,
9 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
To my fellow Jews: I don't expect everyone to understand what I hear/feel/see when I read the words concentration camp, and since so many don't understand, I'm going to tell you why it hurts so when you accuse us of trying to "own" words.
It's a trauma, a trigger. It's an onslaught of emotion that is not a controllable thing. It is weeks standing in a cattle car with no food water or bathrooms where few survived among the defecation and dead bodies. It is choosing to run and being shot anyway.
It is choosing to run and being shot anyway. It's being left to bleed out in a pile of dead and dying. It is families separated left or right. To death or to work. It is children hiding in sewers & human waste pits. It is being branded with a number, no longer human.
It is naked bodies listless from disease. It is human experiments on twins and pregnant women. It is babies tossed on the air and shot. It is mounds of hair, teeth and suitcases. It is scratches on the walls as they gasped for air, dying of poison gas.
It is ovens in which humans were incinerated. It is an ash pile the size of a house-- all that is left of men women and children. It is where the story of our much of our people nearly ended.
Do we own words? No. Did we experience the most extreme cases of the words? Yes Are there people alive who were there? Yes Are there other words to use to describe the nightmare at the border? Yes. would it be nice if people, perhaps out of respect would find different words? Yes
This should have ended weeks ago. I should not be seeing tweets by Jews telling me to let it go or how wrong I am for the feelings I have at these words. These same people wouldn't dare -rightfully- compare the conditions at the border to slave ships. Yet it's okay to do to Jews.
I won't understand why it's more important for you to tell us we are wrong than to find other words to use. I won't understand why you seek the moral high ground on our backs. I won't understand why in all the "words matter" talk, words only matter the way you want them to.
I'm not going to go back and forth. I wanted to explain this and I did, I hope. I pray the conditions change at the border and commend everyone fighting for the people to get proper human care and compassion. God bless us all.
