I'm not sure if it's permitted here to post links to Twitter comments so I'll just summarize.

Someone tweeted a photo of three elderly Jewish men standing together holding up their arms to show the tattooed numbers they received in Auschwitz. They had been standing in the same line and so their numbers are close together. The tweet says, in part:

"Seventy three years later they were photographed, together again, for the Last Eyewitness Project, as free men who survived to build families and prosperous lives."

I guess it's predictable, on social media, but it didn't take long before several tweets referred to the men as "Nazis", I'm guessing in reference to some opposing political opinion.

If any one of us as individuals was held 100% responsible for the acts and speech of some of our elected representatives how unfair and ridiculous and inaccurate would that be? Because how much control do we have over them to start with - one vote every 2, 4, 6 or whatever number of years.

And calling people 'Nazis' merely because of their ethnicity, culture, location, beliefs or whatever, and especially because of what government leaders do and say, is ludicrous. None of those three men are Nazis, it should go without saying. Rather, they suffered unbearably, indescribably, due to Nazism. It must be the ultimate insult to them to hear themselves referred to as Nazis, merely because the opposer doesn't care for the politics of their countries' leaders.

That's why I often say that words matter. There's a current thread here discussing the apparent new label for prospective converts to Mormonism - "friend" (to replace contact, golden contact, investigator, for eg). It doesn't appear that the majority of non- or ex-Mormons (at least, those on this board who have commented in that thread) think much of the change. Because the word 'friend' has meaning.

And, at least based on my own brush with the Mormon Church, as well as the very sad accounts shared here by many former Mormons, many, many members of the CoJCoLDS are only "friendly" as long as a person knuckles under and performs as expected. Don't be different. Don't ask questions. Don't fail to conform. So many don'ts. Too many.

What do Mormons call members who leave or "friends" (investigators/contacts) for that matter? I'm fortunate not to have been BIC. But definitely no Mormon ever contacted me to ask why I wasn't showing up so I guess I wasn't a friend at all. Friends check on friends out in the real world. So, I'm not impressed with their new label 'friend' because I doubt that their concepts and treatments towards "investigators" have changed much. You're only "worthy" if you toe their line.

I've mentioned before a Mormon I met when I visited SLC. I can't remember how I ended up having a meal with he and his cousin. I recall that the cousin's father was the bishop. The guy whose uncle was bishop was gay. He didn't spell it out in so many words but I gathered that was the unspoken issue. He said to me "... because I'm not worthy". I didn't know that is a common Mormon phrase, and expectation, so it was very startling because who says that? Especially to a stranger? It's the most demeaning and terrible word and idea to promote, especially in a church you'd think.

The Bible says "None is righteous...". Maybe that's where Mormonism got the idea about worthiness. But the teaching isn't about a person striving themselves to become righteous or worthy - the idea is that nobody can do it. So there's no need to take on the label "unworthy" for oneself while others bask in some supposed knowledge that they *are* worthy. We know how it's all supposed to work out in basic Christian teaching (not shared by Mormonism apparently).

Words have power. It matters what comes out of one's mouth. I can scarcely think of a worse insult than to call a Jewish person a Nazi. Unless they literally are one. Which would be quite shocking.

At least to me.

"Lamanite" doesn't quite carry the charge that "Nazi" does, especially outside of mormonism.  Imagine the amount of explanation necessary to inform someone who knew nothing about mormonism what the word Lamanite means; and yes, Negro is worse, so at least I . . .  

I'm guessing that trigger words like Nazi, Lamanite, Negro and a boatload having to do with sex exist for a very important reason; important, but not necessary.

I'm thinking of the thread where wonderment is expressed about which came first, consciousness or evolution...?  As if it mattered!  And I think to myself, which is more important, putting people down or building yourself up?  

That's a toughie, huh?


(Now I'm seeing a scene on TV wherein a fully tricked out, old-world Orthodox Rabbi is forbidding his daughter to continue seeing her RM boyfriend whom she met at a Holocaust Museum, and the scene ends with her calling him a Nazi, as she runs out the door, to hitchhike to Provo.  The look on his father's face is hard to describe ...)

The old saying was wrong.

Sticks and stones can break your bones but words-- can gut you.



And as implausible at it seems, there were Jewish nazi's. They considered themselves Germans first. An American named Bryan Rigg has researched and interviewed many.

An excerpt from an old article , 1996, in the Los Angeles Times:

"Rigg said he has documented the Jewish ancestry of more than 1,200 of Hitler’s soldiers, including two field marshals and 10 generals, “men commanding up to 100,000 troops.” In about 20 cases, soldiers of Jewish heritage were awarded the Knight’s Cross, Germany’s highest military honor, he said."

Very hard to comprehend, but, mankind's struggle for domination is not as black and white as many would like to believe. Take current America for instance . . .

Surprising what people will align themselves with.

Thanks for that info, D&D. Very interesting. I hadn't heard of that before.

I'm glad I qualified my disgust then, by saying this above:

I can scarcely think of a worse insult than to call a Jewish person a Nazi. Unless they literally are one.



I also said: "Which would be quite shocking."

Definitely. Hard to comprehend the enormity of that.

Perhaps some of those Jews were trying to survive.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Perhaps some of those Jews were trying to survive.

I agree that this could be one possible explanation, but the Germans (so far as I am aware) are, and have been since at least medieval times, among the world's greatest record keepers.

It is difficult to try to imagine how, in that time and in that place, this could have happened.

It is also totally unclear what "had Jewish heritage" means. Full? Half? A sixteenth? A sixty fourth?

The entire purpose of calling concentration camp survivors Nazis is to be as insulting as possible.

Yes, I agree.

There is a good chance that Hitler was part Jewish too. Either his mother or his grandmother worked for a Jewish man who people suspect abused his power over her. Some biographers think the monster's anti-semitic rage stemmed in part from those doubts.

Clearly the "Jewish" members of the Nazi movement and government would have varying degrees of Jewish ancestry and each would have made his own choices. There were probably some who were only fractionally Jewish and identified with their non-Jewish ancestors; others probably felt they had to be more fanatically dedicated to the cause than full Germans if they wanted to survive; still others probably didn't know whether they were Jewish, at least at the time.

For what it's worth, other researchers who have gone through Rigg's documents say that the vast majority of his "Jews" were Jewish according to the Nuremberg laws but not by Jewish criteria. So yes, the claims are overstated presumably in order to sell more books. Rigg has subsequently gone on to work in fund management, where overstatement is likewise an established practice.

What I see from what I have read by those who have studied this and done interviews is what I think most of the world is missing.

It wasn't all about race. It wasn't about the semetic genes. It was also as much about the way the jews were tight knit and because of that were viewed as having too much control over some important parts of the workings of Germany. The fear of Jewish control. As an issue this could have been handled with some legislation. But this was Hitler and this was the way the world at large had often dealt with their perceived problems.

I see these Jewish Nazi's in some ways the way I see the closeted gay politicians and ministers who are the most homophobic of all and voting for all homophobic legislation while having sex with male hookers at some motel.

I see in both these situations the deep human need to be on the winning team, to be part of the in crowd. Those are the things people sell their souls to buy. And this is how they buy their facade to maintain their place in society.

For me it is important to see that many things were in play here and not just the black and white way that particular holocaust is perceived by a world that rarely looks deeply.

From the article:

"Hitler personally signed declarations for all 77 on the 1944 list asserting that they were of German blood, thereby exercising his right of exception under 1935 Nazi legislation that barred anyone with a Jewish grandparent from becoming an officer. Deciding exactly who was to be classified a Jew stirred great internal debate among Nazi leaders. Hitler loathed Jews, but he also needed experienced commanders and fighters."

“What’s fascinating is how involved Hitler was in the screening process,” Rigg said. “At the height of the war, he was personally deciding whether this private or that should be of German blood. A private!”
]

And---

“In many cases, these men have not talked about it for 50 years. When I come, it is as if they have opened up a coffin they thought they buried so long ago. It all comes out,” Rigg said.



Now--can we wonder how all the U.S. soldiers feel now about how they helped take all the gays in the death camps back to prison to finish their sentences.

None of this is Black and White. And people should be very careful about pointing fingers.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> None of this is Black and White. And people
> should be very careful about pointing fingers.

Certainly, D.

Unfortunately, it's so easy to point fingers.

I came to see at some point that the more I learn the less I know. IOW, I have to keep looking stuff up and striving to obtain reliable information. Then I have to try and remember at least a little piece of it.

It is to be hoped that teachers and parents and other adult influences in children's lives help them to see that learning is of necessity a lifelong endeavour. It's not like that kids' song: No more pencils. No more books. No more teacher's dirty looks.

Rather we have to keep on opening the books, so to speak - gathering information from multiple sources, always, hopefully, checking them out to ensure they are trustworthy - not just finding sources that agree with our preconceived opinions but rather definitive sources that may challenge us.

Lifelong learning. It's a thing.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I see these Jewish Nazi's in some ways the way I
> see the closeted gay politicians and ministers who
> are the most homophobic of all and voting for all
> homophobic legislation while having sex with male
> hookers at some motel.

I couldn't agree more--at least for some subset of the total. In fact, I alluded to that dynamic as a partial motivation for Hitler himself.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> The entire purpose of calling concentration camp
> survivors Nazis is to be as insulting as possible.

Yes, that is what I tried to convey as well.

That shocking bit was perfectly clear in your opener. People will do anything at all to denigrate others these days---truth and facts be damned.

Sorry I side tracked your important post.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> Sorry I side tracked your important post.

Darling D. Don't be sorry! Your thoughts have illuminated my thread immensely. I appreciate your opinions so very much. You bring forth a side to the discussion that is too often ignored or silenced as well as easily misunderstood.

Thank you!

I did not know any of this.

Thank you, very much, for the information.

Tevai (lovely to see you!): You can check out this guy on Twitter:

Spiro’s Ghost

and see a picture of the three men and the brief commentary. It starts out like this:

"These three Jewish men arrived in Auschwitz on the same day..."

Thank you, everybody, for your thoughtful input. I appreciate it so much. As usual, some of your comments have me delving deeper into the points you've raised.

In the name of accuracy while writing the OP I took the precaution of checking to see if 'Jewish' is considered a race. I nearly wrote 'the Jewish race' but it didn't sound right, although I've heard it before. From what I found in various apparently reliable sources, it is not correct to label Jewish people as a separate race. I didn't think so (my memories of high school science are vague) but I never actually looked it up before to confirm.

Here is an interesting (short) description of a book titled 'The Myth of the Jewish Race':

https://lupress.cas.lehigh.edu/content/myth-jewish-race

"...from Day One Jews have married non-Jews, and therefore there is no way to genetically characterize them as a race. Nevertheless, many people find it difficult to accept the ideas that Judaism is not hereditary, but a religion, and that Jews who abandon the Jewish faith, whether they adopt another religion or none at all, are no longer Jews."

"As a trained geneticist, he [the author] became convinced that there are not and never were human races. In the last twenty years, an increasing number of anthropologists and biologists have reached the same conclusion. They argue that there is no way to genetically characterize race, because no human population has ever been isolated long enough from other populations to avoid "crossbreeding." The history of the Jews, in particular, supports this thesis. From Day One they had children with non-Jews. Hence, biologically, Jews are not different from non-Jews."


From Nature:

https://www.nature.com/articles/113659b0

"The Jewish communities of the world constitute no pure race, and in their features and physical characteristics represent no single uniform or even average type. An examination into the origins of the Jewish people offers an ample explanation of this diversity of appearance."


From the Jewish Virtual Library:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/are-jews-a-nation-or-a-religion

"Judaism can be thought of as being simultaneously a religion, a nationality and a culture.

"Throughout the middle ages and into the 20th century, most of the European world agreed that Jews constituted a distinct nation. This concept of nation does not require that a nation have either a territory nor a government, but rather, it identifies, as a nation any distinct group of people with a common language and culture. Only in the 19th century did it become common to assume that each nation should have its own distinct government; this is the political philosophy of nationalism. In fact, Jews had a remarkable degree of self-government until the 19th century. So long as Jews lived in their ghettos, they were allowed to collect their own taxes, run their own courts, and otherwise behave as citizens of a landless and distinctly second-class Jewish nation.

"Of course, Judaism is a religion, and it is this religion that forms the central element of the Jewish culture that binds Jews together as a nation. It is the religion that defines foods as being kosher and non-kosher, and this underlies Jewish cuisine. It is the religion that sets the calendar of Jewish feast and fast days, and it is the religion that has preserved the Hebrew language.

"Is Judaism an ethnicity? In short, not any more. Although Judaism arose out of a single ethnicity in the Middle East, there have always been conversions into and out of the religion. Thus, there are those who may have been ethnically part of the original group who are no longer part of Judaism, and those of other ethnic groups who have converted into Judaism.

"If you are referring to a nation in the sense of race, Judaism is not a nation. People are free to convert into Judaism; once converted, they are considered the same as if they were born Jewish. This is not true for a race."

-----

I get that the history is complex and feelings run high. It can be a sensitive topic, undoubtedly. But hopefully getting accurate information from definitive sources will keep the record straight.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2023 02:20PM by Nightingale.