahini]

18. Every movie, film and newsreels with footage should be on regarding the Holocaust should be

On TV to show the young citizens what the war brought.
It was shown all the time when I was a kid.
Easy to deny if you are never shown or taught about it.

[TygrBright]

19. There is nothing new about holocaust denial. Check out the film "Denial"...

It does a good job of identifying and describing the phenomenon, and exploring the many complex reasons why it is so pernicious.

Anything that purposefully distorts history is evil. Anything that purposefully denies evil is itself evil.

somberly,
Bright

[ShazzieB]

31. Yes!

I mentioned this movie in my post up thread, not realizing you had already beaten me to it.

This is really making me want to watch it again. Definitely going to do that tonight.

[The_Casual_Observer]

20. Never makes any sense to me why they deny it because in the next

Breath they talk about doing it again.

[Ford_Prefect]

32. Exactly!!!

[Cha]

21. TY & JT 🤦‍♂️💕

[electric_blue68]

23. From 7 to 17 I lived in a 2/3rds Jewish neighborhood a mix of reformed, conservative, secular...

Jews.

The rest of us were ethnic Catholics, Christians, Puerto Ricans and escaped Cubans, and probably some aetheists in there.
(The fun part was on the High Holy days when 2/3's of our class was out! 😄 )

😔 The sobering part was leaning about the Holocaust through TV (seeing the horrific Liberated camps), and school but also knowning that a bunch of my friends didn't have all the extended family they should. One of my friend's mother, or grandmother showed us the blue small numbers tattooed below her wrist.

It's frikkin' true, lying scum!

[keithbvadu2]

25. Eisenhower insisted that the Holocaust camps be thoroughly documented because he knew there would be

Eisenhower insisted that the Holocaust camps be thoroughly documented because he knew there would be deniers.

[BonnieJW]

33. The Germans made their own films

These films were shown at the Nuremberg trials and they are shown in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg.

[soldierant]

39. The impulse some people have

to film their own crimes as they commit them just boggles my mond.

Whom or aht do they think these films are going to make a positive impression on?

And it still happens, and keeps happening.

[Initech]

26. My grandfather was in the Normandy Invasion. Like the first wave.

I should ask him if Hitler was a good guy. Oh wait, I can't because he passed years before I was born because of an injury he sustained from being shot in the line of fire as a result of being involved in D-Day. My grandparents would be turning over in their graves if they knew what was happening right now.

Really, fuck Kanye, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and all these neo-Nazi shit heads.

[majdrfrtim]

34. In the mid-60s, I may not have yet been ten years old

and to this day I remember my parents sitting me down -- all of us gentiles -- in front of the black-and-white TV to watch a documentary on the liberation of the camps at the end of WWII. I remember my shock and horror at seeing the naked, emaciated bodies of the victims (may their memory be a blessing). I remember my parents, through their tears, telling me "this is awful to see, but you must see it; if we forget that this happened, it may happen again."

I can't believe this NAZI crap has been mainstreamed by loudmouthed imbeciles and their co-conspirators in what's left of the Republiqan party. Silence *is* complicity!

The English language does not contain words adequate to express my disgust and rage at the perpetrators of those atrocities then and their wannabe imitators and lionizers now.

[Blue Owl]

35. K&R

[love_katz]

36. We had to watch films about the horror of the camps, when I was in high school.

Our teachers warned us that what we were going to see was horrible, and said that it was ok to put our heads down on our desks if it became too much for us. I had to do that. It was beyond anything that I had ever seen. A pox on the deniers and their houses! As horrible and terrifying as it was to look at those images, it was absolutely necessary, in order to make Sure that it NEVER happens again!

[Rebl2]

37. I remember

my father talking about about a man he worked with who had a tattoo from hitlers youth camp. I don’t think my father asked many if any questions (I believe this was in the late 1970’s) because my Dad likely didn’t want to upset him or pry. I am sure he felt if the man wanted to talk about it he would.

[lambchopp59]

40. My dad fought in Germany

And left a kidney in a MASH there from shrapnel. He saw the trains packed full of "undesirables" being shipped to their doom, stopped since they blew up the railroad bridge ahead of them. Unfortunately he was hit by shrapnel upon approaching to liberate those people and evac'd, but got second hand reports in the hospital it was successful.
Now dad had his issues for sure. He became a right wing Fox News mesmerized nightmare in his senile dementia that was a booger to deal with.
But I still was proud of his service: and...
Alive today he'd like to slap the snot out of these deniers.

[LittleGirl]

41. I remember the film we saw in my grade school class

I think it might have been 3rd grade. I was an innocent little girl and watched that film and wondered how humans could be so evil. Then in high school, my french teacher had his number tattooed on his wrist. I saw it. He was treated miserably by the students in my class so I quit the class after one semester. He was a good man and it's a damn shame that my classmates treated him so poorly. I hated them for that. I can't imagine the horrors he saw.

[Genki Hikari]

42. My grandmother on my father's side

Lost nearly all of her Jewish family and family friends in Ukraine and Poland. I think a few of them managed to escape/survive. But only a few.

But yeah, it didn't happen, according to the fascists. I guess all those people just vanished into thin air. Poof!

[Tender hopper]

43. One of my elementary school teachers had the tattoos on her arm.

SCREW All the fascist wannabes.

[The Jungle 1]

44. My father passed and I miss him.

This is somewhat graphic history.
He fought fascism. I am lucky to be able to write this because he was at the Battle of the Bulge and D Day. He was in the 82 Airborne. 500,000 Americans were at the Battle of the Bulge. In five weeks 75,000 Americans lost their life defeating fascism. The Germans lost 100,000. The battle was fought along an 85 mile stretch of the Ardennes forest. 175,000 divided by 85 shows us there were around 2,058 frozen dead men per mile! We must never forget their effort to save our democracy.
He was a union carpenter and a Democrat.
My father would be outraged by current events. I can't even imagine what his reaction to Charlottesville would have been.

[Behind the Aegis]

45. Yiddish Word of the Day: The Holocaust