Holocaust-Comparative trivialization

[Ludicus]

..Please discuss. Why it matters- what does make the Holocaust unique is its unique dimension, which, unlike the Stalin's purges, allowed no escape for the Jewish victim.No Jew could ever become the "Nazi New Man". Nowadays, with the rebirth of the Homem novo/New Man/ L' Uomo Nuovo, "Family and folk", the trivialization of Holocaust (and deflective denial in Eastern, illiberal Europe - e.g. Orban's Hungary) has become an hallmark of the Nationalist alt-right. Enjoy the , in all its glory.
Alt-Right Brasil (@AltRightBR) | Twitter

"The New Man",




Between Denial and Comparative Trivialization, The Holocaust is Being Trivialized by Trolls and Republican Times of Israel...

The same terminology, endowed with 21^st technological capabilities, has morphed into racist memes and internet trolling which belittle historic Jewish persecution. The Holocaust, which was once considered sacrosanct, has been trivialized to such an extent that Donald Trump Jr recently commented haphazardly about the media’s “persecution” of Republicans as “warming up the gas chamber.
To non-ironically paraphrase the Trump campaign – let’s
“Make Never Again, great again”

The "soft-core" holocaust denial of the Alt-Right, De-Judaization of the Holocaust, the two faces of Trump Jerusalem Post. 2017

....Following these criticisms, on January 29, Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff, justified the president’s remarks, saying in an interview on BBC, “Everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust including, obviously, all of the Jewish people affected….”.

A few days later, on January 30, Deborah Lipstadt, the American historian and specialist on Holocaust denial, also criticized Trump’s comments, in an article published in The Atlantic. She argued that Trump’s wording constitutes what she calls “soft-core” Holocaust denial.
Those who de-Judaize the Holocaust, as Trump did in his statement; compare mass crimes in order to minimize the genocide of Jews... are all contributing of this trivialization.

Banalization allows one to put different crimes on supposedly equal footing, with the grotesque effect of minimizing the genocide of the Jews

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Primo Levi's interview, translated from Italian into English by Ruth Feldman. The Italian-Jewish Holocaust survivor writes, Excerpts,

The purpose of the Nazi camps was not the same as that of Stalin's gulags. In this lugubrious comparison between two models of hell, I must also add the fact that one entered the German camps, in general, never to emerge. No outcome but death was foreseen. In the Soviet camps, a possible limit to incarceration always existed. In Stalin’s day many of the “guilty” were given terribly long sentences (as much as 15 or 20 years), but hope of freedom, however faint, remained.From this fundamental difference, others issue.

The relationships between guards and prisoners were less inhuman in the Soviet Union. They all belonged to the same nation and spoke the same language, they were not graded “Supermen” and “Non-men” as they were under Nazism. The sick were treated, though inadequately. Confronted with overly hard work, an individual or collective protest was not unthinkable. Corporal punishment was rare, and not too cruel.

It was possible to receive letters and packages with foodstuffs. Human personality, in short, was no denied, and was not totally lost. As a general consequence the mortality figures were very different under the two systems. In the Soviet Union in the harshest periods, around 30 percent of those who entered died. This is an intolerably high figure. But in the German camps, mortality amounted to between 90 and 98 percent.It is possible, finally, to picture a socialism without prison camps; in many parts of the world it has been realized. A Nazism without camps, however, is unimaginable.

Perhaps one cannot—what is more, one must not—understand what happened, because to understand is almost to justify. Let me explain. Understanding a proposal or a form of human behavior means containing it, containing its author, putting oneself in his place, identifying with him. No normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and the endless others. This dismays us, but at the same time it provides a sense of relief, because perhaps it is desirable that their words and their deeds cannot be comprehensible to us. They are nonhuman words and deeds, really counter-human, without historic precedents, difficult to compare even with the cruelest events of the biological struggle for existence.
The war can be explained, but Auschwitz has nothing to do with the war
There is no rationality in the Nazi hatred. It is a hate that is not in us; it is outside man, it is a poison fruit sprung form the deadly trunk of fascism, although outside and beyond fascism itself. If understanding is impossible, however, knowledge is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Conscience can be seduced and obscured again: even our consciences.

From "the face speaks the soul of the race", according to nazi white supremacists. Are they right?



Book- If This is a Man, by Primo Levi

page 29,

We had soon learned that the guests of the Lager are divided into three categories: the criminals, the politicals and the Jews. All are clothed in stripes, all are Haftlinge, but the criminals wear a green triangle next to the number sewn on the jacket; the politicals wear a red triangle; and the Jews, who form the large majority, wear the Jewish star, red and yellow.

Chapter, The Drowned and the Saved"- pages 99/103

...We would also like to consider that the Lager was pre-eminently a gigantic biological and social experiment.

..here the struggle to survive is without respite, because everyone is desperately and ferociously alone... In the Lager, where man is alone and where the struggle for life is reduced to its primordial mechanism.
With the adaptable, the strong and astute individuals, even the leaders willingly keep contact, sometimes even friendly contact, because they hope later to perhaps derive some benefit. But with the mussulmans, the men in decay, it is not even worth speaking, because one knows already that they will complain and will speak about what they used to eat at home.
Whosoever does not know how to become an "Organisator," "Kombinator," "Prominent" (the savage eloquence of these words!) soon becomes a "musselman." In life, a third way exists, and is in fact the rule; it does not exist in the concentration camp.

This word "Muselmann" I do not know why, was used by the old ones of the camp to describe the weak, the inept, those doomed to selection... Their life is short, but their number is endless; they, the Muselmanner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer. One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand
To sink is the easiest of matters; it is enough to carry out all the orders one receives, to eat only the ration, to observe the discipline of the work and the camp. Experience showed that only exceptionally could one survive more than three months in this way.

All the mussulmans who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story; they followed the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea. On their entry into the camp, through basic incapacity, or by misfortune, or through some banal incident, they are overcome before they can adapt themselves; they are beaten by time, they do not begin to learn German, to disentangle the infernal knot of laws and prohibitions until their body is already in decay, and nothing can save them from selections or from death by exhaustion. Their life is short, but their number is endless; they, the Muselmanner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer. One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand.

Chapter -The Last One -page 175,

...At the foot of the gallows, the SS watch us pass with indifferent eyes: their work is finished, and well finished. The Russians can come now: there are no longer any strong men among us, the last one is now hanging above our heads, and as for the others, a few halters had been enough. The Russians can come now : they will only find us, the slaves, the worn-out, worthy of the unarmed death which awaits us. To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.

Chapter - The Story of Ten Days - page 185,

..About midday an SS officer made a tour of the huts. He appointed a chief in each of them, selecting from among the remaining non-Jews, and ordered a list of the patients to be made at once, divided into Jews and non-Jews. The matter seemed clear. No one was surprised that the Germans preserved their national love of classifications until the very end, nor did a any Jew seriously expect to live until the following day.
The two Frenchmen had not understood and were frightened. I translated the speech of the SS man. I was annoyed that they should be afraid: they had not even experienced a month of the Lager, they hardly suffered from hunger yet, they were not even Jews, but they were afraid.

January 26th. We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.

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I hope it has become clear the unique dimension of the Holocaust, the Nazi attempt to murder every last Jewish man, woman and child.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

unlike the Stalin's purges, allowed no escape for the Jewish victim.No Jew could ever become the "Nazi New Man".

Interesting that you brought up Stalin of all people. His doctor's plot also didn't give the option to become "Communist new man" either.

[Aexodus]

I’m not sure this is a conversation that needs to be had. No one’s trivialising the Holocaust when they compare it to other genocides/mass murders.

[Himster]

No one’s trivialising the Holocaust when they compare it to other genocides/mass murders.

It is interesting that some people think that this somehow causes trivialization. That could be a line of discourse that is worth pursuing.

[tgoodenow]

Well, now that Mueller, Stormy Daniels, the 25th Amendment, and impeachment has failed... we are back to Drumpf is literally hitler

Which is ironic because the far right or alt right or whatever we’re calling the fringe these days; considers Trump to be a Zionist puppet.

[Mithradates]

the trivialization of Holocaust (and deflective denial in Eastern, illiberal Europe - e.g. Orban's Hungary)

In Hungary, the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust is a crime punishable by up to three years' imprisonment. Just saying.

[Morifea]

In Hungary, the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust is a crime punishable by up to three years' imprisonment. Just saying.

Good to know, I thought we germans are the only ones with such laws.

[sumskilz]

Ah yes, soft-core Holocaust denial. If it exists, there is porn of it on the internet. Who could possibly disagree with Dr. Stephanie Courouble-Share when she says inclusive language is unacceptable? Perhaps intent matters.

[Ludicus]

I’m not sure this is a conversation that needs to be had. No one’s trivialising the Holocaust when they compare it to other genocides/mass murders.

Here, Aexodus.
#711
#717
#713
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Ah yes, soft-core Holocaust denial. If it exists, there is porn of it on the internet.

Deborah Lipstadt, you don't like her? she argued that Trump's wording constitutes what she calls "soft-core" Holocaust denial.

Deborah Lipstadt, testimony to a sub-committee of the House Foreign Affairs on resurgence of antisemitism: "Resisting Antisemitism and Xenophobia in Europe"

Watch the video. Begins about 30 minutes. https://youtu.be/yxKJgsorhxI

the hate of an entire group...we see this notion on the far-right

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In fact,anti-Semitism is an inherent part of right-wing populist and extreme-right parties. The relationship between party affiliation and anti-Semitic beliefs is part of the authoritarian syndrome.
(PDF) The radical right and antisemitism - ResearchGate
(See also: the Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right).
Key excerpts, Anti-Semitism and Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Quantitative Results

Since 2008, the refugee situation, economic crises, rising unemployment, and identity crises are just a few factors driving the move to the far right.
Anti-Semitism accompanies this phenomenon, but not everywhere in the same way: in countries with a fascist and National Socialist past, anti-Semitism seems to be an inherent part of right-wing populist and extreme-right parties.
Meanwhile, in other countries, rising anti-Muslim sentiments have caused right-wing parties to align with respective Jewish populations in their aim to instrumentalize such anti-Muslim attitudes in their election campaigns.

Indeed, several leaders of right-wing populist parties frequently travel to Israel to emphasize their sympathies; however, in Israel, they prefer to meet with Israeli extreme right-wing parties, with whom they share their exclusionary rhetoric and form anti-Muslim alliances (e.g., Betz 2013)

the number of anti-Semitic hate crimes has risen, possibly—though not necessarily—due to the growth and rhetoric of the Front National in France, Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice) in Poland, Sweden Democrats, Freiheitliche Partei Österreich (FPÖ, Freedom Party of Austria), and Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (Pegida, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany) in Germany. It is not possible to establish any clear causal connection between the rise of the right and anti-Semitic hate crimes, but the aggressiveness of right-wing and extreme-right propaganda certainly contributes to a more general climate that supports hate crimes against all “others,” thus also against Jews (Wodak 2015a, 2016).

Zick, Küpper, and Hövermann (2011) combined six dimensions of prejudice to create a GFE (group-focused enmity) index. Calculated as the mean value of six individual GFE elements, it expresses the overall intensity of group-focused enmity.
The internal consistency (reliability) of this index, composed of anti-immigrant attitudes, antisemitism, racism, anti-Muslim attitudes, sexism, and homophobia, is confirmed empirically for Europe as a whole, and at the country level. In all countries, all six prejudices are so closely related that they can be treated as a single dimension.

In a next step, Zick, Küpper, and Hövermann (2011, 77) investigated the correlation of the GFE with party affiliation and the endorsement of authoritarianism and law-and-order politics. Taking the European countries together, they found significant relationships between group-focused enmity and authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and a negative attitude toward diversity.

This implies that respondents who exhibit prejudice against weak groups are also likely to espouse ideological convictions that oppose equality for different groups. In this way, we actually find empirical evidence for Adorno and colleagues’ (1967) theory of the authoritarian syndrome (see above).

These results also imply that right-wing populist parties that endorse anti-Muslim beliefs and ultra nationalism are highly susceptible to antisemitism, homophobia, and sexism (Zick, Küpper, and Hövermann 2011, 102): The further to the right respondents place themselves in the political spectrum, the more likely they are to hold prejudices against the target groups under consideration

Nowadays, the various roots of anti-Semitism (drawing on nationalist, religious, and racist ideologies) are usually merged into what I label syncretic antisemitism. (1)

Teun van Dijk has described strategies for denying racism in great detail (1992, 89ff.). He claims that one of the crucial properties of contemporary racism is its denial, typically illustrated in such well-known disclaimers as “I have nothing against blacks, but..." (* see below)
...by instrumentalizing anti-Semitic tropes, such provocations support the agenda of right-wing populist parties: they immediately dominate the media for a period of time, triggering what I have labeled the “right-wing populist perpetuum mobile” (see Wodak 2015a, 2016).

What some have termed “post-Holocaust” or “post-fascist” antisemitism has remained a potent force of anti-Jewish hostility in contemporary societies and is most commonly found among political and intellectual actors associated with the radical right. (** see below)

Research to date seems to have neglected the different histories of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe as well as the various anti-Semitic stereotypes and tropes that are functionalized time and again for political ends. Anti-Muslim sentiments have not been substituted for anti-Semitic beliefs; quite the contrary, in fact, as they frequently occur together.

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(*) Portugal minister condemns far-right MP's attack on ... - Reuters

Portugal’s Angolan-born Justice Minister Francisca Van Dunem said in a speech that lawmaker Andre Ventura’s comments were “an example of the xenophobic discourse which has begun to invade our institutional spaces and now arrived in parliament.”
Ventura, the head of small populist party Chega (Enough) who was elected for the first time in October, posted the statement on Facebook on Tuesday in response to a policy proposal by Joacine Katar Moreira from the eco-Socialist party Livre. She had proposed that items in Portuguese museums obtained from former colonies should be returned to their countries of origin.
“I propose that the lawmaker herself be returned to her own country. ... It would be calmer for everyone, including her own party, and especially Portugal!” wrote Ventura.
Moreira is one of three black members of parliament, and has presented various policy proposals on tackling racism and colonial legacies in Portugal.
An unrepentant Ventura told TSF radio: “She is constantly attacking our history and defending foreign interests".
At a time when far-right populist movements are on the rise in most of Europe, their peers in Portugal still enjoy relatively weak support because of the country’s attachment to a young democracy that began in 1974 after four decades of Antonio Salazar’s fascist dictatorship.
Ventura was elected with just 1.3% of the vote for his party, but rights groups have voiced concerns that his populist rhetoric often broadcast from parliament is whipping up anti-foreigner and homophobic sentiments and nostalgia for Salazar.

(**)
Small parties create major upsets in parliament - Portugal

Abel Matos Santos has described the former dictator’s much-feared PIDE (secret police) as the “best police force in the world” and dismissed a former Portuguese consul credited with saving thousands of lives from the Nazi gas chambers as “a money-lender to the Jews”.

The Jews do not agree, and will never agree, with those who consider Aristides Sousa Mendes to be a "Jewish moneylender"-a right wing anti-Semitic canard.

Israel Foreign Affairs Minister, https://youtu.be/BuN-XOnQnHk
https://youtu.be/bwwi9cd5kJw

(**)
In March, the spanish Vox Party Vox nominated as a congressional candidate Fernando Paz to run for Parliament in Albacete. Paz is a journalist and right-wing historian, who was known for saying the accepted historical account of the Holocaust is "far from having been established with accuracy," for calling the Nuremberg trials a "farce"and for having presented his book at the Madrid headquarters of La Falange, an openly anti-Semitic party of unequivocally fascist ideology.Holocaust denier selected as Spanish far-right party's election

He has called the Nuremberg trials a farce and he has questioned the mass murder of six million Jews,” the FCJE, the official representative body of the Spanish Jewish community, said in a statement.“He has clearly stated his suspicions that the Jews did not die in gas chambers, but instead at the hands of Eastern European residents, and has denied the racist origins of the Holocaust.”...A Eurobarometer poll published in January suggests that 66 per cent of Spaniards do not believe that Holocaust denial is a problem

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(1) According to Sartre," Antisemitism in its most temperate and most evolved form remains a syncretic whole which may be expressed by statements of reasonable tenor. According to the antisemite, which is always a syncretic thinker, the Jew is not evil because he's a banker or fails to fight in the war, or charges usurious interests, but rather he fails to fight in the war because or charges usurious interests because he's a Jew and therefore evil", He has adopted in advance a certain idea of the Jew. His hatred is a priori.; it precedes experience"
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Maurice Barrès was a nationalist and an anti-Semite, and therefore anti-Dreyfus. He writes "That Dreyfus is capable of treason, I conclude from his race".
Therefore, the devil is inside the Jewish veins. It's crystal clear: that's what Auschwitz was for:to purge "our civilization" of the Jewish blight.That's the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
Finally, to conclude, I ask: to what extent European and American Jews are willing to endorse the rise of far-right political parties?
Europe and right-wing nationalism: A country-by-country

[sumskilz]

Deborah Lipstadt, you don't like her?

I don't have any problem with her, but I think it's a bit paranoid to see anything nefarious in this:

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”

[Ludicus]

I don't have any problem with her, but I think it's a bit paranoid to see anything nefarious in this:

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”

Which is completely true. Deborah was born in 1947.The horrors of the Holocaust are still vivid in older people's memory. In fact, it can be boring, but please read If This is a Man, Primo Levi - whole book in PDF
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Why do I like her? because she is politically impartial. I mean, she criticizes the left and the right, but she has the courage to say,
"Holocaust denial is alive and well in the highest offices of the United States. It is being spread by those in President Trump’s innermost circle. It may be a conscious attempt by people with anti-Semitic sympathies to rewrite history. The de-Judaization of the Holocaust, as exemplified by the White House statement, is what I term soft-core Holocaust denial". She also notes, I quote "Trump's failure to mention Jews as a group persecuted by the Nazis in the White House Holocaust remembrance statement, as well as White House officials who have connections to the alt-right".

Obviously, there is left and right-wing anti-Semitism around the world, but its also true that the great majority (not all) of groups and governments listed by Deborah are all right-wing. As we know, she is opposed to both the Trump's alliances with right wing governments like Orban's regime, Poland's party of Law and Justice in Poland, or the A.F.D. in Germany. She argues, "They feel emboldened because of leaders like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Viktor Orban, Salvini, Bolsonaro. She mentions tombstones desecrated in Slovakia, towns Poland and Italy that refuse to install small brass plates that commemorate Holocaust victims.

Lipstadt says "far-right bigots tend to "own" and even celebrate their hatred". On the far left, she argues, anti-Semitism often finds a foothold in anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric. Which is true, although the criticism of Israel's policies doesn't necessarily equate anti-Semitism. In fact, in 2001, in an interview with Haaretz, she lashed out at the "over-the-top pandering" of Republican presidential candidates, describing their fawning support for Israel as "embarrassing" and "unhealthy."
I quote again the Hareetz:"of last week's appearance of the top Republican candidates at a Washington forum organized by the Republican Jewish Committee, she said: "It was unbelievable. It made me cringe. I couldn’t watch it". "You listen to Newt Gingrich talking about the Palestinians as an "invented people" – it’s out-Aipacking AIPAC, it’s out-Israeling Israel. There’s something about it that’s so discomforting. It’s not healthy. It’s a distortion". (1)
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On the plight of the Palestinians, she said, " let’s look at other countries where that happened with the indigenous citizens, the indigenous residents were treated less than fairly. We can start with the United States of America, the Native Americans, or slavery. For a long time we had slavery in this country, people being owned. Or Canada and its treatment of what is called the First Citizens (First Nation), horrific treatment. Or Australia and the treatment of the aborigines, or New Zealand and the treatment of the Maoris. That doesn't make it right"
I don't agree with everything she says. But I like her.
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(1)Gingrich calls Palestinians an 'invented' people"

[Heathen Hammer]

So basically the thread is about trivializing atrocities of regimes that OP likes.
Also not a current event.

[Gromovnik]

Prison time for neo-nazis is great. Good job, Hungary and Germany!

[Heathen Hammer]

Prison time (or any form of prosecution in general) for any political beliefs is illiberal and tyrannic. I'm surprised this even has to be explained.

[Gromovnik]

It doesn't.

[Heathen Hammer]

It doesn't.

If you want to live under undemocratic totalitarianism, I guess. Kinda like what 30s Germany had.

[Slydessertfox]

If you want to live under undemocratic totalitarianism, I guess. Kinda like what 30s Germany had.

Equating banning Nazi parties and the dissemination of Nazi views with actual Nazism is some galaxy brain .

[mishkin]

I see the problem of saying "in the death camps not only Jews were killed, many people suffered because of Nazism" because it is dangerously close, in the mouth of some, to "all sides committed atrocities in the Second World War". Both statements are true, but as Ludicus rightly points out the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish population is many steps beyond any "all suffered because of those maniacs" or "all committed atrocities during the war.

Seeing the joy with which some fly the Nazi flags in the United States, it might be convenient to replace some of those tributes to racist generals with monuments recalling the Jewish holocaust. It would be quite appropriate in these times. (The Nazi Flag Unfurled at a Bernie Sanders Rally Illustrates the Stakes of This Election)

[Cookiegod]

I see the problem of saying "in the death camps not only Jews were killed, many people suffered because of Nazism" because it is dangerously close, in the mouth of some, to "all sides committed atrocities in the Second World War". Both statements are true, but as Ludicus rightly points out the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish population is many steps beyond any "all suffered because of those maniacs" or "all committed atrocities during the war.

Lol.

First of all: Saying there were more than one victim group is a completely different thing to saying there were more than one side committing atrocities. Pro tip: Don't dabble in racism when wanting to criticise racism. Because that's what this boils down to.

Secondly: Yes, all sides did commit atrocities. And anyone with enough a brain will be able to distinguish the two. Those who want to ignore one do so because deep down they do agree with Nazis on one thing: That one bad excuses the other.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Cookiegod is absolutely right about saying, that there was more than one victim group in the Holocaust than the jews!

Over 25,000 of the approximately 40,000 German and Austrian Sinti and Roma recorded were murdered. In total, an estimated 220,000 to 500,000 Sinti and Roma fell victim to the racial madness of the National Socialists and the genocide systematically planned on them.

https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/der-...-und-roma.html

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Today is European Holocaust Remembrance Day for the Sinti and Roma. 75 years ago, on August 2, 1944, the so-called “Gypsy Camp” was liquidated in the Auschwitz extermination camp. Zilli Reichmann, 94 years old today, survived.

Renate wants to make coffee. Zilli sits in her large, red armchair and gives advice. The little 94-year-old woman with the big pearl earrings nods contentedly when the daughter-in-law disappears into the kitchen. Reaches for a gas lighter, lights a cigarette. The sleeve of her blue dress slides up a bit. Releases a tattoo on the forearm.

"I got it in Auschwitz, from Bogdan, I know what his name is. Look, that was the 'Z', 'Gypsy', you see, I tried the razor blade but didn't go away, but kept coming back ... "

On March 11, 1943, Bogdan, a fellow inmate, stabbed the "Z1959" tattoo in Zilli's forearm. In the so-called gypsy camp in Auschwitz. From then on, the 19-year-old was only a number in the Nazi extermination camp. In the following weeks, railway wagons brought thousands of Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz. Also Zilli's parents, Zilli's four-year-old daughter Gretel, her sister with seven children, her two brothers.

The whole family to Auschwitz

Renate sets the table, Zilli pulls on the cigarette. The 94 year old smokes a lot.

“Not a week goes by when I don't dream, I run around here crying and smoking a cigarette. I'm in Auschwitz. "

Her daughter Gretel, her parents, her sister with seven children - they are all gassed in Auschwitz on the night of August 2 and 3, 1944. 75 years ago. In the so-called "liquidation of the gypsy camp". Only Zilli and her two brothers survive. Because they were transferred to a labor camp hours earlier.

"My father always said: 'Oh, you know what', to my mother, 'Hitler, he only brings the criminals away.' And finally: my father had no criminal record, so wrong parking or something that was nobody is so clean today. And he came to the camp too, then he saw what Hitler was doing, he didn't believe it. He thought he was just taking the criminals away. Afterwards it was our turn. We weren't criminals. "

A wealthy Sinti family who travels through the villages with their traveling cinema between Dresden, Jena and Prague. The brother also trades in violins. They call themselves "Lalleri". "German gypsies," say others. From 1938 there was a "Reich Center for Combating Gypsy Mismatch". And a Himmler decree to "combat the gypsy plague". Basics for the hunting of Sinti and Roma. Zilli has been silent for a long time. The memories were too painful.

To the gas chambers like the Jews

“Our people went into the gas chambers exactly like the Jews. And you rarely hear about the Sinti ... and that annoyed me ... and that's why I did it. "

She spent hours telling historians about her life.

"My two cousins, they were hidden in Strasbourg, they weren't registered, black, they were hidden, the two."

Zilli goes to Strasbourg to bring the cousins ​​to Metz, where the family is waiting with the caravan. That's what her father wants. He believes it is safer.

“And so we wanted to go back from the train station to Metz, where my father was, and then we were arrested, all three. The two were looking for her, I wasn't looking for her, but I went with her voluntarily ... If they take my cousins ​​with me, I go with them, but I didn't know I was going to prison. "

First Strasbourg, then Karlsruhe, Prague, Lety - at the end Auschwitz. The whole family is deported to the extermination camp. Father, mother, Zilli, their daughter Gretel, a sister, two brothers, seven children. The 18-year-old Zilli brings the family through as best they can.

"I stole like a raven, but not from the mouth of people, in the kitchen, in the clothing store, magazine, the Zilli stole everything you could think of ..."

"Mom, they put people in there"

She met Hermann Dimanski, a camp elder, communist, and a Spanish fighter. She begins a relationship with her mother's blessing, she says. From now on, she no longer needs to steal. Diamanski helps wherever he can. He removes Zilli from the gassing list twice. "He probably put another one there for me," she says.

“The gypsy camp was not far from the gas chamber. My child always came to me: "Mom, mom, people are burned over there." I said: "No ... they bake bread." "No, mom, people put in there", she knew that . At four or five years old.

Zilli swallows. Shakes her head. Abruptly changes the subject. A few years ago, she says, an NPD election poster hung on the lantern on her doorstep: 'Better money for grandma than for Sinti and Roma' was there.

"They are not without, they are not without, we are getting a bad time, the young people who are feeling sorry for today’ because the right-wingers are on the rise, they are very popular. "

But she doesn't want to talk about that anymore, she says. You must not be upset about the present. It has enough to do with the past. When thoughts come back at night:

"... and then I pray, Lord, take my mind away, Lord, you know, it hurts me so much that I cry. Sometimes I say to Renate: 'Tonight I was again ...'

Renate: "... I was back in Auschwitz tonight. I got something extra from the psychiatrist. "

But there is no remedy for the nightmare of Auschwitz.

https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de...icle_id=455367

Some picture:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Working for the people and the fatherland

Many German Sinti had not only served for the empire in the First World War, they also fought in the Wehrmacht from 1939. In 1941, the High Command ordered "the release of gypsies and gypsy hybrids from active military service" for reasons of racial policy. Alfons Lampert was then deported to Auschwitz with his wife Else, where both died.



Measured and recorded by racial researchers

The nurse Eva Justin learned the Romani language to win the trust of the minority. In the wake of the racial researcher Robert Ritter, she moved across the country to measure people and to register them as "gypsies" and "gypsy hybrids" - the basis for the genocide. Relationships were researched and the baptismal registers of the churches were evaluated.



Imprisoned and disenfranchised

Like here in Ravensburg in southwest Germany, Sinti and Roma families were locked up in camps on the outskirts of the city in the late 1930s, fenced with barbed wire, controlled by dog ​​handlers. Nobody was allowed to leave his whereabouts. Pets were killed and people had to do forced labor. Many have been subject to forced sterilization.



Public deportation

In May 1940, Sinti and Roma families from south-west Germany were brought through the streets of Asperg to the train station and from there directly deported to occupied Poland. The Kripo report said: "The removal went smoothly." For most of the deportees it was a journey to their deaths, they died in labor camps and Jewish ghettos.



A Mayor's Responsibility

In 1942 the Mayor of Herbolzheim applied for the "removal" of the Sinti family Spindler. 16 family members were deported to Auschwitz, two survived. 60 years later, Mayor Ernst Schilling cleared the events. Since then, the city has remembered the murdered. Schilling says he has become aware of how much responsibility a mayor has for people's lives.



Murder and persecution across Europe

Wherever National Socialist Germany ruled, the minority was persecuted. Sinti and Roma were locked up in "gypsy camps" or with Jews in ghettos such as Warsaw, deported to "extermination camps" and murdered. It is estimated that up to 500,000 people died as a result of shooting, gas, starvation, disease, medical experiments or other acts of violence.

https://www.dw.com/de/vor-75-jahren-...itz/a-49382742

Narrowing the Holocaust on the jews is ignoring the other victims.