Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Motown is Joe-Town!

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

When we show up, we win.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Yom HaShoah 2017

Yom HaShoah 2017

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Today is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day*) 2017. At Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, this year’s Yom HaShoah focused on six torchlighters. The folks at Yad Vashem define a torchlighter as:

Each year, six Holocaust survivors are chosen to light torches in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Their wartime experiences reflect the central theme chosen by Yad Vashem for Holocaust Remembrance Day. The torches are lit during the central memorial ceremony held at Yad Vashem on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This year’s six torchlighters have provided video testimonies. You can see them all at the link, but I’ll post a couple below.

The US Holocaust Museum has also stated that the President will be speaking at their Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony at the Capitol tomorrow. The President was able to release a video statement of remembrance of Holocaust victims today that did not forget to mention Jews.

Today is also the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide. As the LA Times reports:

Turkey has long denied that a genocide took place, arguing that the killings can’t be separated from the historical context of global upheaval during World War I, and that many Turks also were killed. But most historians outside Turkey describe a state-organized campaign of ethnic cleansing that meets the definition of genocide.

Schiff and U.S. Rep. Dave Trott (R-Michigan) last month introduced a resolution asking Congress to formally recognize the genocide.

“Over 100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire undertook a brutal campaign of murder, rape, and displacement against the Armenian people that took the lives of 1.5 million men, women, and children in the first genocide of the 20th century,” Schiff said in a statement. “Genocide is not a historic relic — even today hundreds of thousands of religious minorities face existential threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq. It is therefore all the more pressing that the Congress recognize the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide and stand against modern day genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Schiff has, for years, sought official recognition of the genocide from Congress.

The release of the movie The Promise, which focuses on the Armenian genocide is being released to coincide with the anniversary, which should keep this horrible, and often poorly remembered, if not forgotten, historical atrocity in the news. And irk the Turks.

Update at 9:33 PM EDT

Commenter Debbie provided this interesting link to an NPR report regarding the Armenian Genocide.

Recently Discovered Telegram Reveals Evidence For Armenian Genocide

[av_video src=’https://www.npr.org/player/embed/525441639/525441640′ format=’16-9′ width=’16’ height=’9′]

NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with Taner Akcam, a Turkish historian at Clark University, who uncovered an original telegram as evidence for the Armenian genocide.

We now return you to your previously scheduled post.

I’ll leave you all with a video of Professor Norman Goda, The Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies, Department of History, University of Florida. I had the honor and privilege to arrange for Professor Goda to be the keynote speaker for USAWC’s 2014 Holocaust and Genocide Remembrance Month. The video below is based on his book: Hitler’s Shadow: NAZI War Criminals, US Intelligence, and the Cold War.

* I do not know why there is an International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January and Yom HaShoah in April. Though the latter is an official holiday in Israel.

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  2. 2.

    Felonius Monk

    And irk the Turks.

    I like that. Some Tirks need a lot of urking, I’m lookin’ at you Ergodan!

  4. 4.

    Tokyokie

    And although The Promise may focus on the Armenian genocide, that has been a constant theme in the films of Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan for about 30 years.

  6. 6.

    Gin & Tonic

    The title of Prof Goda’s book makes me almost long for a 1,000-word semi-hinged post from our old friend from Oregon.

  10. 10.

    Elmo

    A dear friend of mine is a grandson of Berthold Beitz, who has a tree planted in his honor at Yad Vashem, as a “Righteous Among the Nations.” Such courage.

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lapassionara: The People of the Gun decided to poke the bear again:
    http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/04/robert-farago/question-day-armed-jews-stopped-holocaust/

    Full disclosure: the author of that peace, who is also the owner/publisher of the site, is the son of Holocaust Survivors. He and I are acquainted. I did the following guest post for them on this topic back in Fall 2015:
    http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/09/robert-farago/armed-jews-fought-back-against-the-nazis-to-no-appreciable-effect/

    You have to read the comments, they’re hysterical!

    Regardless, I’ll have more on this later in the week because it always comes up this time of year.

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Tokyokie: Thank you for bringing that up. I am familiar with the history, but it is not an in depth area of study of mine.

  16. 16.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: The year before we had his research partner on the project – the research was funded by an act of Congress through the US Holocaust Museum – do the keynote. Great talk, but he had the worst combover, his tie wasn’t tied right, and his trousers were too lose and he wasn’t wearing a belt. After the talk the Chief of Staff came up to me and remarked that it was a great talk, but he was fixated on whether our distinguished guest speaker was going to accidentally drop trou during his talk. Fortunately it did not happen.

  19. 19.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Tom Levenson: thanks for making that point. I wanted to, but I think we are not supposed to work on confederate Memorial Day until the next sundown or something. I forget the rules because I’m not, you know, racist.

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    The Armenian Genocide may not be widely remembered, but it certainly is remembered here in Southern California. There are a lot of businesses in Glendale, Pasadena, and Altadena that close every April 24th, and they want everyone to know why. Not at all coincidentally, that covers a big chunk of Schiff’s district.

  24. 24.

    efgoldman

    @Roger Moore:

    The Armenian Genocide may not be widely remembered, but it certainly is remembered here in Southern California.

    Also in the near Western suburbs of Boston – Watertown, Waltham, Belmont – where there’s been a large Armenian community forever.

  26. 26.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: The estimate last July was about 100,000 left. Though from the reporting below, this seems to be Jewish survivors. I do not know and did not find an estimate of non-Jewish survivors.
    http://time.com/4392413/elie-wiesel-holocaust-survivors-remaining/

    There Are Just 100,000 Holocaust Survivors Alive Today
    Melissa Chan
    Jul 03, 2016
    Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel brought voice to the millions of people silenced in the Holocaust and served as an advocate for peace to make sure the horrors of the past did not repeat itself before he died Saturday at 87.

    Now, it’s up to the rest of the world to preserve his memory and continue his legacy as the number of living Jewish survivors — especially those who can still eloquently speak of the atrocities — dwindles to about 100,000 in the world, advocates say.

    “The number of eloquent survivors is few and far between,” said Michael Zank, 58, the director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University, who was mentored by Wiesel. “It puts the responsibility on us, the next generation, the children of survivors, the grandchildren of survivors, to become as articulate as we can be in maintaining this memory and the mandate that comes with it.”

    There are about 100,000 Jews who were in camps, ghettos and in hiding under Nazi occupation who are still alive today, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, one of the few international organizations that tracks that type of data. The group, which negotiates with Germany’s government for payments to Holocaust victims and provides social services for survivors, said there were about 500,000 living survivors, including those who fled Nazi Germany, in 2014.

    The youngest survivors today are around 71 years old, Claims Conference spokeswoman Amy Wexler told TIME on Sunday.

  29. 29.

    philadelphialawyer

    The release of the movie The Promise, which focuses on the Armenian genocide is being released to coincide with the anniversary, which should keep this horrible, and often poorly remembered, if not forgotten, historical atrocity in the news. And irk the Turks.

    If one googles “Armenian Genocide,” one gets over four million hits. And, according to a scholarly article cited at Wiki, the Armenian Genocide is the second most studied such event, trailing only the Holocaust. So, it is hardly “poorly remembered,” much less “forgotten.”

    One might also wonder why “irking the Turks” is, per se, such a wonderful thing. Turkey is a treaty ally of the USA. And Turkey also had the good sense NOT to take part in the second, wholly illegal, immoral and unnecessary war against Iraq.

    I also flatly disagree with Congressman Trott that the US Congress should “formally recognize” the Armenian Genocide. Personally, I believe the actions of the Ottoman Government did rise to the level of genocide, which is no surprise, since the term “genocide” itself was coined in relation to those atrocities by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940’s. And the consensus of historians is the same. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it is the role, the right, or the responsibility of the US Congress to issue pronunciamundos about “historical facts.” Should Congress also “recognize” the “historical fact” of British genocide in Ireland during the Potato Famine? How about the Romans burning Carthage to the ground and sowing the land with salt? Congress should stick to legislating for the USA, and leave the historical determinations to historians. If this was an ongoing set of atrocities, such as the Congressman alludes to in Syria, then Congress might have a role in calling them to the attention of the relevant international tribunals, as well as the Executive Branch. Or, perhaps, if a past genocide in question directly implicated the USA, such as the slaughter of the Native Americans or the enslavement of Black Africans, then an attempt at historical definition by Congress might be warranted. But to single out Turkey, the current government of which was not even in place when these atrocities were committed, seems more like naked ethnic politics than anything else.

  31. 31.

    philadelphialawyer

    @Adam L Silverman: Wow. You really do like to have your cake and eat it too. Why bring it up, if you don’t approve of it? You certainly didn’t condemn it. And you seemed proud of your assonance as well.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @philadelphialawyer: Hey jackass: I’ve served on multinational teams with Turkish officers. I’ve even supervised one. And he’s been missing since last Summer when he was scarfed up accused of being part of the coup. I have a damn good idea that they’re a NATO ally. I have a damn good idea that they’ve fought, bled, and died with us in a lot of conflicts. And I can be a smartass about unintentional assonance and still not be suggesting we put a stick in their eye. Take your high, mighty, self righteous crap somewhere else.

  35. 35.

    efgoldman

    @philadelphialawyer:

    Wow. You really do like to have your cake and eat it too.

    You were a troll a month or so, and you’re still a troll. Your traditional nym is well chosen.

  41. 41.

    efgoldman

    @Steve in the ATL:

    man, I hate lawyers! Or maybe people from philly.

    My guess is s/he’s no more a lawyer than I am. The philly part may or may not be true. The troll part definitely is.

  43. 43.

    efgoldman

    @debbie:

    My manager at my first job (Filenes) was from Watertown and was of Armenian descent.

    We lived in Watertown for three years, and Belmont for eighteen, before we moved to RI in 2002.
    The radio station where I worked is no more, but we had sponsored Armenian programming every week, and our GM had a close relationship with the community.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    watching Rachel Maddow, it seems relevant to this thread that in the United States, in 2017, city workers in New Orleans removing a monument to white supremacists had to wear helmets and bullet proof vests and masks to hide their identity. They were protected by rooftop snipers, following death threats. And there was a candlelight vigil for a monument to white supremacists

  48. 48.

    Taylor

    @philadelphialawyer:

    Should Congress also “recognize” the “historical fact” of British genocide in Ireland during the Potato Famine?

    That wasn’t genocide.

    It was just Malthusian economics.

  49. 49.

    Tom Levenson

    @efgoldman: We lived in Watertown for 14 years, just tup the street from Sevan’s and Arax, and two blocks away from the Armenian church/community ctr. Drank a lot of coffee w. the local Armenian clergy.

    Our street, a one block long road off of Mt. Auburn St., was almost all Armenian when we moved in in 1995. First and second generation. All but one or two houses are now ex Cambridge types and/or rental units.

  50. 50.

    NobodySpecial

    I just wish the Holocaust Rememberance hadn’t been hijacked by their right wing in furtherance of their own attempts at making their little corner of the world Palestinian-free. A secondary lesson for all us goyim, if we weren’t paying attention to the lessons we should have learned from Reconstruction.

  51. 51.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Heard a really interesting interview today with Henry Winkler about his family’s escape from the Nazis. His grandfather (or father?) took all the family jewels, drenched them in chocolate, and put them in a candy box, which made it through all the checkpoints without incident. An aunt or grandmother was shipped out (alive) in a coffin, with a family plant at her feet. When they finally made it to America, every member of the family got a cutting. Winkler moved to Hollywood and took a slip with him; he has it, robustly growing, to this day. Well worth twelve minutes of your time to hear him tell family stories.

    Here’s the link. The Winkler interview starts at about 27:50.

  56. 56.

    J R in WV

    As most here know, we live on a small wooded farm in southern WV. Many years ago we were gifted with a young Holstein cow, with the intention of milking her.

    This is relevant, be patient.

    We asked around for a bull to breed her, as that’s how you get a cow to give milk. Most farmers don’t keep bulls, as they are hard on fences and don’t grow as well as steers. After awhile we learned of a neighbor who had a bull, Don Watts, who lived up on the ridge a couple of miles away.

    I spoke to him, and rounded up a local guy who made a dollar hauling livestock around the neighborhood to truck Molly over to Don’s farm. It was mid-summer, in the late 1970s, and air conditioning was rare around the neighborhood. There were fans moving air into and out of rooms, and you could smell the farm dust everywhere.

    We stopped into Don’s farmhouse to visit. He was an older guy, the age of our neighbors who taught me about farming. He liked to talk about the Bible, and unlike many neighbors was open to varying opinions about ancient history. So we chatted about ancient history, and somehow got into more recent history.

    Don was a combat veteran from WW II in Europe. He didn’t ever tell about his combat experience, but he did talk about being in the first unit to liberate one of the concentration camps. They were pretty much horrified by what they found, and it got worse as they tried to feed survivors, who couldn’t handle C-Rations, which was all they had to give.

    I wish I could remember which camp it was Don’s unit found, it was nearly 40 years ago, and it was so unsettling I just can’t recover the details. But I have an easy answer to deniers, not that I’ve ever encountered them face to face. I spoke to one of the GIs who was there, an eye witness to the destruction of a continent, and to the camps the Nazis built for their enemies.

    The Nazis were unspeakable monsters, and more of them should have been hanged. And anyone alive today who wants to be a Nazi, should be hanged, today. Right away!

    I knew about the camps, having read Leon Uris’s books about WW II and the aftermath, and Shirer’s history of the Third Reich, and such. But hearing about it from an eye witness on a neighboring farm, on a hot summer afternoon, is all different from reading the most lively historical book.

    Don would be pushing 100 years old if he were still alive. He moved down south to be with his kids and grandkids a few years after we met and talked about cows and the Bible, and WW II. His was a powerful witness.

  60. 60.

    J R in WV

    @Taylor:

    I would beg to differ.

    While the Irish farm folk starved, the British shipped thousands of tons of beef and other foodstuffs back to Jolly Old England. That isn’t economics in my book. Far from it.

  61. 61.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, I didn’t find it funny even after rereading after your comment. Churchill starved 2 million plus Indians in Eastern India ,during the height of WWII, just because he could. When Indian soldiers were dying for the god damned empire in the thousands. Yet he is considered a hero.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @J R in WV: One of my professors, also my boss and eventually a co-author, during my masters in religion whose father as in a unit that liberated one of the camps during WW II as well. Her family is from Kentucky, German Americans, from a community were when she was growing up you grew up speaking both English and German. She said her father barely ever spoke about it other than yes, his unit had liberated a camp.

  64. 64.

    efgoldman

    @Tom Levenson:

    All but one or two houses are now ex Cambridge types and/or rental units.

    In his 1980 Spenser novel Looking for Rachel Wallace, Parker describes Watertown as very much working class, blue collar. It was already starting to change by then. By the time we moved to RI, it was almost completely gentrified, as commenter Flying Toaster can tell you.
    Unfortunately, as she can also tell you, the schools haven’t caught up.
    The part of Belmont where we lived, where it’s almost all two and three family houses between Cushing Square and Waverly Square, was also where police, fire, teachers, electric company workers, etc lived on one floor while their parents, who owned the houses lived on another floor. No more. Not even close.
    I have no idea where working class folks even live in Greater Boston anymore. Chelsea? Everett? Malden/Medford? Nowhere in the Cambridge/Watertown/Waltham orbit anymore, for sure

  72. 72.

    voloshin

    Maximilian Voloshin
    Terror (1921)

    They went to the job at night. They read
    Accusations, memoranda, files.
    Signed sentences in a hurry.
    Yawned, and drank wine.

    In the morning, issued vodka to soldiers.
    Under candles, at dusk
    Called up men and women from a list.
    Herded them to a dark court.

    Took off their shoes, dresses, clothes.
    Tied it all up into bales.
    Loaded on horse carts, took them away.
    Divvied up watches and rings.

    At night, drove them naked and barefoot
    Over ice-bound stones,
    To the deserted outskirts outside of town,
    Under the north-eastern wind.

    Drove them with rifle butts to the edge,
    Pointed a flashlight at them.
    Machine guns worked half a minute.
    Bayonets finished them off.

    Dumped the still living into a pit.
    Hastily covered with earth.
    And then, with a broad-hearted Russian song
    They marched back home into town.

    At dawn, the same ravines were approached
    By wives, by mothers, by dogs.
    They would dig up the earth. Snarl over bones.
    Kiss the dearest flesh.

  76. 76.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I think it was more unspeakable than the average combat horror, actually. Don was a great guy, as most of the older farmers around here were. He was proud to have been part of the Army, glad to have survived, still 40 years after the fact, horrified by running into the camp, whichever it was.

    I don’t imagine there would be any way to learn any more about it than what I said already. His friends, my neighbors, are all gone now, have been for years.

    I don’t see any point in going into the details I heard, which are no doubt conflated with the history books I’ve read. I think everyone knows enough already, but for those who still deny that any such thing could have happened.

    It was interesting that what upset Don the most was that they could do so little to help until medic units made it to their front. And they were so unprepared for what they found there.

  77. 77.

    efgoldman

    @Steve in the ATL:

    New Hampshire

    Fewer than you’d think, unless they moved there 20+ years ago. Southern NH real estate is price-comparable with the outer Northwest ring suburbs around I-495. Plus in many NH towns the property taxes are ridiculous, to make up for the lack of state taxes. And if you’re going into Boston, the commute is a killer.

  80. 80.

    Steve in the ATL

    @efgoldman: a big chunk of my company’s Boston office lives in NH. But they work for us, so they could well be stupider than most people….

  82. 82.

    Adam L Silverman

    @J R in WV:

    It was interesting that what upset Don the most was that they could do so little to help until medic units made it to their front. And they were so unprepared for what they found there.

    This tracks with what I’ve hear from/about other Soldiers who were involved with liberating the camps.

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:
    @Tom Levenson:
    Wow, this is like Watertown “Homecoming” week. I lived there from ’79 to ’81, near the now-defunct Rosary Academy, and would go for a jog up and down and up Palfrey Street (which, even though I was in half-decent shape in those days, was a sucky hill to run). Geez, now I’m feeling nostalgic. Or wistful. Or old. Or all of them, Katie.

  85. 85.

    ArchTeryx

    Heh. My relationship to the Jewish folks is a very weird one.

    My mother’s side was nearly all Jewish. (With a name like Malecha, how could they not be?). My father came from an extremely anti-Semitic Swiss family, but he fought for the U.S. in World War II. He still wouldn’t let us watch the Three Stooges, though, instead directing us to Laurel and Hardy. Much later, I discovered it was because the Howard brothers were Jewish.

    ( Heaven only knows what he would have thought of my stash of Jackie Mason tapes. )

    My aunt and my mother have been trying to get me to convert for years, but I feel it’s the wrong time…not just because the anti-Semitism on the rise (I feel like I already have enough targets aimed at my gut) but because of my precarious finances and no job. I’d be doing it to network as much as anything, and that feels just too…cheap and cynical for me.

    I like to think I inherited my mom and aunt’s attitude and not my father’s, but as already been proven with me, evil lurks in the hearts of men.

  88. 88.

    debbie

    @Miss Bianca:

    The Turks have never acknowledged it as genocide, but the telegram refers to liquidation of Armenians. The telegram recaps the email in the first minute of the interview if you want to take a listen.

  90. 90.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: You couldn’t be. Even if they’d been briefed on what was going on, which they weren’t, the reality would still be overwhelming.

  92. 92.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    How could someone be prepared?

    I believe my late father in law’s best friend (long dead) saw the camps. Don’t know if he was with the first, liberating units in. Even if I’d ask him directly, he’d never talk about it.
    My father and all four of his brothers served (and came back), in the US. North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. None of them were in the units that went into the camps. Probably just as well.

  93. 93.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    In his 1980 Spenser novel Looking for Rachel Wallace, Parker describes Watertown as very much working class, blue collar

    The part of town where he finds “Mingo” Mulready (I think it was) was pretty close to where I was living, like a block or two away.

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: A lot of Soldiers did – they wanted documentation because they didn’t think anyone would believe them when they reported it up the chain of command.

  96. 96.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I had a high school history teacher whose dad took pictures at the camp he freed.

    The producers of Judgement at Nuremberg used authentic footage, as did the World at War documentary series and other documentaries. And of course, lots of them are on display at the Holocaust museum in DC.
    I’d hate to think it became commonplace and didn’t bother people any more.

  97. 97.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Neldob: One of my undergraduate polisci professors, the son of parents who managed to flee ahead of the Holocaust, used to say: “people that have been treated despotically, when freed or when they liberate themselves, often wind up establishing some form of tyranny of their own.

  98. 98.

    debbie

    @J R in WV:

    A high school friend’s mother survived Dachau. The friend’s father was one of the soldiers who liberated the camp. Neither of them were known to speak about it. The mother was always very kind, but you could feel the sadness surrounding her.

  99. 99.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    I read the Spenser novels many years before I first visited Boston (and stayed with friends in Watertown). I’ll have to pull them off the shelves and re-read at some point, now that I’m a bit more familiar with the area.

  103. 103.

    GregB

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Trying to remember something about history and how the wisdom of experience can disappear after people who lived through certain events die off.

    Needless to say we are at the end of that learned experience from the WWII generation and right on cue a whole chunk of the world is enticed by fascism.

    Morans.

  109. 109.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Adam L Silverman: this can’t be right. Several posters here and on my FB feed assure me that Wilmer is the most popular politician in the history of political popularity.

  111. 111.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It happened by small steps that no one outside of Germany could really believe were happening, because it seemed so outrageous to think that a country would decide to murder people in an organized way because of their ethnicity and/or religions. A civilized country wouldn’t do something like that. And that refusal to believe in reality allowed the Germans to go down that path, step by step.

    It took several years for the Germans to decide to come up with a Final Solution because their other plans for getting rid of “undesirables” hadn’t worked out as well as they hoped. Remember, the number of Jews killed — 6 million — is half of the total. The estimated total once you include the Roma (Gypsies), LGBT, and disabled (to name just a few) is closer to 12 million.

  114. 114.

    Adam L Silverman

    @amk: I’m not sure whether to go with:
    1) Well at least this way he couldn’t screw it up.
    or
    2) Is there no one on the White House staff who could write an appropriate statement for him to read?

  115. 115.

    NYCMT

    Both of my grandfathers passed through Dachau after Kristallnacht, and both of them lost their parents to deportation and murder (Kovno, Treblinka). Pop-pop’s jahrzeit is right around the corner on Friday – he went from Dachau to Philly to Biloxi to Omaha Beach. My step-grandmother’s brother died some weeks ago at 99; he and Oma, his eldest sister, were the only survivors of their family. Manfried talked about hiding in a Danube ore barge until he reached Bucharest and an unmolested iteration of the Struma, until he fetched up in Palestine in 1940 and was whisked off to Cyprus. Manfried’s wife Adele was a teenager from Carpathian Czechoslovakia who was deported to Auschwitz and worked as a slave laborer – they met and married in Ramat Rahel and he deserted his post to smuggle pregnant Adele out to the main lines during the Jordanian siege. That baby, Drora, was troubled with mental illness throughout her life. Adele kept her younger daughter close for fifty years; Esther never married. Both died childless. They are all gone except for graves in Long Island now.

  120. 120.

    Sunny Raines

    when are we going to have Native American genocide day in remembrance of the 10 million Native Americans (out of a total population of 15 million) snuffed out by American racism and manifest destiny plundering?

  125. 125.

    efgoldman

    @amk:

    what a completely shameless fucker.

    I’m sure Peach Pustule didn’t go to the source and decide on his own. One of the brighter bulbs in the hyena herd copied it and handed it to him.

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne

    @Sunny Raines:

    When there’s compelling filmed and/or photographic evidence of exactly what happened.

    I saw Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog once, and only once, and yet images from it still occasionally haunt my dreams. Especially the row of headless bodies laying on a series of slabs, with the heads casually piled in a nearby basket.

  127. 127.

    NYCMT

    @ArchTeryx: When I last spoke to Manfried six years ago (there was a very bitter fight fourteen years ago after Esther died), I asked him to decipher his onion-skin letters to Oma, which Oma had kept over seventy years until her death. He refused. I invited him to my son’s bris milah, he refused. My father and I stood in the November cold wind at New Montefiore off Wellwood Avenue as he hammered his cane over and over into Adele’s just-unveiled gravestone. “Hab kein anderer mishpochah!” he said. It was a shitty day.

  129. 129.

    Lizzy L

    I grew up in a neighborhood where it was common to meet people with numbers tattooed on their forearms. There must have been a time in my life when my parents told me what those numbers meant. But I cannot remember that conversation.

    I do remember my mother explaining to me that we (through her side of the family) had had relatives in Alsace, but that they had been killed by the Germans “in the war.” She was not explicit, so it was some while later that I realized that they had been murdered by the Nazis. My father fought in the South Pacific, and it took some time before I understood that the war my father had fought in and the one that had killed my unknown cousins in France was the same event, and a pretty recent one.

    My maternal grandmother’s name was Hirsch. In 2000 I traveled to Alsace. I visited Strasbourg and traveled into the surrounding countryside. I encountered a local brandy; the maker’s name was Hirsch. I have no idea if there was any connection.

  130. 130.

    ArchTeryx

    @NYCMT: “Don’t speak of the family?” That’s pretty awful…at least you kept some of his legacy alive. Did you find anyone else to translate the letters?

  131. 131.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    All the comments are screwed up on the mobile version of this post. Extremely narrow column width, double printing of comment number.

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