facemasks and jews

One of the frustrating things about having a blog is the constant vague, underlying feeling that there is an obligation to actually write something every now and then.  This is especially true when you have a blog, such as this one, in which you really do not publish much very often.  The last White Fluffy Duckies was written and published nearly two months ago.  Frankly, I thought it had been longer than that.  I have found it increasingly difficult over the past year or so to come back here and record my thoughts, as society as a whole has become increasingly depressing.

Then there are those entries that practically write themselves.

Today, we will very briefly touch upon Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.  At the outset, I will state that I will not dignify her by using her name again.  Much like the former guy, mostly known in this space as cadet bone spurs, she will henceforth be relegated to identification by nickname, reference and ridicule, which is still probably more than she deserves.  For obvious reasons, we will refer to her mostly by the title she probably adores, Rep. QAnon.

Over the course of the past few days, in addition to a myriad of of ignorant and insulting statements she has made over the years, including during the relatively brief the time she has been a member of congress, Rep. QAnon has equated mask mandates during a public health pandemic that has already killed more than six hundred thousand people in this country alone to the treatment of Jews at the hands of nazis in World War Two.  She has specifically stated that forcing people to wear masks in public is just like the treatment Jews in concentration camps felt when being herded off to gas chambers.  When the predictable outrage ensued, she doubled down, and said that there was nothing wrong at all in what she had said.

Nothing wrong.

She equated a public health measure that just about every public health authority endorses as saving lives with the mass slaughter of Jews by nazis, a deliberate genocidal attempt to eradicate the planet of Jews.  

Six million.

Six million Jews.

All killed.  

Deliberately.  

Ruthlessly.

And this cretin thinks it's the same thing as asking people to wear masks to help overcome a pandemic.

Somehow, placing a piece of cloth over your nose and mouth in an attempt to prevent the spread of a deadly virus is the same as gassing Jews.  We have reached the point where public health measures are to some people the equivalent of mass genocide. 

Let me teach Rep. QAnon a few words and places from history.  Maybe she should look them up in history books before she equates public health with genocide again.  I am not going to define them for her here, as it is just a waste of time.  For anyone to truly learn, they need to look this up themselves.

Holocaust.

Shoah.

Warsaw Ghetto.

Auschwitz.

Treblinka.

Bergen-Belson.

Sobibor.

And what is most personal to me, November 3, 1943.

I seriously doubt Rep. QAnon knows much about each of these terms, places and dates.  I doubt that she knows anything at all of the significance of November 3, 1943.  For that much I will offer a brief history lesson.

November 3, 1943 is known in the history of the Holocaust as "The Harvest Festival".  It is the day the nazis decided Jews were going to be exterminated.  Approximately forty-two thousand Jews were murdered in concentration camps that day throughout Europe, the single largest mass murder in a single day in history.  Nearly eighteen thousand alone were killed at a concentration camp in Majdanek.  Included in that number were members of my father's family -- my family -- who had not managed to escape Frompl, Poland before the outbreak of the war.  Those members of my family were likely killed that day.  The remains of the Majdanek camp still exists.  Tours are offered, including the barracks Jews were stored in while awaiting their fate, the gas chambers and the ovens.  There is also a large memorial which consists of a mountain of ashes covered from the elements.  You can walk up steps on the side of the mountain of ashes and peer over the edge.  What you will see are ashes of the people killed at Majdanek.  Included are members of my family.  

The ashes, the horrors, they still exist.  

Frompl no longer exists.  

My family, including great grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins, also no longer exist.

But Rep. QAnon still exists, as do people who think like her.  The deliberate ignorance she spouts still exists.  It is for Rep. QAnon and people of her ilk that for nearly eighty years my people have repeated the phrase --

"Never Again".

Never Again should one group of people be allowed to exterminate another for the simple reason that they are not like "us", whomever "us" may be.

Never Again should we allow ignorance and malice to flourish to the point where one people think they have the right to eradicate another, or to make false equivalences to measures having nothing whatsoever to do with Shoah.

About six months ago, a person who had been a friend on facebook published a photograph there of a nazi soldier harassing a small boy, one of those infamous "papers please" moments, and equated it with mask mandates.  I immediately unfriended her and have not seen her on my facebook feed since, nor do I wish to.  

And I say this now.

If there are any other "friends" out there who feel the same way, who think that public health measures designed to prevent the spread of a deadly virus are the same as sending Jews off to gas chambers, please spare me the job of finding out who you are.

Just unfriend me.