Today marks the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and the #HolocaustMemorialDay. We honour all who perished in Auschwitz and other #WW2 Nazi German camps. #HMD2018 pic.twitter.com/WejaohHP5n
— Polish Embassy UK (@PolishEmbassyUK) January 27, 2018
Today is the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Soviet Red Army.
Ivan Martynushkin, a senior lieutenant in the Soviet Army, had just turned 21 when the gunner unit he commanded was ordered to advance toward the Polish town of Oswiecim.
“We saw buildings beyond the barbed wire. And as we got closer, we began to see there were people.”
“At first there was wariness, on both our part and theirs,” he says. “But then they apparently figured out who we were and began to welcome us, to signal that they knew who we were and that we shouldn’t be afraid of them — that there were no guards or Germans behind the barbed wire. Only prisoners.”
“We saw emaciated people — very thin, tired, with blackened skin,” he says. “They were dressed in all sorts of different ways — someone in just a robe, someone else with a coat or a blanket draped over their robe. You could see happiness in their eyes. They understood that their liberation had come, that they were free.”
The unit stayed no more than half an hour, attempting to communicate with prisoners who Martynushkin now believes were Hungarian Jews. “We all spoke a bit of German, English, and Polish by then, but we had no idea what language these people were speaking,” he says.
But despite the language difficulties, the prisoners’ happiness was infectious, Martynushkin says. “We could feel that we had done something good.”
As such the 27th of January serves as the date for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Holocaust was not the only genocide, ethnocide, or major ethnic cleansing of the 20th Century, but it was the one that was central to the formation of the post World War II international order. Partially because of how Americans reacted to the the horrors of the camps they helped to liberate and the subsequent US push for the Nuremberg Trials.
Auschwitz wasn’t just one camp. Rather it included Auschwitz (Camp 1), Birkenau (Camp 2), Monowitz (Camp 3), and an additional 45 camps including one dedicated to dealing with Gypsies/the Romani and the Sinti that was an outgrowth of the Birkenau death camp.
73 years ago today over 7,000 prisoners of #Auschwitz, including ca. 700 children, were liberated by the Soviet army. https://t.co/hyEaUWEVbu pic.twitter.com/jpmNLc4Ev8
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 27, 2018
The butcher’s bill was extraordinary:
Out of 1,3 million deported 400,000 people became prisoners of the camp while 900,000 people were murdered in gas chambers after arrival. The estimated number of people murdered in the German Nazi Auschwitz camp is: 1 mln Jews, 70k Poles, 21k Roma, 14k Soviet POWs & 12k others.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 27, 2018
And despite the deniers so recently embolden to slither out from the shadows, there was overwhelming evidence left behind.
After the liberation of Auschwitz multiple evidence of German crimes were discovered, including 1.2 million items of clothing, 43,500 pairs of shoes, almost 70,000 cooking utensils, almost 50,000 brushes, 5,500 tallitot, over 3,000 suitcases and almost 13,000 pairs of glasses. pic.twitter.com/ihpFESRsjn
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 27, 2018
The links to the two parts of today’s live broadcast of the memorial service can be found here and here (they’re not embeddable).
Here’s video of Lieutenant Martynushkin filmed for the 65th anniversary of the liberation:
The 322nd, however, were not the first group to reach the camp. The Polish resistance placed Witold Pilecki, who volunteered for the assignment, inside the camp to gather intelligence. For three years he bore witness to some of the most horrific acts perpetrated by humans on other humans. The Office of Strategic Services in London ignored his reports because of questions of reliability. Pilecki was captured by the Soviets in occupied Poland after the war and executed in 1948.
The Nazi killing machine wore on, but one Polish man daringly put himself into the heart of the beast to gather intelligence on what was going on. His name was Witold Pilecki. He was an Auschwitz volunteer.
For International Holocaust Remembrance Day, #WeRemember his story. pic.twitter.com/TeWvuvGZaf
— (((WJC))) (@WorldJewishCong) January 23, 2018
Open thread!
Timurid
We can trust the New York Times to treat this solemn anniversary with the respect it deserves. Uh, actually… forget I said that.
Karen Potter
I knew a couple of men who were part of that, one was barely 18 but his hobby of picture taking made him an official photographer. He not only took part but had the dubious honor of having to take roll after roll of pictures. He said he would take a roll, go get sick; then take another roll. By the time they finished he said no longer got sick between rolls of film, but he also had to process the pictures which made him sick all over.
schrodingers_cat
@Timurid: They wanted a promotion from being The Vichy Times to The Nazi Times.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Timurid:
@schrodingers_cat: The New York Times is garbage.
debbie
Apparently, Trump managed to mention Jews in this year’s Proclamation.
NotMax
The sentencing prologue in Judgment at Nuremberg.
IIRC, that 1961 film marked the first time the general public saw some of the actual gruesome footage shot at the camps.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Here’s his tweet with the link to the proclomation:
What’s sad, especially since I’m sure he doesn’t understand why it is sad or that it is sad, is that this was the tweet the preceded it:
schrodingers_cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: More like radioactive waste with a long half life.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: I’m pretty sure that is correct. I went look for the early 90s BBC roundtable on the Nuremberg Trials, but it does not appear to be up on Youtube. I remember watching it when it first aired in my house in Scotland.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: Mostly OT: I saw your comment earlier. I’m waiting to see what, if anything, is actually released on Monday as the White House plan/list of requirements/opening bid in negotiations before posting about it. I know what was reported last week was to be released on Monday, but I also know that once the pushback began the White House quickly let it be known that nothing would be released on Monday. So rather than jump at shadows, I’d wait to see what, if anything, actually is put out in the light of day.
Roger Moore
@Timurid:
Good god they’re awful. I guess we can’t have a fair discussion of the Holocaust without a Nazi getting a seat at the table.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Trump didn’t write the 11:30am Tweet, it’s not his style. The 3:55am Tweet on the other hand, that’s vintage Trump.
Adam L Silverman
Outgoing!
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
That yarmulke atop his head seems ill at ease.
chris
Pence had to weigh in too. JFC he’s creepy. Start here:
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: No doubt. The early AM one was him. The latter one was transcribed copy probably staffed by Kelly so as not to repeat last year’s mess (which included having Seb son of Hugo Drax defend it, which is letting the NAZI guard the concentration camp of foxes guarding a hen house if you will). And my guess it was transcribed by Hicks.
p.a.
Let’s not forget the ‘normalization’ began when Bonzo went to Bitburg
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitburg_controversy
Adam L Silverman
This sounds strangely familiar…
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Fair enough. Whatever it is, its going to be terrible. We just have to see how terrible.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Who the hell wears white to Yad Vashem?
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: It is struggling to maintain both a shred of decency and ritual purity.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
It lost an argument with the ferret.
debbie
@chris:
Resurrection = The State of Israel. Wow.
B.B.A.
Let us never forget the Holocaust. But let us never forget the Nakba either.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: That’s a hot mess. He should have stuck with we will never forget or something. There is no resurrection in Judaism. And the survivors creating new lives for themselves sure doesn’t count as a spiritual resurrection. A whole lot of them wound up functionally agnostic or atheistic, not more devout, while remaining culturally Jewish.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
On visiting Yad Vashem
Obama wrote in impeccable cursive, while Drumpf wrote in capitalized block letters
(link)
Adam L Silverman
@chris:
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/lucky-the-jews-didn-t-get-what-pence-was-really-saying-1.5764424
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes, but we all know he’s not capable of doing that. He’s a Christianist who can only see Jews through the lens of his death cult.
chris
@debbie: @Adam L Silverman: Looks like every Jewish and every decent person on Twitter is dragging him. Except for those still cursing at Douthat and cancelling their subscriptions to FNYT.
Adam L Silverman
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: The Trumpenfraulein. In Judaism white is the color of the penitent seeking redemption and thereby purity. Hence why the rabbinical and cantorial garb on Yom Kippur, as well as what is worn by many congregants, is white.
p.a.
@Adam L Silverman: In America’s free market Christianity, Pences proliferate, the Fred Clarks, Rachel Evans languish. By their fruits…
NYCMT
The gas chambers of Auschwitz devoured my mother’s father’s parents, aunt and uncle and first cousin. My mother’s mother’s mother. My father’s step-mother’s sister and mother. My step-grandmother’s sister-in-law was deported from Carpathian Slovakia, had her entire immediate family gassed, and was tattooed and put to labor in Monowitz II. My step-grandmother’s first husband’s entire family and he dropped dead the day the letter came from the Red Cross, on September 30, 1945.
Mary G
St. Paul was an asshole.
Adam L Silverman
@B.B.A.: Correct, but that is remembered on 15 May.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
The Knesset gave Pence a מוליגן.
Yutsano
I have way too many emotions on this subject. So I’m going to abstain except for this:
@Timurid: JFC STFU Chunky Reese.
Adam L Silverman
@chris:
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: I can never get one to sit on my head properly.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: So fucking conceited, his way or the high way.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
debbie
@chris:
I just read it. How deluded is he?
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Well played.
efgoldman
@Karen Potter:
I think one of my uncles – my dad had four younger brothers. All five of them served, and survived WW2, but not all in Europe – was at the liberation of one of the smaller, lesser known camps further West.
I learned about The Holocaust at a very young age. By the time Judgement at Nuremberg and Rise & Fall of the Third Reich came out i was pretty familiar with most of the details.
Then when we went to the Holocaust Museum in DC a few years ago, everything got reinforced.
Thanks Adam for for posting a reminder and remembrance in this space.
[I believe both of my paternal grandparents, who came here 1905-1910, lost people in the war but not in the camps. My grandfather’s family was trapped in Leningrad during the siege, my grandmother came from a small shtetl near Minsk or Kiev – it was never clear – and she assumed they werer wiped out.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Perhaps one of these:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/4105mpOQV5L._SY355_.jpg
Or if you want to be tacticool, as well as appropriately religiously attired, one of these:
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1_CVzJVXXXXaxXpXXq6xXFXXXx/226138704/HTB1_CVzJVXXXXaxXpXXq6xXFXXXx.jpg
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
The few times I’ve attended services recently, it seems very few men can keep them straight. The ones handed out to guests are the worst: One size fits all and kind of pointy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I was told to use bobbie pins.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie:
That might be part of the issue.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
“Keeps your kippah on your keppis.” Oy!
chris
@Adam L Silverman: He must have saved his sermon on Revelations for the private meetings.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: The most bittersweet story I’ve heard was related to me by a woman I dated for a while. She was at a friend’s wedding, before we started going out, and at the rehearsal one of the groom’s grandfathers kept staring at one of the bride’s grandmothers. Apparently a lot of the extended family had not yet met before the rehearsal as some times happens. After a while the groom’s grandfather went up to the bride’s grandmother and asked her: “what is your number”. She got startled, looked at him closely, and started sobbing. It was his first wife. They were separated when they went into the camps, couldn’t find each other after the war when they were liberated, assumed the other was dead, and went on to rebuild their lives, only to be reunited over 50 years later at their grandchildren’s wedding.
debbie
SNL’s rerunning an abbreviated version of the show hosted last season by Dave Chappelle at 10:00 Eastern. It was a great show, especially the Walking Dead satire.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: I’m sure it was a revelatory experience for everyone.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
And a substantial minority wound up as viciously racist as any KKK member,
I’ve mentioned before, I knew such a man very well. Camp survivor, ni[clang] this, ni[clang] that. Kept strictly kosher, but was a wholesale salesman for Dubuque pork products.
chris
@debbie: Haha! I wondered what sort of clothing that was. Well done.
Tenar Arha
I don’t quite know what brought these photos of Laughing at Auschwitz – SS auxiliaries poses at a resort for Auschwitz personnel, 1942 to mind today. Been thinking a lot about
the banal smiling faces of those who do something terrible to other people.
(& I’m not even sure it’s right to post the link to the photos because it appears Spiegel didn’t when they were found).
? Martin
Turns out the college student murdered near me was killed by a white supremacist.
Killed behind a bunch of million dollar homes. I can’t imagine this happening prior to Trump being elected.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
A high school classmate’s mother survived Dachau. She lost all her family and never had her number removed. Her husband was one of the soldiers who liberated the camp.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Without a doubt. Though my guess is they were bigoted in that way before they went in. And Israel has a major racism problem with Ashkenazi Jews on top, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in the middle, Ethiopian Jews/Bet Danu at the bottom, but just above Israeli Arabs and Palestinians without Israeli citizenship. And that’s not counting the devout/secular problem. I’ve always felt that if the Israelis and Palestinians ever reached a settlement, shortly thereafter the Israelis would fall upon each other to violently determine just who is and isn’t Israeli and who is and isn’t Jewish. It is not a healthy society.
Another Scott
Relatedly, Brad DeLong is thinking about Trump – Images of a slide presentation (or I’d post extended excerpts). The original Apple Keynote slides are here.
Yup.
A good read.
Cheers,
Scott.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
I’ve heard occasional stories like that, but never been close to one personally
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
And Israel’s about to deport African refugees back to their sh*thole.
Adam L Silverman
@? Martin: Was that the kid named Blaze or something? I saw the reporting on that. Planned to do a post and it, unfortunately, got lost in the shuffle of all the other insanity.
Adam L Silverman
And for Raven and Ruckus and you other Vietnam vets, lest we forget:
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
He’d never seen a black person in Europe
Even as early as the 1967 war (which happened the night of my brother’s high school graduation) I felt that the secular. democratic government gave the rabbis way too much power.
And of course it’s gotten much worse in the decades since.
Omnes Omnibus
The father of one of my high school history teachers had been a photographer attached to a unit that liberated a camp. The slide show was appalling. As were the stories – people having to block out the enormity of what they were dealing with so that they could do the work of burying the dead and caring for the living.
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: Both sides!
eclare
@? Martin: Wow, so sad, and in retrospect so predictable.
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: Wow.
Adam L Silverman
Always nice when the FBI subtweets the President:
And some background from a retired Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Division:
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Wow.
No words.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
chris
@Tenar Arha: An illustration of the phrase, “the banality of evil.” Buncha workin’ stiffs taking a break from their labours. Gross. And some of the comments show how not very far we’ve come.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe we should find out what the two corinthians have to say about this.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I think I count as somewhere around twice removed on this one.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Yep.
JanieM
@Timurid: @chris: Douthat — once an offensive asshole, always an offensive asshole.
J R in WV
Adam,
While this topic is hard for me to deal with, for anyone I suspect, I appreciate your post a great deal.
Years ago we had a Holstein milk cow and needed to breed her. I promise this is on topic! After asking around I was sent to an elderly farmer on the other end of the high ridge just east of us. Don was an infantryman in Europe in the early 1940s and had an interesting time of it. We took the opportunity to chat with him on hot summer afternoons between work intensive sessions of loading hay, moving the cow, etc.
Don was part of a unit that was – shockingly for them – first to encounter a given death camp, out in the coutryside. I do not recall after 30 years which one it was, nor his unit ID. He was after several decades able to talk about it well; I believe he thought it was part of his duty to talk about it, to tell the story of that day.
These guys were plain old country boys, small town kids, bright enough, hardened soldiers by then, and they were heartbroken by what they had found. They didn’t really have any medical supplies for such a situation, the medics had bandages and such, but they were running on canned ham and soup and such. When they tried to feed the liberated prisoners such foods, it killed them, they couldn’t process it at all.
After a while, he told us, a special medical unit showed up and took over care of the camp, and Don’s unit returned to combat. I suspect they were relieved at that. I think the Army had some knowledge that these camps were out there, and made some small preparations, but didn’t know exactly where all of them were. So when a unit stumbled across one, they could send a unit prepared to deal with such a grim discovery as best as they could in the midst of a war of survival.
Sitting in a farmhouse living room, with a fan running and all the windows open, cattle in the field, we had talked of many things over the summer, but nothing affected me so much as that story. From the liberator’s mouth. It was such an ordinary country house, a ridge top farm, sunny days, yet Don had lived most of his life bearing witness to such a thing.
I have no patience nor tolerance for deniers, I have the story first hand from an elderly neighbor farmer who lived in this neighborhood most all his life. All my other neighbors had known Don since the 1930s. Of course they’re all dead now, but I’m alive to tell the story. Anyone who wants to dispute it can come and see me about it. I have left most all the details out, no one here today needs to know more than what I have told, but I know them.
Obviously I also have strong feelings about the local American Nazis. We now know, have known since the 1940s what fascism stands for – racist murder is the bottom line. Destroying the American way of life is their way forward, ending in murder. Hanging is too good for them, really.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: @Another Scott: Of course the woman I dated turned out to be nuts, so please keep in mind I am relating to you what she told me. I did not witness it myself. And, just a reminder, nuts!
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: Last I saw them they were walking into a bar.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
I can. Bigots never stopped killing LGBT people.
eclare
@J R in WV: Powerful story.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Do you have her phone number? Asking for a friend…*
*Well, for Baud actually.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: It is amazing. The father of the religious studies professor I was assigned to assist doing my MA had fought in WW II as a young man. He’d grown up in the German-American areas where Kentucky and Ohio meet. Actually spoke German as a first language despite being born in the US as it was what was spoken at home because of his grandparents lack of fluency in English. She said that he could never fully bring himself to talk about what he saw when his unit got to the camps.
As for knowing, they did. The best book on this topic is this one:
https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Intelligence-Nazis-Richard-Breitman/dp/0521617944/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517109290&sr=1-7&keywords=norman+goda
I know Norm Goda and Richard Breitman. I had them come and speak in back to back years at USAWC/Carlisle Barracks as the keynotes for Holocaust and Genocide Remembrance Month. They’re both, in addition to their primary faculty assignments, senior fellows at the US Holocaust Museum.
? Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, Blaze Bernstein. I had a colleague at UPenn reach out and try and spread the word that he was missing. As it happens I have a good friend that works at OC Search and Rescue and was working on the case so put them together. We were pretty sure that Blaze met a bad end – this isn’t the kind of wilderness area that people get lost (I have other friends that live in that neighborhood). Maybe, maybe he ran into a mountain lion. It’s rare, but it happens. Anyway, I had some other life emergency intervene so I couldn’t help on the search but, given that I also work with college students, this hits pretty hard.
OC is not without a history with neo-nazis, but it certainly seems that the vocal Trump supporters here aren’t like the coal miners in WV, they’re more consistently white supremacists.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Please tell me that you have told that story here before, because I know I have heard it, so it can’t have been from anyone other than you. Right?
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Fair.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: In my professional opinion, one of the major drivers of the reemergence of some of this garbage from the right most fringe is the dying off of both those who survived and those who were involved with liberating them. Museums and memorials and documentaries are all great resources, but losing more and more of the first person recollections each year is not helping.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
Shit, horrible.
“you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”
Never forget.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
Paul Ryan’s punchable face comes to mind.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Do you mean (a) that was the first time the general public saw some particular camp footage or (b) that was the first time the general public saw any of the camp footage?
(A) may be true, but I don’t think (b) is. Eisenhower ordered that Signal Corps footage be released to the newsreel companies almost immediately, and the newsreel reports were shown in American theaters as early as May 1945.
Here is one Universal newsreel from 1945 narrated by Ed Herlihy. Warning: extremely graphic! (Buchenwald footage starts at 4:05.)
Orson Welles wrote in the New York Post on May 7, 1945:
Welles included some of the documentary footage in his 1946 film The Stranger, about a Nazi fugitive living undercover in a New England town.
Sorry to go on at such length if your answer to the question at the top is (a), but I may be away from the blog for a while and wanted to get my notes down.
El Caganer
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: …as is Vidkun Quisling. Norwegian, too – only the best people! Bigly!
Psych1
My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was one of 16 children. The shetel rabbi came and told her father he must send 5 of his children to America and 5 to Palestine. They all thrived and multiplied. The ones left behind were all killed in the camps.
Villago Delenda Est
The vile dominionist ass that is Dense issued a statement loaded with fundy Christian implications, totally missing the point of the Holocaust, which was done at the hands of nominal Christians.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I wouldn’t do that to you or Baud. Or anyone else for that matter.
WaterGirl
@NYCMT: I have no words, but I do want to acknowledge what you wrote. I am so sorry.
Adam L Silverman
@? Martin: It is a needless tragedy. And pointless too.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: That was funny,
Suzanne
I went to Dachau when I was in Germany. Never been to Auchwitz-Birkenau. Going to Dachau was one of the most intense experiences of my life. I absolutely recommend going to see at least one of the camps in one’s lifetime.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: Yes, I’ve recounted it here before.
Amir Khalid
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Omama also wrote eloquently about the memorial’s significance for humanity at large, today and in the future. Trump’s message reads like a clueless tourist wrote it — but hey, at least he managed not to shove anyone out of the way at the group photo session.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: So glad to hear that!
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: @WaterGirl: Try to do a favor for someone…..
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Of course
Just as the War of Treason Over Slavery became romanticized in half the country
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: No words for that story, Adam.
No words.
Lapassionara
@J R in WV: I knew a guy who had been in one of these units too. Had photos. Anyone who denies that this happened is scum.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: Omama!
Also, wasn’t there some other book Trump signed where he added something like “have fun!” or some other wildly inappropriate thing? I am not one to feel shame based on what other people have done, but I do feel shame that this man is representing our country.
Lyrebird
@Timurid: Favorite reply this far:
El Caganer
@Adam L Silverman: ‘and the bartender says, “We don’t get too many corinthians in here…”‘
”
jharp
I’ve not been to the Holocaust museum but I’ve heard it is extremely powerful.
I once worked for a man who was a survivor of Treblinka. One of 6. Estimates vary though.
He had an amazing story.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: Glad to see the FBI are fans of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation.
efgoldman
@Lyrebird:
Tapeworms, at least, are only following their instincts and genetic programming.
Altho I suppose you could say the same thing about racist, antisemitic, nazi assholes
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Well it wasn’t technically the only US ship bombed durning the Vietnam war but the point is well taken.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: Baud, Actuaply is an under rated Xmas movie
randy khan
The Holocaust Museum in Washington has a photo from the liberation of one of the camps showing soldiers getting their first look at the prisoners in the camp. They originally planned to have it blown up to more or less life size in a spot that everyone would have to pass through during the museum tour, but they had to take it down even before the museum opened because the staff members – people who dealt with this horror on a daily basis – couldn’t stand to look at it. It ended up being part of a montage of photos at a much smaller scale.
Apparently what made it impossible to look at wasn’t the prisoners, but the looks on the faces of the GIs when they saw the prisoners. I’ve always thought that told me everything I need to know about how horrific conditions were in the camps.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: Under- or XXX-rated?
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: Actually about how they facilitate presidential health by positively reducing his BMI without excess exercise or something.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: They’re hip.
Lyrebird
@efgoldman:
Yeah. Not sure what to say about Miller and his ilk.
Old friend of mine did used to bring up tapeworms, though, any time he heard people spouting off about humans being the pinnacle of evolution. They are remarkably well adapted to their environment!
Raoul
I cannot fucking believe this Douthat piece. I mean, the WH already has ‘shithole’ and ‘Mexican rapist’ Donald Trump in it. We need a young white supremacist accolade there as well to set the table for a deal?
Between this and the awful Dreher bit the other day, the Christians who didn’t seem like foaming idiots are, with Trump’s cultural permission, letting it be seen plain as day that they are foaming racist idiots as well.
chris
@Raoul: Dreher’s always been a foaming idiot.
ETA: And a racist.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: I am aware. We’ll discuss The Liberty in June. As is tradition.
Amir Khalid
@JanieM:
And as at his usual roost The Effing New York Times, Chunky’s commenters are not kind to him.
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman: So true! And then Slytherin Alumni Association Spokesmodel K. Conway would pick up the thread by suggesting that all exercise is effeminate, somehow inserting slams of Richard Simmons and both Clintons into the debate.
ETA: Sorry, Adam, for the “Slytherin” reference to a non-Harry-Potter fan, but I know you know how to skim on past.
chris
@JanieM: I remember the spasm of disgust in the blogosphere when he got the FNYT gig.
NYCMT
@WaterGirl: Because today was the seventy-third anniversary of the liberation, I limited my third-hand testimony to the members of my extended family killed there. Riga, Treblinka, Sobibor, Terezin – both grandfathers survived months in Dachau after Kristallnacht before the war, before their parents were killed.
Three generations later, it still reverberates in the core of my family story. Every day, my sister commutes through the small Frankfurt suburb where my great-grandparents lived – where they were deported from their house, directly to Treblinka. Just five weeks ago, my septuagenarian father, born in London in ’44, scrambled over the low corner in the mossy brick wall of the Jewish cemetery in the small Vogelsberg town where his namesake mother’s father is buried (he died in ’27). They all flew home just before the end of the year, for the bris milah of my newborn second son, who is named for my mother’s father. Pop-pop was beaten in Dachau so badly he had lifelong kidney disease (from which he died in 1982). He fled after release through Switzerland to the United States before Pearl Harbor, and landed at Omaha with the third wave.
Amir Khalid
@WaterGirl:
Fine. Pick on my typo. Hmph. ;-)
Adam L Silverman
Any of the lawyers know the Federal charging code for stalking a former Secretary of State who was also a senator and first lady? And this isn’t even the most offensive segment she’s done this week!
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: She’s daft.
Ohio Mom
@debbie: LOL
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
I hate that woman (edit: Jeanine Pirro, not Hillary Clinton!). I hope she draws a single-digit tumbrel number.
And I strive mightily to keep women off my punchable-faces list, but she and the Possum Queen make it very, very hard.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suzanne: I did as well, and even though it was a sunny day, the place was dark.
efgoldman
@Steeplejack:
Fortunately (or not) there are only nine single-digit numbers, for so, so many tumbrels.
Betty Cracker
My paternal grandfather was among the first American soldiers to liberate a concentration camp in Germany. What he saw there haunted him for the rest of his life.
chris
@Adam L Silverman: I’d guess that HRC’s Secret Service people would know all about that and would be delighted to inform the “Judge.”
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: I’m familiar with the Potter references. Carry on.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Been there as well. October ’84. I did not go back when I was stationed over there a few years later. Once was enough.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: I wonder if she still has her driver’s license. I think she was supposed to plead by some time in early January. In New York State, going 40 mph or more over the limit is an 11-point violation, enough to get your license suspended.
I loved her excuse, too: I had been driving for hours and didn’t realize how fast I was going. Now 90 can maybe creep up on you if the road is empty and you’re not paying attention. But I’ve driven at 120 on a public road, and that is not a speed that creeps up on you. And she wasn’t on a great road, either.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: She’s nuts. Seems to be drunk on air a lot. Whatever you do don’t go looking for the clip of her talking about Dreamers tonight. Mean spirited, factually inaccurate, and tipsy is no way to go through life.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
How many people can we pack in one tumbrel? Clearly I have not thought this through.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: You are right that 90 or so can creep up on one, but 120 requires intent. Unless she was driving a McLaren. Was she driving a McLaren?
B.B.A.
@Adam L Silverman: She was DA of Westchester when I was growing up there…and it seemed like such a normal county at the time.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: I kind of liked it. Early in 2007, at campaign events when Barack would introduce himself he would joke about his name and the (seeming) inability of people to get it right. “Yo Mama”, he joked. So when I saw your Omama it reminded me of young easy-going Barack joking about Yo Mama.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t think I made it through 10 seconds. Was this for real? What an obnoxious blowhard.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: She really does sound like an obnoxious, braying drunk. It amazes me that anyone watches her show for reasons other than to laugh about how horrible she is.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: The stories don’t say. Although a NYT story indicates that when her husband was convicted of tax evasion some years ago. they had a Bentley, several Mercedes and a Ferrari 348 (quite a dated machine by now, though, if they even still own it.)
ETA: NY Daily News story from November indicates she was driving a Cadillac.
efgoldman
@Betty Cracker:
Maybe that’s why she’s on on Saturday night. the traditional TV graveyard.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Don’t know anything written, but I have a strongish recollection that on his paper-towel-throwing post-Maria visit to Puerto Rico, his message to the survivors was something like “Have a great time!” or “Have fun!” or something like that.
Frankensteinbeck
@Lyrebird:
It would explain a lot if Trump had a tapeworm infestation. The larvae like nervous tissue, and the adults like assholes.
ruemara
@Adam L Silverman: That is a wild story.
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman, @Betty Cracker:
Her voice is what drives me nuts—the harsh tone and the broad accent. She sounds like she should be on The Real Housewives of Shithole, New Jersey.
Libraryguy
OT, but remembering a loss so I hope it’s alright …
Our 15-year-old mini-Schnauzer Rosie went to the Bridge three weeks ago today. It hits a little harder somehow, when my wife starts crying while making dinner, because Rosie loved to “help” in the kitchen. We called her Rosie Underfoot. Just missing her, I guess.
Jeffro
@Mike J: Ok, firing that up now just like Pavlov Radio…
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
What an appalling woman. I take it this is Fox News’ idea of hard-hitting investigative journalism, but holy fuck.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman:
One, maybe two of those…but not all three, for Pete’s sake…
Jeffro
And OT, but perhaps worth talking about again in the a.m.: even for ‘just’ the mid-terms, these guys still have $400M+ to spend on preserving an illegitimate stranglehold on our government.
A large “investment”…
It’s a “challenge” that Democrats actually plan to exercise their franchise…
A “lot of demagoguery” on the D side…
Oh my. Remind me to go all in on pitchfork futures come Monday morning’s opening bell…
Peale
@Adam L Silverman: I guess I get the point. They want desperately to make it appear that she’s still the candidate they’re running against in 2018. That she still matters politically. The left apparently wants to run against her, too. Drag Clinton into the discussion as much as possible and pretend she and her “Clinton wing”are up to their “old tricks”. Behind the scenes. It’s really kind of crazy, but who knows. It just might work.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
No. It’s torches you should go in on. Pitchforks are a durable good, so once people are fully equipped there’s no future market. Torches are a consumable, so they’ll keep buying.
eclare
@Libraryguy: So sorry about that, the holes that they leave in your heart are huge.
Adam L Silverman
@B.B.A.: Everything was fine till that Xavier fellow opened his “school” for gifted youngsters.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: Yep.
Honestly, I don’t know what’s happened to Fran Descher’s career since the Nanny was taken off the air.//
Betty Cracker
@Libraryguy: I’m so sorry. We’re in the same boat here, and the absence is hardest to bear in the daily routines.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: My money is that she’s the person having the affair with the President that Michael Wolff alludes to.
Peale
@Jeffro: ugh. Between the Freedom caucus and the Republican study group, the Koch’s have purchased 180 seats in Congress to create a big black hole in the House. They won’t vote. They won’t propose legislation. They shouldn’t even be counted as dues paying members at this point. They are like registered voters who don’t show up to the polls. How many more seats does Charles want?
Jeffro
@Roger Moore: noted! Torches it is!
Adam L Silverman
@Libraryguy: My sincerest condolences. We – that would be me, my Rosie (a black lab mix), and her little sister Ruby (a chocolate lab mix) – are keeping good thoughts for you all.
ruemara
I AM DONE! And I’m reasonably happy with it. I have that good feeling on the story, like you know this is what the characters would do. Y’all can wish me luck, because landing this fellowship would be amazing.
Libraryguy
@eclare: Thanks. You’re right, she was so happy and warm, it makes her not being there so much harder.
Mary G
@Libraryguy: It’s so hard. I was heading for the food bowl every day, then I would remember it no longer needed filling, and be so sad. They leave a big hole in the heart. I
am sorry for your loss.
Libraryguy
@Betty Cracker: Thank you, Betty. My wife sang a version of Neil Diamond’s song to her every night, and she’d fall right asleep. We miss that so much.
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: And get the decent ones. Not those cheap, citronella tiki ones that the neo-NAZIs like.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: Congrats! Well done!
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Make sure you’re well provisioned!
Adam L Silverman
@ruemara: Strike Hard!
Libraryguy
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks, Adam. I didn’t realize how many Rosies there are among the BJ folk. I like that.
Libraryguy
@Mary G: Thank you, Mary. I feel for you, moments like that really bite the heart.
Tenar Arha
@Libraryguy: Grief is sneaky like that. Was missing my mother and an aunt yesterday. Learned a new word for the feeling today on Twitter via @HaggardHawks
Adam L Silverman
@Libraryguy: Officially she’s Rosa.
You all hang in there.
Libraryguy
@Tenar Arha: That’s exactly the feeling. Thanks for sharing that.
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: Best of luck!
@Adam L Silverman: GROSS! ?
Betty Cracker
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
A WWII era destroyer. By the time I was in there weren’t that many left. We had one home ported in Charleston. By the late 60s, early 70s it was way past it’s life expectancy but the navy, in it’s infinite wisdom sent it to Vietnam. The crew figured it wouldn’t make it to the Pacific.
To the original post.
I think what pisses me off the most with the republican party, from the very bottom to the very crappy top is that they have no concept of history. And because they are stupid fucks without any concept of world events past and present and they are too fucking dumb to learn, they will repeat the same mistakes that have been made so many times before by other idiots just like them. They will do the same things over and over and think that they just didn’t try hard enough or throw enough bodies at something or steal enough money and that’s why it didn’t work, just like it hasn’t worked the thousands of times humans have done it before. It is disheartening that way too high a percentage of humans are still functionally idiots, after all this time on this rock. I can certainly see an argument against at least mental evolution could be legitiment.
Kayla Rudbek
@Villago Delenda Est: when I was an Army brat, we visited Dachau. I can still remember that the sunlight did not seem to have any power or warmth. And I couldn’t have been any older than 6 years old when we visited.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
If you are a drunk it would be easy to be a mean spirited asshole. Not for everyone but for some people it is one reason they drink, they like being an asshole but don’t have the courage to act like that without support. I’ve known a few. So that might be 2 out of 3 pretty easy. And of course if you are drunk, being factually accurate is not really high on your list of things to worry about. That’s 3 out of 3. And she’s employed by faux so that’s really 4 out of 3.
J R in WV
@Libraryguy:
I don’t think a pet obit is ever going to be off topic here. Hug your wife often and hard while she’s hurting that bad. And rescue another pupper asap. That’s what we do when we have a new hole and extra room.
Condolences.
Libraryguy
@J R in WV: Thanks, J R . We still have our Benny (Westie – Maltese) we rescued back in 2006. Hard to imagine a new pup right now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: A happy photo. Thank you.
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks for posting the photo of rescued victims. It helps late at night to have a bit of positive to remember. And of course my neighbor Don was pretty positive in some ways. He lived to tell the story, to witness the events.
Good night all, ya’all jackals~!!
Ruckus
@Peale:
CK wants it all. The closer he can get to all before he lies breathless in a pool of his own excrement he thinks will get him closer to nirvana. Which he will of course have attempted to purchase prior to that. Look at drumpf, how awful he is and just know that CK is far worse. He has far, far more money than drumpf and is willing to spend it to destroy the country that has allowed him to get this rich.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
I hope that little girl went on to do amazing things.
Steeplejack
@ruemara:
Congratulations on the script, and good luck on the fellowship!
aznfg
I’m from the area where Ohio meets Kentucky. My parents and grandparents did know German speakers growing up. I heard about the Holocaust at home but not much at school until the eighth grade. My American history teacher played the US Army Signal Corps film about the liberation of a camp. You could not imagine a quieter group of 8th graders leaving that classroom.
Gretchen
My dad was one of the first American troops to get to the camps. They had no idea this was happening until they got there. He was travelling with a group of 6 men, with rations for 6 men, and encountered hundreds of starving people. The Germans were gone, but the collaborators were still there, and the prisoners were trying to get to them. All they could think to do was arrest the collaborators, but he was haunted years later by not having enough food to give to all the others.
Gretchen
That was one of the many maddening things about the 2008 election. Obama said that his grandfather was among the troops which liberated Auschwitz. Liar! Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians! Grandpa, like my dad, was one of the many allied troops that liberated other concentration camps. But since Obama wasn’t clear on exactly which camp his grandfather liberated, it was all a lie.
PJ
The thing I remember most about visiting Auschwitz are the cases (vitrines) – you walk into an empty room, and along a wall there is a case with hundreds of suitcases, another with thousands of eyeglasses, another filled entirely with human hair, including the pigtails cut off of young girls. It’s difficult to imagine the murders of a more than a million people that took place there, but when you see these jumbled artifacts, you get a sense for the immensity of it.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: Just finishing is amazing, but finishing and feeling good about the story is everything. Crossing my fingers and toes for you. I really hope you get this!
Karen Potter
It isn’t just that we are losing those who survived, those who liberated; but we are also starting to lose those of us who heard first hand the stories from those people. Unless, the stories are believed it will happen again. History shows it keeps happening, but faster when the stories are no longer told nor believed.
Sm*t Cl*de
@Adam L Silverman:
I would have said “mess of pottage”, for I am old-school, but Amit Gvaryahu no doubt knows his audience.
woodrowfan
one of my friend’s mothers was a child in that camp. I get chills when I see her photo (the one with the girls standing behind the wire).
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Lyrebird:
Don’t slander Slytherin like that!
Death Eaters came from other houses as well.
Conway is the female Peter Pettigrew.
LaNonna
My mother and her twin sister were sent to Mengele by Barbie from France, to be experimented upon; my mother the control, her sister the “experiment”. Our family has a long history of twinning, each set born since WWII a victory; how sad and amazing that as the first native-born American I feel that my rights as a woman, a Jew, and lefty anti-fascist are better protected here in Italy than in the US, a country that both my parents did handsprings to get to after liberation.
Sab
@Mary G: Agree with you on that (StPaul was an asshole.) And I am not an atheist.
Kathleen
@NotMax: I remember watching the movie with my grandfather, an Irish immigrant and WWII vet. He said every person in US needed to see that film so that we would never forget..
Kathleen
@p.a.: So on point. Thank you.
Tehanu
Jared Fkg Kushner’s grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. I read her testimony — which started with her memory of a German soldier shooting a 3-year-old child dead for making noise playing outside the house the Germans had commandeered, and got worse from there. It really made me wonder how Jared can justify his working for a Nazi sympathizer like Dump.