God, as somebody that grew up in a largely jewish community, holocaust denial is like... so fucking weird.
Because I don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t terrified of swastika’s, including when I was so young that I didn’t even know what a swastika was.
Because it’s such a strangely specific feeling to be born in the wake of a tragedy so massive that you can still feel it’s reverberations and were born with a weird sense of survivors guilt that will shadow you forever
Because when we were younger and our parents refused to tell us exactly what the holocaust was, we would trade our grandparents horrific experiences like they were scary stories across the camp fire, repeating them over and over to ourselves and eachother so we could figure out what it all meant.
Because I’d see those books with grey photos of Auschtwitz prisoners on the cover and feel like they were looking straight fucking at me.
Because every single Yom HaShoah you’d hear grade school children get up and say “my grandmother was the only one left of her family” or “they barely got out before it started” or “they managed to hide in an attic for months on end” or “my great grandmother managed to jump off one of the trains with her daughter in her arms” or “my grandfather has numbers on his arms but he won’t talk about it” or “my great aunt was shot just before the liberation so she couldn’t get out,” like it was normal.
Because we were always taught to run if we were in a group of non-jews that started making nazi jokes, to laugh along and then take the fuck off to stay safe.
Because the question always lingered over our heads, “what if it happens again? what if it happens to us?”
.... and them some stupid fucking college age white trash dickhead stands up and says “it didn’t happen” or “it wasn’t that bad” and I just can’t... fathom that? Like how the fuck wasn’t this part of your life? How is this not etched into your bones?
And its because it’s not. Like people didn’t grow up with this shit, some people can afford to deny the holocaust and deny antisemitism because it won’t hurt them.
It’s just... fucking wild.
(please reblog)
