Gavi's Blog

This is an archived copy of a post I made for Yom Hashoah on the microblog side of the fediverse.

The content discussed in this blog post will be deeply upsetting.

How the Holocaust still impacts Jews today

It's easy to think this was ancient history and create a disconnect from what happened when you don't live with the long term inter-generational impact it has held.

But it must be noted clearly: the holocaust occurred in contemporary Europe. There are people alive right now who lived thru the horrors and impacts of what happened. Unfortunately the survivors who carry their trauma are dying off as time goes on, so its especially important to listen to their stories as you can.

The pain these people carry is so immense and reverberates throughout modern Jewish culture. These are our parents, grandparents and great grandparents. And their trauma has been carried between generations as well. The trauma they endured is so intense in fact, that it still holds long term health impacts. Children and grandchildren have higher rates of mental health disorders due to this. This occurrence actually has served the basis of some modern research.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma)

This is still a fresh wound, and Jews still struggle to grapple with it. It is why holocaust inversion is so harmful and antisemitic. It is detaching a trauma Jews still collectively try to grapple with and move forward on.

Every Jewish person remembers when they first learned about it as a child. It changes you and the way you view the world in a way that's difficult to describe.

The elephant in the room of who still is alive as well

When you reflect on the fact that there are survivors who are still alive from that time..... it should be obvious the inverse is true as well.

The perpetrators of the Holocaust and what contributed to it occurring are still alive and well too. Many escaped justice and will likely never face any. That's the unfortunate fact of life.

What happened after the camps were liberated?

The immediate aftermath of the Holocaust was a humanitarian disaster that's difficult to fully gauge in words. The trauma that survivors held was not over, and many died as a result of refeeding syndrome due to their previous malnourished or died of diseases they caught from the concentration camps.

When the camps were liberated it wasn't an immediate relief, but a new stage of trauma entirely. People were crowded into displaced persons camps and some were there for years awaiting migration to any country that would take them. Many of these people were effectively stateless and desired to emigrate to somewhere new instead of returning to where their original trauma began. It was a mess of trying to figure out which country wanted to take these people in, and many refused or accepted only a limited amount of Jews.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-aftermath-of-the-holocaust https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/displaced-persons?series=89

In these displaced persons camps people struggled desperately finding whatever remained of their families.

Another aspect of these displaced persons camps were the orphans. Because children were separated from their families and systemically slaughtered in ways akin to culling cattle, there were MANY orphans that were within these displaced persons camps. Life was extremely difficult in trying to attain some form of new normalcy and the unique trauma these kids had isn't something that is often discussed.

Jews prior to the holocaust were quite assimilated, all things considered

Jews (much like in the United States presently), for a period of time prior to the Holocaust and the rise of Nazi Germany made major contributions to the academics and the arts across Western Europe but especially Germany. For the most part, most Jews could not be distinguished from their non-Jewish neighbors in Germany. They participated in all aspects of life. In Eastern Europe there was less assimilation but Jewish life still thrived as well.

It only took a war and economic crisis for the tide to be completely turned against Jews across Europe. All their contributions to German society at the time were thrown to the side and Jews went from just usual Germans to being seen akin to bugs.

It took less than a generation. Children watched as their neighbors went from being warm to them and interacting with them in civil society, to being discriminated against and later murdered by them. We see a glimpse of this change in Anne Frank's diary. She was one of many Jewish children who witnessed this happen.

https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/teaching-about-jewish-life-before-the-holocaust.html

The depth of the cruelty is worse when you understand basic tenets within Jewish culture

Every aspect of the Holocaust in nearly every single way was done in a way to be as cruel and defiling towards Jews and Jewish bodies.

Within Jewish religious philosophy, the body is sacred and both cremation and tattoos are seen as taboo. The fact Jews were mass cremated was a direct insult to Jews after murdering them. Akin to kicking someone while they were down.

Religious items and artifacts and even personal items were all looted and stored with intentional callousness. There were even plans to make a “museum” about us and other “inferior” cultures when they finished us off. Entire torah scrolls were taken to warehouses and just left to rot for years on end.

The other groups are important too, and Roma still face horrendous treatment today

The victims of the Holocaust were not just Jews. A big group that's often overlooked is the Romani people that were also victims of the Holocaust as well. Antiziganism is still a big thing across modern Europe, and the way Roma are treated at times exists in tandem to how Jews are treated. Our trauma is unique, but we seem to exist in union with one another in the way people hate each of us. In the modern day it seems that when hatred of one rises, the other follows shortly after as well.

And unfortunately with antisemitism on the rise worldwide, this remains the case.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/updates/roma-persecution-antiziganism-intensifies-in-europe/ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/genocide-of-european-roma-gypsies-1939-1945

Many people abandoned or began to hide Jewish religious identity due to trauma, and that aftermath is visible in certain Jewish religious movements

Many survivors of the Holocaust responded to the trauma in many ways, but a big one was rejection of religiousity. A rage against G-d for allowing this misery to happen to them was adopted by many, and this attitude of both hiding and rejecting Jewish identity is something many survivors taught their children and is still a struggle to be undone.

As well, some people who were alive during the Holocaust as well abandoned their Jewishness or began to hide it as a result of survivors guilt.

Some became more religious after.

The responses were unique to each person, but the impact is no more clearer than how Jewish practices exist and have evolved over the past decade, particularly reform Jews both in Europe and especially the United States. Reform Judaism and the way it practices religious services has changed significantly over time.

This has been one of the common causes of strife against the Reform Jewish movement in the United States by more orthodox leaning Jewish movements, as for a long time religious and prayer services (and even ritual ceremonies) were effectively Jewish mirrors of similar Protestant practices. From the abandoning of Hebrew, to embracing “confirmation”, these practices are being replaced by more traditional jewish ritual practices but the impact is still there nonetheless. It's interesting just how different most Reform services in the United States were only 30 years ago compared to today. And this trauma response was very likely a big impacting factor to that.

Most collaborating companies never faced justice

Most companies that collaborated with the Nazis have never faced justice in any way. There exists numerous companies that were stolen completely from Jewish families that were never returned or forced to pay reparations in any capacity . These companies hide this fact, but it's a skeleton that exists in many European companies closets (and even some American companies as well.)

LGBT survivors were treated terribly

The topic of LGBT people under the holocaust is a tricky subject but something that needs to be known clearly is that the hatred of LGBT people that nazis held was in DIRECT consequence of their hatred of Jews. They felt that LGBT people were a clear representation of Jewish degeneracy. German Jews did have rising allyship with LGBT people in Germany too and this only served to contribute to this linking of LGBT people with Jews. It did not help either that the founding researcher of Institute for Sexual Research was Jewish.

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/life-before-the-holocaust/pre-war-homosexual-life/

After the camps liberation though, for the most part the LGBT people were nearly universally placed back into prison by the Allies. This is something that people commonly debate its authenticity when its spread online, but this is unfortunately true. This is why you likely have never heard of the LGBT Holocaust survivors. It's not that they didn't exist, it's that their nightmare never truly ended.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gay-prisoners-germany-wwii/ https://theconversation.com/lgbtq-history-month-gay-victims-and-survivors-of-the-holocaust-are-often-forgotten-we-need-to-tell-their-stories-154417

Jews & whiteness

The idea of Jewishness and whiteness is complicated, but in Europe without a doubt Jews were not seen as white. More often than not antisemitism exists outside of the bounds of most forms of bigotry and it doesn't help that Judaism is both an ethnicity and a religion and can exist independently of each other at times as well. It sometimes results in this occurrence of “conditional whiteness” where ashkenazi Jews are given white privilege until it's no longer convenient for their oppressors. The fact exists in that ashkenazi Jews are capable of both contributing to white supremacy whilst being victims of it at the same time. This is why it's alarming to dismiss American Jews as just another form of whiteness because it's more nuanced than that.

Ashkenazi Jews although faced the brunt of the Holocaust, are not the only Jewish ethnic group and antisemitism contrary to what some may believe is not a uniquely European concept. The next post will talk about Jewish ethnic groups as well.

Jews are not European, and antisemitism isn't uniquely European either

European antisemitism although historically insidious is not the only form of antisemitism. Antisemitism has existed across cultures around the world and unfortunately exists heavily across the Middle East.

Jews are a Middle Eastern diaspora group, and there exists numerous ethnic groups across Jewish culture. We are all united mutually by Jewishness but we still have our own independent cultural traits and traditions between each groups.

There exists Ashkenazi Jews who are broadly European Jews, Sephardic Jews which are Hispanic and Latin Jews, Mizrahi Jews who are broadly Middle Eastern, Keifeng Jews of Asia (specifically China) and Beta Israel which are the African Jewish ethnic groups.

Each of these groups have all faced antisemitism and hatred in their own unique ways. No Jewish ethnic group in the diaspora has ever known true peace. None.

Sephardim faced the crusades and forced conversions at the hands of the catholic church, as well as mass violence and expulsions from countries on numerous occasions.

Kaifeng Jews are actively suppressed by the Chinese government even in the modern day. Most are largely assimilated into Chinese culture today.

Mizrahim in the Middle East have faced endless violence and persecution. Mizrahi Jews were not treated with kindness, and at best were merely tolerated. They were treated as sub-class citizens and taxed heavily as a direct consequence of their Jewishness. Modern day Middle Eastern culture is extremely culturally antisemitic with casual antisemitism existing in many aspects of modern Middle Eastern countries day to day society and media.

Ashkenazi Jews are not the only Jewish ethnic group, but we are merely over-represented in the minds of most of the Western world and in conversations about Jews. There are key cultural differences and what many people in the Western world see as “jewish culture” is more often than not really just Ashkenazi Jewish culture. From bagels, klezmer, etc. That's Ashkenazi specific.

Even large portions of African Jewish populations have had to largely flee their home countries due to violence and hatred as well.

Fediverse link: https://grimgreenfo.rest/notes/9sz4aqupqckd04ej

Tags: #Judaism, #Antisemitism, #JewishEducation