Thread by @erikaheidewald

It is not Holocaust denial to correctly insist that the targets of the Final Solution - Endlösung der Judenfrage - were Jewish and Romani people and to accuse a Jewish person of that is antisemitic and truly cruel. Holocaust history is important, so let’s get it right.

https://twitter.com/OneiricCanid/status/1376572714165669891

I am German, Romani, queer, autistic, and I’ve been to Dachau three times and Auschwitz once. The Holocaust is something that has affected my whole life, my political opinions, my outlook on the world. You can care about the Holocaust without centering yourself.

I talk a lot about antisemitism, which frequently leads people to assume I’m Jewish, but I’m not. I just really hate antisemitism and I’ve never understood why everyone doesn’t. The Holocaust happened less than 100 years ago. Modern antisemitism should enrage & terrify everyone

My great-grandmother was Romani and her extended family was killed in Auschwitz. This personal connection to the Holocaust matters to me, but the Holocaust still is not as big of a part of my history as it is for Jewish people. I can care about mine but not center it.

The Holocaust happened because of antisemitism. The Nazis wanted to remove the entire Jewish race from the Earth and if they’d won the war they would have. Nobody should speak over Jewish & Romani people about the Holocaust. Consider the gravity of that intergenerational trauma.

Far from Jules dismissing victims of the Holocaust, I honestly appreciate them always including Romani people. Most people don’t mention the Romani as also central victims of the Holocaust and I’ve never been mad about that but I appreciate it when they do.

Romani people were also seen as an alien race and were targeted for complete genocide. There were fewer Romani people so the scale is different - about half a million Romani people were killed and six million Jews. Half the European Roma were killed and 2/3 of the European Jews.

The Holocaust is the story of the Romani people as well, but since I never knew my great-grandmother and am very disconnected from that part of my ancestry, I don’t claim it as *my* story. You don’t have to claim a story in order to care about it and be angry about it.

Dachau was a camp originally for prisoners and that’s how a lot of gay men ended up there - anti-sodomy laws. Gay men, Communists, and disabled people were all in Dachau and they were there because of their identity. When I went to Dachau the second time I’d just come out as gay

I absolutely cried for the gay men killed at Dachau for being gay and I felt a personal connection to them I didn’t know I had before. It’s ok to feel that connection to them and to recognize that as part of queer history. That should make you empathize with Jews MORE, not less!

A tiny fraction of the victims of the Holocaust were targeted for being gay. Feel the pain of that and imagine if that was the story of all of your family and that six million people had been murdered for being like you. We can’t truly imagine that pain. We can only respect it.

The Nazis targeted queer and disabled people and Communists. They killed autistic kids as a practice run for the Holocaust. But they didn’t start a massive campaign of genocide to wipe every queer and disabled person off the face of the planet. That’s the distinction.

I would love for us to talk more about how autistic people were seen and treated by the Nazis. I’d love for us to talk more about Aktion T4 and the impact that Nazi ideology has on the treatment of autistics today. But not at the expense of Jewish people. Fuck no. Never.

Going to Auschwitz vs Dachau shows you the difference in the intention. Auschwitz was created for genocide. Efficient genocide. Dachau was a work camp where they started killing people. Both things are fucking awful. But the difference is part of the history.

Antisemitism is one of the most powerful forces of evil in human history. It almost led to the complete genocide of Jewish people so recently that some survivors are still alive today. Never minimize antisemitism. Never overlook it. It leads to murder. That’s what it does.

Antisemitism led to the murders of the other victims - the Nazis basically said, “we’ve created such an efficient system of murder, let’s throw some other people we hate in there, too!” So purely on a selfish level, antisemitism should enrage and terrify all marginalized people.

Antisemitism is one of the forces of hatred, like antiblackness, that is so powerfully virulent the people who believe in it will create whole civilizations around it. They’ll die for it. They’ll create entire ecosystems of hate around it. It ruins the whole fucking world.

I have no fucking idea why those forces of hate are so powerful. That’s been one of the most confusing things in my whole life. Why the fuck do people hate Jews & Black people so much they will die to defend that hatred? I don’t know. But it’s real. Don’t deny that.

All forms of hate and prejudice are wrong and we should speak out against them. But there are certain kinds of hate that underpin others. Systems of hate are built upon the original focus of that hate. Those forms of hatred have to be exposed and fought at every single turn.

Antisemitism is the reason the Holocaust happened. Jewish and Romani people should never be spoken over or decentered in discussions of the Holocaust. Anything else is denial of the centrality of antisemitism and *that* is Holocaust denial.