on this day, I would like to commemorate the extensive Jewish resistance that existed in almost every Nazi-occupied nation. from the streets of Warsaw, where Jewish resistance perplexed and bewildered the Nazis so much that a top German general lost his job because of it (and where we inadvertently inspired the Warsaw Uprising) to Sobibor, where Jews killed SS guards and burned a death camp to the ground, enraging the Nazis so much that they ordered the camp’s remains bulldozed into the ground, to Treblinka, where Jews escaped through the barbed wire into freedom and managed to survive to meet the Red Army the next year.
Jews did not go passively into the gas chambers. Abba Kovner, Mordechai Anielewicz, the Bielski brothers, and many others ensured that.
the image will always live in my mind: during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a Jewish woman armed with two pistols approached General Jurgen Stroop’s command group and opened fire. Stroop’s flame troops set her on fire, but she continued shooting until she collapsed. as Stroop walked over to gloat, she spat on his shoes.
The anti-semitic Mcminn County School board just voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s Maus from all of its schools, citing the inclusion of words like “God Damn” and “naked pictures” (illustrations) of women.
Sigh. I’m really exhausted, folks.
If you haven’t read Maus and are curious about it given all of this news, consider ordering it from a local comic book store. They’ve all had a rough couple of years.
today (27 Jan) is International Holocaust Memorial Day, so I’ve compiled a list of charities you can donate to which help to preserve European Jewish culture as well as supporting living Jewish communities, especially in Eastern Europe, as a way to honour victims of the Holocaust both by preserving their memory and by supporting the European Jewish communities that the Nazis aimed to destroy.
-YIVO[Link]; founded in Vilne, Lithuania in 1925 and now based in New York, is one of the largest organisations for the preservation and education of Yiddish, as well as hosting the largest archive of Eastern European Jewish materials (23 million items) - including many which were rescued from Nazi book-burning by Jewish resistance. It is the ONLY prewar Jewish library and archive to have survived the Holocaust.
-World Jewish Relief[Link], formed during the Holocaust by the UK Jewish community to aid the evacuation of German Jews. The majority of their modern day work focuses on aiding vulnerable Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. They also provide aid to refugees, disabled and elderly people, and respond to international disasters across the world.
-The Yiddish Book Centre[Link] hosts an online archive of hundreds of digitised Yiddish books (many with translations), as well as a video oral history archive with 1000+ Jewish people of all ages and backgrounds telling their own stories, many in Yiddish (with subtitles). They also train new Yiddish translators and run lectures, education programs, film screenings, music festivals, and the world’s first Yiddish museum.
-The Together Plan[Link] supports post-Soviet Jewish communities, especially in Belarus due to the current instability there. As well as supporting Jewish communities with aid, education, and community building; they also record and translate Holocaust testimonies, preserve Jewish graveyards, and run education on Jewish Belarus.
-The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative[Link] works to preserve and restore Jewish cemeteries, particularly in countries whose Jewish populations were decimated by the Holocaust, which left cemeteries to be vandalised and fall into decay. This is an important act in honouring the dignity of the dead, as well as witnessing and preserving the presence of lost European Jewish life.
If you have no money to spare, consider spending some time browsing the testimony and history hosted on YIVO and the Yiddish Book Centre as an act of memorial instead.
Okay, I knowHP fandom hatesthe way Slytherin was treated in the books, with all its implications. I knowJKR’s belief that all blood supremacists go to Slytherin sounds implausible and dodgy. I know there are kids who have been mocked/side-eyed for being Pottermore-sorted into Slytherin. Hell I know that I’m pretty ehhhh on JKR’s Pottermore reveal that Peter Pettigrew was actually probably a Slytherin. There’s a lot of worthy criticism to be made there & an understandable instinct to want to redeem the house from its less than savoury reputation.
Wizarding culture is fucked up and we shouldn’t shy away from admitting that. There’s a difference between being a Slytherin in our world and being a Slytherin in their world. You are not part of wizarding culture and not subject to the problems that comes with that.
Which is a position reallyworth keeping in mind in anyfandom discussion, especially one concerning Slytherin and its position in HPverse.
2) There have been a couple of posts floating around, defending Salazar Slytherin that I’ve seen lately (x,x), claiming that canon + history are somehow ‘evidence’ that Salazar Slytherin had the ‘right’ idea - and that therefore, canonically, Slytherin was a nice guy and not a bigot. And that is completeandutterbullshit.The rest of this essay is a copy of a response to the original post that I’ve made before, but I’m posting it again because apparently this idea refuses to die a permanent death.
There’s a distinction to be made between headcanon and canon here. You’re free to headcanon Salazar Slytherin however you want, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that there is ‘canonical proof’ for a headcanon when the bulk of canon, well, contradicts it. However, it also pays to be critical about howyou’re headcanoning something and to ask yourself whyyou’re headcanoning Salazar Slytherin’s racism/bigotry away & what you achieve by it - and even more importantly, what real world issues does it feed into/reflect?
3) JKR wrote the persecution of muggleborns as a really reallyclear parallel for anti-semitic persecution through the ages. It’s reallyhard to ignore that when you have things like the Muggleborn Commission (and Mary Cattermole’s trial in Deathly Hallows), propaganda titled with things like “Muggleborns and the Threat they Pose to Wizarding Society”, or hell, even the twisted version of muggle studies the Carrows teach the kids in DH - muggles are wild animals etc. Now, suggesting Salazar Slytherin’s views made ‘sense’ because witches were being persecuted c. the 10th century is
a) historically inaccurate, therefore, completely baseless,
b) is canonically inaccurate because wix in canon have used a variety of spells to save themselves from death, notably, Wendelin the Weird who used Flame-Freezing charms to save herself from burning & the Duc de Trefle-Picques who escaped beheading (and faked his death) using a Disillusionment charm on his head and
c) it suggests that his assertion that muggleborns were a ‘real’ threat were rightand by extension, that that language of justification is all right, as long as a ‘case’ can be made for a ‘threat’ - which has all kinds of really messed up implications re. the real world where the language of ‘threat’ is used repeatedly to justify violence against immigrants, racial minorities, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities and yes, was used to justify the Holocaust (this is basicallythe thesis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that the Jews were behind some big ‘conspiracy’ to take over the world, which is one of the texts Hitler built his campaign on).
d) the real world implications areimportant here because HP hasa huge social element to it and if HP fans are going to pat themselves on the back for being more socially aware & tolerant than other fans, then its worth being aware about what kind of views in our society Salazar Slytherin’s declaration that muggleborns were a threat to wizard society (despite them being a relatively powerless minority) is meant to reflect.
e) in doing so, you’ve actually fallen hook, line and sinker for Salazar Slytherin’s own propaganda.
Cool?
Cool.
And now, the really long essay in which I cover all the arguments I’ve seen in favour of Salazar Slytherin in depth using canon, Pottermore & historical & academic sources to talk about why Salazar Slytherin has no foot to stand on. A summary of the arguments I make:
A bigot is alwaysa bigot, no matter how much they talk about ‘threat’ and ‘risk’. This language has been used in the past to exclude minorities, Salazar Slytherin uses it to exclude muggleborns - there’s a really clear principle here.
Salazar Slytherin lived in the 10th century, the witch hunts did not start until the late fourteenth century and really only intensified during the 16th and 17th centuries. Incidentally, the worst of the hunts took place in Germany and not in Britain, though the Scottish witch hunts of the 17th century were pretty bad.
The people of the middle ages held a lot of contradictory views on magic and religion, so even though a bunch of texts concerning folk religious and magic practices were destroyed (though there are lots of exceptions to this) they weren’t only a) studying the Bible and nothing else and b) folk magic really was a thing even during the medieval period.
Witch burnings were mostly to do with getting rid of unwanted people/people who were felt to be ‘burdens’ or ‘undesirable’ but had no real ‘crimes’ that they could be put away for. Socially marginalized groups usually bore the brunt of this persecution. A lot of money-making was involved as well. Actual magic was not always the point of contention.
JKR has independently confirmed that a) Salazar Slytherin’s views were statistical outliers for his time and b) that the belief that muggles were dangerous really only gained traction afterthe establishment of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692.
JKR has also independently deconstructed the idea that witches and wizards had anything to fear by the way persecution in the 14th century, using the character of Wendelin the Weird to do so.
Cuthbert Binns is an unreliable narrator, the wizarding world is highly corrupt and prejudiced - JKR literally spent seven books telling us this was so.
JKR independently confirmed, on Pottermore, that Salazar S. placed the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. Also, really, there’s a big difference between a safety room (e.g. a nuclear fallout bunker) and a room that has stone pillars made of snakes, snakes with emeralds for eyes and one giant statue of Salazar Slytherin whose mouth opens when you say “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.” in Parseltongue. Sounds more like a shrine to myself, made by Salazar Slytherin to me tbqh.
David Cameron, Donald Trump & Tony Abbott use this same language of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’ to society to explain why immigrants shouldn’t be allowed into their countries; that’sba s i c a l l y what Salazar Slytherin’s views boil down to in the end.
Hit read more because it’s really long. Feel free to reblog this.
Okay, I knowHP fandom hatesthe way Slytherin was treated in the books, with all its implications. I knowJKR’s belief that all blood supremacists go to Slytherin sounds implausible and dodgy. I know there are kids who have been mocked/side-eyed for being Pottermore-sorted into Slytherin. Hell I know that I’m pretty ehhhh on JKR’s Pottermore reveal that Peter Pettigrew was actually probably a Slytherin. There’s a lot of worthy criticism to be made there & an understandable instinct to want to redeem the house from its less than savoury reputation.
Wizarding culture is fucked up and we shouldn’t shy away from admitting that. There’s a difference between being a Slytherin in our world and being a Slytherin in their world. You are not part of wizarding culture and not subject to the problems that comes with that.
Which is a position reallyworth keeping in mind in anyfandom discussion, especially one concerning Slytherin and its position in HPverse.
2) There have been a couple of posts floating around, defending Salazar Slytherin that I’ve seen lately (x,x), claiming that canon + history are somehow ‘evidence’ that Salazar Slytherin had the ‘right’ idea - and that therefore, canonically, Slytherin was a nice guy and not a bigot. And that is completeandutterbullshit.The rest of this essay is a copy of a response to the original post that I’ve made before, but I’m posting it again because apparently this idea refuses to die a permanent death.
There’s a distinction to be made between headcanon and canon here. You’re free to headcanon Salazar Slytherin however you want, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that there is ‘canonical proof’ for a headcanon when the bulk of canon, well, contradicts it. However, it also pays to be critical about howyou’re headcanoning something and to ask yourself whyyou’re headcanoning Salazar Slytherin’s racism/bigotry away & what you achieve by it - and even more importantly, what real world issues does it feed into/reflect?
3) JKR wrote the persecution of muggleborns as a really reallyclear parallel for anti-semitic persecution through the ages. It’s reallyhard to ignore that when you have things like the Muggleborn Commission (and Mary Cattermole’s trial in Deathly Hallows), propaganda titled with things like “Muggleborns and the Threat they Pose to Wizarding Society”, or hell, even the twisted version of muggle studies the Carrows teach the kids in DH - muggles are wild animals etc. Now, suggesting Salazar Slytherin’s views made ‘sense’ because witches were being persecuted c. the 10th century is
a) historically inaccurate, therefore, completely baseless,
b) is canonically inaccurate because wix in canon have used a variety of spells to save themselves from death, notably, Wendelin the Weird who used Flame-Freezing charms to save herself from burning & the Duc de Trefle-Picques who escaped beheading (and faked his death) using a Disillusionment charm on his head and
c) it suggests that his assertion that muggleborns were a ‘real’ threat were rightand by extension, that that language of justification is all right, as long as a ‘case’ can be made for a ‘threat’ - which has all kinds of really messed up implications re. the real world where the language of ‘threat’ is used repeatedly to justify violence against immigrants, racial minorities, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities and yes, was used to justify the Holocaust (this is basicallythe thesis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that the Jews were behind some big ‘conspiracy’ to take over the world, which is one of the texts Hitler built his campaign on).
d) the real world implications areimportant here because HP hasa huge social element to it and if HP fans are going to pat themselves on the back for being more socially aware & tolerant than other fans, then its worth being aware about what kind of views in our society Salazar Slytherin’s declaration that muggleborns were a threat to wizard society (despite them being a relatively powerless minority) is meant to reflect.
e) in doing so, you’ve actually fallen hook, line and sinker for Salazar Slytherin’s own propaganda.
Cool?
Cool.
And now, the really long essay in which I cover all the arguments I’ve seen in favour of Salazar Slytherin in depth using canon, Pottermore & historical & academic sources to talk about why Salazar Slytherin has no foot to stand on. A summary of the arguments I make:
A bigot is alwaysa bigot, no matter how much they talk about ‘threat’ and ‘risk’. This language has been used in the past to exclude minorities, Salazar Slytherin uses it to exclude muggleborns - there’s a really clear principle here.
Salazar Slytherin lived in the 10th century, the witch hunts did not start until the late fourteenth century and really only intensified during the 16th and 17th centuries. Incidentally, the worst of the hunts took place in Germany and not in Britain, though the Scottish witch hunts of the 17th century were pretty bad.
The people of the middle ages held a lot of contradictory views on magic and religion, so even though a bunch of texts concerning folk religious and magic practices were destroyed (though there are lots of exceptions to this) they weren’t only a) studying the Bible and nothing else and b) folk magic really was a thing even during the medieval period.
Witch burnings were mostly to do with getting rid of unwanted people/people who were felt to be ‘burdens’ or ‘undesirable’ but had no real ‘crimes’ that they could be put away for. Socially marginalized groups usually bore the brunt of this persecution. A lot of money-making was involved as well. Actual magic was not always the point of contention.
JKR has independently confirmed that a) Salazar Slytherin’s views were statistical outliers for his time and b) that the belief that muggles were dangerous really only gained traction afterthe establishment of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692.
JKR has also independently deconstructed the idea that witches and wizards had anything to fear by the way persecution in the 14th century, using the character of Wendelin the Weird to do so.
Cuthbert Binns is an unreliable narrator, the wizarding world is highly corrupt and prejudiced - JKR literally spent seven books telling us this was so.
JKR independently confirmed, on Pottermore, that Salazar S. placed the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. Also, really, there’s a big difference between a safety room (e.g. a nuclear fallout bunker) and a room that has stone pillars made of snakes, snakes with emeralds for eyes and one giant statue of Salazar Slytherin whose mouth opens when you say “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.” in Parseltongue. Sounds more like a shrine to myself, made by Salazar Slytherin to me tbqh.
David Cameron, Donald Trump & Tony Abbott use this same language of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’ to society to explain why immigrants shouldn’t be allowed into their countries; that’sba s i c a l l y what Salazar Slytherin’s views boil down to in the end.
Hit read more because it’s really long. Feel free to reblog this.
This, from Holocaust survivor Dr. Gabor Maté (on my podcast Under The Skin) is the most beautiful and powerful testimony on this subject I’ve ever heard. From someone with deep connections to the history of this situation.
On this day, 7 May 1945, Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered, leading to the end of World War II in Europe. But rather than be punished for their crimes, many Nazi and fascist leaders continued to hold onto power and wealth. In West Germany, despite “denazification”, most Nazi war criminals went unpunished, and many were rehired in official positions as the Cold War with the eastern bloc heated up. For example, out of around 1 million people involved in the Holocaust, only around 600 received serious prison time. Even convicted war criminals like Hanns Martin Schleyer rapidly regained power: Schleyer himself quickly became president of Germany’s main employer associations, helping to break unions. Many Nazi scientists were employed to work in the US as part of Operation Paperclip, while others were put to work in the Soviet Union under Operation Osoaviakhim. In Greece, the US and UK backed Greek fascists and Nazi supporters in a brutal civil war against the former resistance members. In Italy, the CIA intervened in elections in 1948 to prevent victory of the left, which had been the backbone of the resistance. And in Italy and across Western Europe, ex-Nazis were employed by NATO to form an underground anti-communist army called Gladio which carried out terrorist attacks in countries like Italy and Belgium. In the East, in Romania, resistance guerrillas were labelled “bandits” by the new Soviet authorities, who put Petru Groza and Gheorghe Tatarescu in charge. Both men had previously been part of right-wing governments, and Tatarescu was minister of state during anti-Jewish pogroms in 1927. In Bulgaria, fascist leader Khimon Georgiev was made Prime Minister, and soon repressed striking coal miners. In Hungary, the man appointed to run the first government in Russian-occupied territory was Bela Miklos, the first Hungarian to have been awarded the highest Nazi honour: Knight Grand Cross of the Iron Cross. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1711283592390117/?type=3
