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So, Monday, 1/27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This year it will mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
This is absolutely a day to remember the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust in addition to the Jewish ones.
This year it will mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
This is absolutely a day to remember the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust in addition to the Jewish ones.
(As opposed to Yom Hashoah, 4/21 this year, which is specifically a Jewish observance to remember the Jewish victims. When it comes around, please respect its specificity.)
So, I have three things I want to talk about:
-non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust
-how much of the Nazis' work was done for them beforehand
-Jewish religious responses to the Holocaust
-non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust
-how much of the Nazis' work was done for them beforehand
-Jewish religious responses to the Holocaust
Non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, a thread.
Let's start with trans people, and LGBT and gender non-conforming people more generally.
The Nazis set back progress on LGBT rights at least 75 years.
Let's start with trans people, and LGBT and gender non-conforming people more generally.
The Nazis set back progress on LGBT rights at least 75 years.
Here's the thing: pre-Nazi Germany was GAY AS FUCK.
Homosexuality was referred to in England as "the German custom," for the French, it was the "vice allemande," and the Italians winkingly called gay people "Berlinese."
1920s and early 1930s Berlin was a gay mecca.
Homosexuality was referred to in England as "the German custom," for the French, it was the "vice allemande," and the Italians winkingly called gay people "Berlinese."
1920s and early 1930s Berlin was a gay mecca.
The Germans were researching non-heteronormativity, they were researching sex in general, and they were the worldwide experts in it as far as Japan.
Germany was gay as a picnic basket and loving it.
Germany was gay as a picnic basket and loving it.
It's a parallel irony for both Jews and LGBT people that Germany was one of the best places to be gay or Jewish right before it became one of the worst places to be gay or Jewish.
(It's perhaps not even *parallel* -- Jewishness and queerness have long been entangled.)
(It's perhaps not even *parallel* -- Jewishness and queerness have long been entangled.)
They were working out vocabulary to describe various marginalized identities around gender and sexual orientation, and consciously creating communities around those identities.
Friedrich Radszuweit, the leader of the Federation for Human Rights, started a magazine called The Third Sex specifically to foster trans community, containing the latest scientific research, autobiographical essays, tips, and both professional and candid reader-supplied photos.
Look at these beautiful people.
Anyway, read more about how amazingly queer Germany was before the Nazis here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/01/15/a-lost-piece-of-trans-history/
So yeah, the crown jewel of German expertise and supportive interest in queerness was the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. (Started by a Jewish doctor, so, doubly doomed.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft
In 1933, the German Student Union attacked it, and a few days later, its books and archives were burned. The lead administrator, Kurt Hiller (also Jewish, so again, doubly doomed) was sent to a concentration camp.
So, 2 things to note: it wasn't Nazi officials attacking it. It was students. Often in media about the Holocaust, we get shown uniformed Nazi officials or soldiers Doing Terrible Things while other Germans just sort of stand around, maybe jeer at the victims, maybe sell them out.
And the other thing is just:
Take a moment to grieve for all that lost knowledge, all those lost voices in the archives and library, all that lost *culture.*
All the wheels that had to be reinvented by queer communities. All the things that *couldn't* be restored.
Take a moment to grieve for all that lost knowledge, all those lost voices in the archives and library, all that lost *culture.*
All the wheels that had to be reinvented by queer communities. All the things that *couldn't* be restored.
And think how much richer our world would be if queer communities had been able to just keep building *on*, rather than *rebuilding*, what the Nazis destroyed.
It seems obvious, as an afterthought, that if you were Black in Nazi Germany you were fucked, but Nazi Germany usually gets portrayed as white (Jewish victims) and even whiter (German perpetrators).
We shouldn't retroactively aid the Nazis in whitewashing Germany.
We shouldn't retroactively aid the Nazis in whitewashing Germany.
The history of Black people in Europe goes back a lot farther than the Weimar Republic--Anton Wilhelm Amo, born in Ghana, taught at German universities in the 1700s, for example--but that's a whole other thread.
There was a sizeable population of African descent in Germany prior to the Nazis, primarily a legacy of German colonialism in Africa. They founded a bilingual German-Duala periodical, the Sun of Cameroon, and established German branches of international human rights orgs.
Afro-Germans were prominent musicians and involved in the film industry. (I haven't dug into the history yet, but I guarantee you we lost a lot of art there at the Nazis' hands.)
And, okay, I mean I assume you knew what you're getting into with a thread on the Holocaust, but...
And, okay, I mean I assume you knew what you're getting into with a thread on the Holocaust, but...
CW: forced sterilization, child abuse, murder, etc.
Approximately 400 children from marriages between Afro-Germans and other Germans were seized from their classrooms and outdoors and forcibly sterilized, often without anesthetic, under Nazi eugenics laws.
Approximately 400 children from marriages between Afro-Germans and other Germans were seized from their classrooms and outdoors and forcibly sterilized, often without anesthetic, under Nazi eugenics laws.
CW: ableism, forced sterilization, child abuse, murder
Same with disabled children under the Nazi regime. Deaf children were taken from their classrooms by school principals, taken to hospitals where they were sterilized.
Same with disabled children under the Nazi regime. Deaf children were taken from their classrooms by school principals, taken to hospitals where they were sterilized.
And this is before the concentration camps. In a lot of cases, though, we don't *know* what happened to Afro-Germans and disabled Germans.
When communities are small, or not cohesive, stories get lost.
When communities are small, or not cohesive, stories get lost.
But we do know that the Nazis killed 50,000 disabled people in the "T-4" program, which helped them develop more efficient methods of murder, which would later be used on Jewish and Roma populations in the death camps.
The Nazis saw Jehovah's Witnesses as a threat because they opposed war and urged others not to fight. They imprisoned about 10,000 of them, executed about 250, and a total of about 1200 died in captivity.
They could escape persecution by renouncing their beliefs, unlike Afro-Germans, Roma, Jews, and other groups that were targeted on racial grounds.
Most of them didn't.
Most of them didn't.
Clergy who spoke out against the Nazis were sent to Dachau, where they were confined to special barracks to prevent them from worshipping with or giving solace to other prisoners.
About 2000 were kept prisoner there, and about half died there.
About 2000 were kept prisoner there, and about half died there.
People of Slavic descent, especially the Polish, were classified as Untermenschen, "subhumans." Blonde, blue-eyed Polish children were taken from their families to be raised as Germans, while dark-haired, dark-eyed children were denied education to serve as servants to Germans.
Between 2-3 million Russian prisoners of war were kept in concentration camps and starved to death by the Nazis.
And then there's the Roma. While the Nazis killed a lot of people, as this Al-Jazeera article notes, they applied a "consistent policy of extermination" against three main groups: Jews, Roma, and disabled people. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/07/remembering-roma-victims-holocaust-170728114822470.html
Historians estimate that as many as 70-80% of Europe's Roma population was murdered in the Holocaust.
The Nazis hated the Roma just as much as they hated Jews, and were just as horrific in their treatment of them. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/genocide-of-european-roma-gypsies-1939-1945
And let's not forget the first groups targeted by the Nazis, and the first to mount organized resistance--anti-fascists, socialists, and communists. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/07/arts/at-last-recognition-and-praise-for-the-resistance-in-nazi-germany.html
The Nazis also started by targeting judges and lawyers, editors and journalists who opposed them.
Those who could use the law to protect people from them, and those who could keep the public informed about what they were doing.
Those who could use the law to protect people from them, and those who could keep the public informed about what they were doing.
And, of course, young people who fought back, who refused to accept that the future had to be dystopian, who--in a society where the powerful viewed the humanity of their victims as power that must be taken away, and their own humanity is weakness--insisted on humanity for all.
Remember the White Rose. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-secret-student-group-stood-up-nazis-180962250/
I'm sure there are groups I've left out.
But the point is:
Imagine if all these precious people had lived, and if all this culture had not been destroyed.
Imagine where we could be, as a world, how much more joyous, how much more wise.
Do whatever it takes to stop fascism.
But the point is:
Imagine if all these precious people had lived, and if all this culture had not been destroyed.
Imagine where we could be, as a world, how much more joyous, how much more wise.
Do whatever it takes to stop fascism.
