TRIGGER WARNING for art and writing (concentration camps, holocaust, persecution, violence)
April of Acceptance Daily Idea: accept that there things you can never accept.
I haven't written in days. I haven't wanted to. The idea of writing down words about acceptance has felt disingenuous.
I know that I have a disclaimer for this month's topic of "Acceptance". This week I am struggling with the topic; Personally, professionally, and politically.
So I have been ruminating and deciding whether or not I wanted to use this blog as a platform for my current non-acceptance of global events.
I want to talk about concentration camps existing in 2017.
I'm not convinced that the significance of this atrocity is sinking in around the world.
In Chechnya, gay men are being put in concentration camps and (legally) brutally beaten by their kidnappers.
This is not 1933.
This alone should make the world take notice. Homophobia is so globally-rampant and accepted that we don't have world leaders stepping in with sanctions and bans and boycotts. LGBTQ people are subhuman.
But .... who will be next?
I don't know how to phrase this thought in any other way than how I am going to write it. I want to first apologize in advance for how it may come across. I mean it respectfully.
I find that, as a faith, Jehovah's Witnesses are very close to the bottom of the religious hierarchy. They are the punchline for jokes. They are seen and commented on as the crazy religious zealots who knock on your door and try to convert you.
I was raised as an atheist. I have my own beliefs. They are irrelevant here. Faith interests me. I research many faiths. I ask people of many faiths a whole lot of questions. I only mention faith here because I think it's important to state that I am not writing this as a religious post. This post is about my inability to accept persecution and hate.
This week in Russia, the Supreme Court ruled that JWs are "extremists", and banned JW in the country. This means it is against the law to be JW. It is illegal to practice the faith. All JW property is seized by the government. People who practice JW can be jailed.
Why am I talking about this in a post about my inability to accept?
I am scared.
I am scared that it will be "easier" or "convenient" to jail JWs in the concentration camps in Chechnya where gay men are being held.
And then, who will be next?
I'm jumping the gun. I'm overreacting. I'm fear mongering. I'm conjecturing. Or maybe I'm thinking historically. Maybe I'm thinking that acts of hate declared as acts of public safety are a slippery slope to persecution and genocide.
In 2013, I had the opportunity to go to Hitler's lair, named "Eagle's Nest" (Kehlsteinhaus).
I rode in his elevator and wondered who he would have had in there with him.
I stood at his fireplace and wondered what was discussed and decided there.
In 2013, I had the opportunity, and honour, to visit Mauthausen Concentration Camp.
I saw where people were jailed, left to die, and/or murdered.
I am not minimizing the genocide of Jews in WWII. My intention here is to draw attention to other groups targeted by Nazi Germany. And the ways in which targeting a religious group only leads to more hate and more violence. My purpose is to bring awareness to the fact that hate leads to hate and we have historical examples of this since the beginning of time. But we also have people alive RIGHT NOW. Survivors of concentration camps and death camps. This isn't a long ago part of history that sits in a textbook. We have people in concentration camps TODAY.
One of the groups targeted by Hitler's regime were Jehovah's Witnesses.
Mauthuasen was not a Jewish death camp. It was a concentration camp. That's where people outside of, or against, the Nazi regime were jailed. This camp held people from all over Europe whose crimes were based on following particular religions, being LGBTQ, being a political resistor, or speaking out.
The photo in the top left corner is of the swimming pool the guards used for recreation, in front of the jail. The bottom right photo is the code used to label the prisoners' clothing to identify their "crime". I have left out the photos of the oven, the place where people were hung, and the barracks where the sick were left to die beside the soccer field where spectators came to watch professional matches. I left out the photos that show how close the nearest farms were.
Respect and diversity and religious freedoms are important aspects of our society. Are there groups of people who, in the name of religion, create "extremist" groups that harm or cause violence and death? Of course there are. Isis, Westboro Baptist Church ...
To declare an entire religion "extremist" is dangerous. To question a religion, to explore its tenants, to confront its beliefs is our right. To call a particular group using a religion to justify violence and murder as "extremist" is entirely different than making a law to say the entire religion is outlawed. The fact that a government can outlaw an entire faith is terrifying to me.
We do not get to pick and choose whose rights are human rights.
We DO get to decide how to live our lives and how to treat others.
Be kind,
To yourself too
xo
(I am including the link to this post because it feels related. https://www.someecards.com/news/politics/white-supremacist-muslim-history/)
***NOTE: "acceptance" in the context of my writing is about the belief that all living things are entitled to respect, regardless of their actions and beliefs. "Acceptance" in this context is NOT about being silent, ignoring injustices and self and others, or expecting that we can say something is okay when it isn't. In this context I am referring to the idea that we cannot control what happens around us, we can only control how to respond to those things.
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