Thread by @JustSayXtian

Jews explaining to gentiles - yes, even gentile Holocaust historians who are usually very much on the right side of these narratives - why rehabilitating Nazis based on nothing more than revisionist family narratives is not, in any way, "punching down"

https://twitter.com/waitmanb/status/1447969733949722627

It's hard to explain how utterly disappointing it is to see someone whose whole career is based on documenting and teaching the history of the Holocaust drop everything to extend the benefit of the doubt to a gentile woman leaning into revisionism and the 'sympathetic Nazi' trope

It's even MORE disappointing to see calls for mass-reporting Jewish people for making "death threats" when what was actually said was not, in any way, a threat at all. Was it extreme? Yes, it was. Was it a threat? No, not even a little bit.

Unless you're going to say that everyone who has ever said "fuck you" and "go to hell" to someone who offended them was making death threats, it's completely off base to hold someone who said exactly those things in a very Jewish way to a different standard.

The worst thing about all of this, though, is that it's such a clear example of how hard it is to trust 'allies'. For most Jews, the Holocaust is not a subject of academic interest. It's not something we can or should remain detached from. It's not ok to let 'mistakes' slide.

So the quickness with which gentile Holocaust experts leap to make space for another gentile to rehabilitate her Nazi family members in public, and to suggest that saying she made a 'mistake' and we should all just 'drop it' is a good indication that we're not on the same page.

And to be clear - none of this is to cast doubt on Dr. Beorn's credentials or expertise. None of it is to say that he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's to say that because he DOES have expertise I am not going to hold him to anything but the highest of standards.

If someone is going to dedicate their career to the study of *someone else's* traumatic history, that person has MORE of a responsibility to be unwavering in supporting that peoples' response to having their history revised and rehabilitated. Not less.