On Holocaust Remembrance Day, this twitter account is posting the names and photos (when available) of refugees turned away from America who became victims of Naziism. #NoBanNoWall #RefugeesWelcome
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My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of ‘Gone With the Wind’, and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It’s actually one of the things that you live and die for.
Neil Gaiman (via oiseauperdu)
Happy birthday, Janusz Korczak- you would have been 134 today.
For anyone who does not know who he is, please keep reading. He is by far my favorite historical figure, and perhaps one of my favorite people ever to have existed. Few great people are also good, but he was.
There is no one in the world I admire more. Before World War II, he was known in Poland as a doctor-turned-teacher who was the first to advocate the belief that children were worthy of respect, their feelings were as valid as the feelings of adults, that they deserved to be talked to instead of being talked down to. He spent his life radically changing and modernizing the Polish education system, teaching at almost every level, and writing children’s books and books of educational theory (the latter he mostly denounced, saying that you shouldn’t ‘try to become teachers overnight with educational theory in your head and psychological bookkeeping in your heart’). He was quirky and awkward around adults – there are many hilarious accounts of his dealings with most people- but no one understood kids better. In his old age, he opened orphanages and implemented his ideas there.
When World War II started, as a Jew, he was no longer allowed to work in Gentile orphanages. So instead he ran a Jewish one in Warsaw. At the beginning of the war, he practiced active resistance, running down streets with giant flags of Polish and Jewish pride at eighty years old, and refusing to wear the Star of David. Only out of concern for what his children would do without him, did he stop. Once he and the orphanage were forced into the Warsaw ghetto, he resisted by making the orphanage the happiest place in the ghetto, full of life and theater and love, as he tried to make life as normal as possible- and at the same time, try to prepare the children for the worst.
When the worst came and the children were to be rounded up to be killed, despite many attempts by the Jewish Underground to rescue him, and despite not having to go himself as an adult, he went with them to their deaths, giving up his life so that he could give them a few last moments of comfort before they died. Observers say that the children were calm and even happy as they walked, because of Korczak.
You are my hero, Janusz Korczak. Rest in peace.
“One does not leave a sick child at night, and one does not leave children at a time like this.” – Janusz Korczak
I’m legit angry that I was never taught about this guy.
Today is August 2nd.
Today is Romani Holocaust Remembrance day.
Today, in 1944, the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz was liquidated.
Today marks 71 years since brave Roma and Sinti lost their fight against the Nazi’s Final Solution.
Today marks 71 years without reparations or even acknowledgement of a Romani genocide during the Holocaust.
Today marks 71 years of continued state-sanctioned oppression and brutality.
Today, there is still Romani genocide.
Today, we still lose our brothers, fathers, and children to police and Neo-Nazi violence.
Today, we continue to be exploited for our labor and forced into slavery.
Today, we still live in ghettos and camps.
Today is August 2, 2015.
Today, our stones have become words and books and education.
And today, we will not stop fighting.
I’d like to remind everyone that the Jewish population is still 3 million less than it was in 1939.
This isn’t even the hundredth of it, basically.
Jews were 10% of the Roman Empire’s population. Based on other groups’ growth, there should be ~200 million Jews today.
There are ~185 million Jews who don’t exist because of antisemitism.
if you guys want an actual discussion on nicki’s new video, let it come from a jew (since no posts i’ve seen so far are from jews at all):
nazi imagery is traumatising, utterly traumatising. from anyone who’s grown up learning about how influential hitler became over such a large group of people, literally pushing them (although it didn’t take much pushing) to the ‘final solution’ aka the extermination of anyone perceived as ‘other’ (particularly jews, blacks, romanis and homosexuals), seeing those images used in pop culture is a blow to our feelings of safety, and of remembrance of the horrific acts committed by the nazi party.
there’s no defense for using this type of imagery, it’s a lack of empathy for anyone who felt the effects of what the nazis did and many of us still do to this day. i will never be able to trace my ancestry, since all the record from my paternal side were entirely destroyed in the holocaust. my grandmother can never talk about her experiences without crying for days, and she’s one of the strongest people i know.
this wasn’t a long lost historical event, either. it happened just over 60 years ago, with people (including my grandma) who experienced it still alive today. this is strongly felt in many communities of those targeted, though i can only speak for the jewish community. to this day we fear what could happen if the world was plunged into a third world war, because it’s completely possible what happened there could happen again. we feel the pain of the holocaust every single day, and seeing someone use the images so carelessly just compounds it.
there’s no defending nicki’s use of these images. no justification. no legitimate reasoning other than shock value, and that is unacceptable. i loved nicki, but how she could do something without even thinking of the effects it might have is ridiculous and unacceptable.
Shopping mall to be built at former Nazi camp in Serbia
Shopping mall to be built at former Nazi camp in Serbia
The site of a former Nazi concentration camp in Serbia where 6,000 Jews and 1,500 Roma were killed during WWII is set to be redeveloped as the largest shopping mall in the Balkans.what the actual god damn fuck
#man i know when im in a place where i know thousands of people were systematically tortured and murdered#i just get such a hankering for food court snacks (redlanternzoom)