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i wanna make something very clear.
we absolutely do not "talk too much about Jews in the Holocaust". in fact, we don't talk about them enough, because we don't talk enough about the Holocaust.
many white people, especially though not exclusively in formerly Nazi countries, *really* don't like to think about the Holocaust. they want to see it as a done thing, something of the past. "yeah, it was bad that it happened, we shouldn't do it again."
but the thing about genocide is it's not a thing that happens, then ends. there's a reason we separate genocide from other crimes, and that is that genocide is not just murder. victims are not just killed, they are erased. their memories gone, their part of culture not coming back, their language fractured so thoroughly it can irrevocably change and lose its identity within far less than a decade.
the Holocaust didn't "happen". it's still here. it's echoes ringing like that of a large bell, inseparable from the sound of the original strike.
and i wanna make something else very clear. the reason non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust aren't talked about is *because* we don't talk enough about the Holocaust. because people want to reduce this historical moment of people coming together in hate to erase other people in their entirety to just the phrase "six million Jews". the persecution of queer people and Roma and Jehovah's witnesses and Slavs and disabled people wasn't a separate thing, in fact many of the victims from those very groups *were also Jewish* (a fact that modern Nazis know when they deface their momorials with anti-Jewish slogans).
the Holocaust makes people uncomfortable, which is why they try to solve and reframe it.
sit in that discomfort. think about what it means.
Matt Campbell
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