One in five young Germans ‘unaware of Auschwitz’
One in five young Germans has no idea that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp, a poll released Wednesday showed, two days ahead ofHolocaust memorial day.
Although 90 percent of those asked did know it was a concentration camp, the poll for Thursday’s edition of Stern news magazine revealed that Auschwitz meant nothing to 21 percent of 18-29 year olds.
And nearly a third of the 1,002 people questioned last Thursday and Friday for the poll were unaware that Auschwitz was in today’s Poland.
The poll comes ahead of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945, which Germany has marked since 1996 with official memorial ceremonies for Holocaust victims.
According to a report by independent experts commissioned by the German parliament and published earlier this week, about one in five Germans is latently anti-Semitic.
Pretty fascinating as far as cultural memory goes.
That’s really fucking depressing. It’s only going to get worse as the last of the survivors—and soon enough, their children—die off over the next decade.
Isn’t this shit important enough to teach in school?
But then, sometimes I think the only reason U.S. schoolkids are taught about the Civil Rights movement, or even slavery and abolition, is because of the imperitives of Black History Month.
HOLY SHIT!!
I thought Germany was supposed to be on top of this shit?
Whatever happened to Never Again?
Source: sinidentidades
“For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later neither I, nor anyone else, will care for the outpouring of a thirteen year old schoolgirl.”
Anne Frank
If only you knew, Anne. <3
(via thelittlekneesofbees)
There is little to no difference between Nazism and white supremacy as we know it today. Nazism was a version of white supremacy. No wonder it is so fiercely condemned in today’s white hegemonic world, I guess it is a psychological way to distance oneself from the horrors of white supremacy while still taking part in them. The reason no one would say “Doesn’t shout about teh evul Nazi man in Germany” and be taken seriosuly is quite simple actually: Jews are now part of whiteness. I have read about Hannah Arendt and all these philosophers wondering why and how such evilness happened in Germany. Well it happened how it has been happening for ages and is still happening to this day: Those excluded from whiteness are mere things, well they are nothing actually.
I just…. can’t. This is so, so silly. Not about you, buddy. This is the definition of Not About You.
Last homosexual survivor of the Holocaust dies
This is so touching. This guy seems like he was a pretty awesome dude.
But… and is it just me… or do people say a lot about the LGBT people who were oppressed during the Holocaust but not a whole lot about the asexual and demisexual victims? I AM NOT SAYING IT’S NOT AWFUL WHAT HAPPENED TO GAY PEOPLE BACK THEN. I’m panromantic myself. I just… I know that people on the asexual spectrum were targeted too, and I wish we had more of a voice.
I…. what? What?
This is seriously not okay. For one thing, asexuals weren’t targeted as asexuals the way that gay people were. And for another, this is not a horrific event in history that had anything to do with asexuals—of course people are not going to discuss us. No one was out as asexual in the forties! No one knew it we existed—even the Kinsey Reports hadn’t been done yet. And frankly, this particular incident in history would have been a time at which I would have been grateful to be invisible.
I just. I have no words. This, here? This is not a place where it’s appropriate to bring up asexuality at all. Seriously, no. Not our history, not our suffering, not our place to speak up. This is a time to listen to other people’s histories.
Yeah, I mean, not to say I know everything about WWII and the Holocaust, but I know my fair share. Homosexual men and people with developmental disabilities were definitely targeted and killed along with the Romani and Jews for eugenics reasons. A few other groups were targeted for speaking out (Priests and pastors mostly, plus prisoners of war and random groups of Eastern Europeans like the Poles).
Asexuals though? I dispute the argument that asexuals didn’t exist in the forties. I’m willing to bet they’ve been around just as long as homosexuals and straights. But no one was getting targeted for not being interested in or being repulsed by sex (unless they were up on a soapbox and directly interfering with the National Socialist Hitler government, obv).
Otherwise, agreed.
This person was just asking a question about people they felt were left out of a part of history, and every responder to this is so quick to condemn instead of ask questions that could clarify or clear up a miscommunication. Everyone is just perpetuating the separation of “us” and “them” and whose historical context is more ‘important’ and ‘pertinent.’ People are responding with ‘what the fuck’ and ‘you’re an idiot OP’ instead of using peaceful and intelligent resolve to understand someone else’s perspective and question on a matter of history and sexuality.
The original poster wasn’t ‘erasing’ or demeaning the terrible experience that ANYONE went through with the holocaust, but merely asking about another group of people that may or may not have been left out of the historical knowledge of the rest of the world. Why is everyone so quick to condemn others and think that their ‘group’ of people is more important than another?
‘this is about us, not you.’ -comments like this just create yet another ‘other’ group of people that doesn’t need to be created. Asking ‘what about these other people’ was no attack on any other group that was included in this post. This person was creating a separate discussion of another group of people that may or may not have been targeted by the nazis, not skipping over the jews or homosexuals who suffered during this terrible time. I think the question about asexuals and the holocaust made by the poster has been terribly skewed to mean ‘asexuals suffered more than everyone else what about them.’ That is clearly not what the original poster was saying.
Listen. I firmly believe in taking the time to speak mindfully and with kindness so as to not alienate others, especially others who are also struggling. I acknowledge that one of my jobs as a person who believes in working towards social change is going to have to be to “educate.” In 99.99% of Internet disagreements, I would agree with you that it’s detrimental to “perpetuate the separation of ‘us’ and ‘them.’”
But this is totally unacceptable.
I am furious because this conversation is so incredibly emblematic of the narcissistic selfish individualism and anti-intellectualism that is so much of queer “activism.” I am sick of all of this essentialist historical revisionism, mashing up queer history to point out how much your people have suffered. Guess what guys? Sexuality and gender as they exist in our cultural psyche are constructs that are entirely bound to socio-political contexts. The love between two men was not considered to be “homosexuality” (we know it today) before a hundred or so years ago. Similarly, asexuality did not exist as a sexual identity of perversion in people’s minds during 1945 Germany.
It’s horrifying and disgraceful to know how little historical understanding somebody might have of the Holocaust, but that’s not the reason I’m fuming. I’m fuming because it’s seriously not fucking okay for people to always be trying to factor in their own personal marginalization into everything. When you listen to other people’s stories, sometimes you should just be quiet and empathize. I mean, if your friends talk to you about shit that they are going through, shit that I can somewhat relate to, sometimes it’s much better to just listen without adding your two cents and trying to compare stories. And if you read about a genocide that affected one segment of the population, you shouldn’t start trying to factor in how your segment of the population was affected as well. In this context, it’s not really okay to redirect the conversation to focus on asexuals. It’s fucking offensive as shit.
Also, this person didn’t seem to be kindly asking as much as they were trying to make the asinine claim that their erasure = oppression somehow.
emphasis added
why i cant take some of ya’ll seriously sometimes
o-m-g
Jesus Christ.
Some of you seriously need to check yourselves.
Basically, what ineffableshe said. Quality commentary. Jesus God.
(via cosmopolitan-fascist)
