Trigger Warnings: Genocide, sexualised violence, and rape.

It being International Woman's Day, I figured I'd talk about the Holocaust.

In case you didn't know, it's more shocking that ever thought. You'd think it was impossible for the Holocaust to be an even more terrible moment in history than it already is perceived and conceived to be.

The New York Times story states:

Thirteen years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
[...]
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

Emphasis mine.

I have to say when I read this, I felt sick. I was honestly shocked. The Holocaust is a piece of history I've taken the time to learn about - entire branches of my family tree were eradicated during the second world war - and much of my knowledge came from what I'd been spoon fed by the education system of my country.

You're probably asking yourselves why I'm talking about this on International Woman's Day.

If you continue reading you'll reach this little factoid:

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

Emphasis mine.

Why is The New York Times disinclined to call rape, what it is? I think the idea of rape as a war crime is still something that mainstream media is reluctant to talk about, because rape is sadly ubiquitous in "times of peace".

More to the point, the way rape is perpetrated during war and upon an occupied population is very often misrepresented and downplayed, often because rape, during war, is "expected". It is a risk of war, much like bullets and bombs. If you are a woman in a war zone, you should prepare for the enemy to use their weapons upon you.

"This is my weapon, this is my gun."

My point is that that little titbit is all that was said about the "special treatment" of women during the Holocaust. There is a great deal we do not know about the difference women and men experience war and how acts of war are perpetrated on their bodies.

More often than not, women are not counted as people, but as spoils. Hence the creation of special brothel camps.

Women Under Siege's report to the new findings gives a good overview when it comes to how much more needs to be done in order for justice to really be done.

Rape and genocide go hand in hand. Rape and war go hand in hand. But for some reason, they're not always counted as crimes against humanity.

Tumblr crosspost

That's what I see when I encounter a 100x100 icon of Erik's tattoo.

What tattoo?

The tattoo on his forearm, that was stamped (with needles and ink) on him when he and his family were sent to a concentration camp from a ghetto.

I know screen caps create the illusion of having no context. But the movie uses its first twenty minutes to ensure that we know that Erik has not forgiven the Nazis (human and not) for what they did to him and his family.

I mention this, because I feel it needs to be said that the Nazis marked people entering the camp (Jewish and not) as a way to keep them demoralised, without control and, I'll say it again, dehumanised.

An icon of that number, is a fetish of the aforementioned dehumanisation. What we are seeing on screen happened, in history, in real life, to millions of people.

Erik is fictional, what happened to him is not.

The number tattoo, being reduced to a number, actually happened.

People who went through and survived are still alive.

It is inappropriate to use that number on an icon as a way to present the character is an objectified manner and yes, that is what icons do and that is what they are for.

When we see Erik's tattoo, which is exactly twice, it is in the context of bringing down Nazis, because it is evidence to what was done to him, to Jews, to Gypsies, to homosexual men and women, to anyone the Nazis deemed subhuman and sent to die in a camp designed to kill.

That is what that number means.

Things always hit you harder when they are closer to home.
Always.

I had a race fail a few days ago, in which I basically preached to a woman of Japanese descent why the casting of Avatar: The Last Air Bender was racist.
I was called on it.
And I apologised and I was told it wasn't a problem.

Still, the shame continues to linger, because my privilege fogged the way I viewed this person and the way I discussed the issue with this person.

However, you live and learn right.

Well, no.

If history teaches us anything is that we would rather forget, or even not know and you basically need a very strong lobbying group in order for things to be remembered.

The past month or so has seen so much fail in fandom, the Race!Fail, the Trans!Fail, The Abelism, I'm quite sure there were more fail I'd forgotten and seriously, even though I commented only briefly I was outraged and saddened by all of these incidences. People can (and have) asked me why do I put so much energy into issues that don't have much to do with me (yeah, I know), I mean... why get so worked up on something that doesn't directly affect me.

Well, for one, despite the fact that I'm not in the disenfranchised group of non-white people, trans people and disabled people, these issues affect me mainly because the fact that those groups are disenfranchised I can safely go about my day not thinking about it.

But you know why I really take the time to give a damn and cracks my heart wide open? Beyond it being the right thing to do and being in an ethically sound position.

I want to be safe.

I want my body and mind to flourish, and the body I currently inhabit may have a lot of privileges associated with it, but its history is also bloody, by virtue of it being cis female, queer and Jewish.

My Jewish body is very weird thing. On the one hand it is Israeli Jewish, meaning it is the default body of superiority where I live, on the other, it comes from generations of bloodshed, exile, pogroms and genocide.

The history of this genocide, like most genocides oddly enough, is well documented. The violence was recorded, photographed, duplicated and triplicates by well meaning bureaucrats who kept the train tracks clear.

The genocide of my people even has a special name, The Holocaust¹, and like all historical events which linger in the collective memory of a people, a nation, a community, we tend to treat it with a deference of some kind. Even as I make Holocaust jokes, and sing "Springtime For Hitler" and make cracks about Germany blitzing its way though the Mundial and yeah, I'm waiting for Germany to serve up Spain's ass in the upcoming Semi-Final...

Still.

The Holocaust is an event that continues to shape my life and inform me of who I am, as a Jewish person in Israel and Palestine, as a queer person and as a feminist woman.

It does not, however, as a historical event, exist to be a backdrop to an AU Fanfic about American Soldiers and their love affair. What? The Battle of the Bulge was too tame?!

Yes, someone wrote a story, which has since been locked, but luckly there exists a Screencap (H/T to allchildren). I have not read it. I do not intend to.
I did read the Author's notes though; the warnings read thus:
Beating, abuse, non main character death, scientific experimentation, starvation, physical and emotional damage
Oh and the added disclaimer (after "nasty comments" began to appear) the gist of which is that this piece of work is NOT meant to be historically accurate. Accompanied to this Author's Note is a picture of the gates of Auschwitz, you all know the one, the one that was stolen and returned and reads Arbeit Macht Frei - "Work Makes One Free".
The... writer... of this AU fic stated that they added the picture, not for itself, but for the slogan, the meaning of the words upon the gate.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. I will probably say it for the rest of my life.

Context matters. Context, much like money, makes the world go around. That slogan cannot be removed from the gates it is attached to. Those words do not mean what you think they mean. The work they are talking about is not craft and the liberation they symbolise is not freedom.

A story, does not need to prettify history in order to make palatable for the readers. On the contrary, history should be shown in its grittiest form, it should be shown to be true and it should be portrayed with verisimilitude.

So, when you use a historical backdrop, in which you, dear author, feel the need to excuse yourself that by writing this you are no different from anyone who writes about rape, incest and domestic abuse, then you do not understand what fetishisation means.
You do not understand what treating subjects (people and events) with respect means.
You do not understand what this writing about history means.

You do not understand what context means and beyond that making you a disrespectful, blinkered and privileged fool, it also makes you, no matter your style, no matter how well written the characters are, a really really bad writer.

Personally. I blame Hollywood. And you know, bad education, entitlement and plain good ole' dehumnasation and antisemitism.

Also. No. Just. No.

This Nice Jewish Grrl needs to lie down now as she can't believe fandom sucks so hard right now.

ETA - 09/07/10: The story that is screen capped above is "1945" by slashxyouxup and is now unlocked. I'm not holding my breath though.

Footnotes
1) Even though we were not the only targeted people. The Roma people and other Gypsy groups were targeted and experimented in the same manner, homosexual men were castrated and murdered and many others. Still though, when you've got an entire country (Poland) set up to be an extermination station, while special Commando forces, Einsatzgruppen, are sweeping though Europe targeting Jewish Communities, you're going to feel that this is the Pogrom to end all Pogroms... in a way... it did...
Back.

I come from a family of history nuts.

We all adore history, we have different ideas of what history means, but we all love it, learn it and think memory is one of the more important things in life.

I recall the one time I looked my history in the face, when I was 17 and went on the class trip to Poland. I don't think I would have gone without my mother, who insisted, because I seriously hated my peers.
It was an odd time, of false camaraderie and a whole lot of national zeal. I still feel weird thinking about those ten days in Poland, in which the only time we saw something "fun" was in Krakow - where we went shopping in the square and travelled down the salt mines (which is used as a wedding hall, these days... or at least back in 2002).

In Majdanek, which is the concentration-death camp next to Lublin and has a fucking huge ash mound - yeah, seriously, there are reconstructions of the housing blocks, which have been converted into museums. There is a block that has nothing but shoes in it, there's a red high heeled shoe there that I'll never forget.

One of the blocks is an information archive, it has documents, SS uniforms, prisoner uniforms (those stripy "pyjama" things), ID cards for the well known Nazi commanders who did their duty there and a wall with badges.

Badges explaining what each one meant and who wore them.

I had only ever heard of the yellow star of David. When I saw the pink triangle I was shocked. What was a symbol I associated with Gay Pride doing here!?
I read the info and discovered what it meant and why it was reclaimed by gay people.
(I was 17, in a relationship with a boy and was only beginning to understand my own queerness).
I saw the black triangle and saw that it was given to Anti-Socials - which included gypsies, anarchists, the mentally ill and Lesbians.

This confused me.

Surely the Lesbians should be with the pink triangle.

Lesbian women were "Anti-Social", not because they had sex with women, but because they refused to marry and "breed" for the Reich. This I discovered not long afterwards when I realised that my country only counts the 6 million as victims and the rest as incidental - never mind that there are, you know, Jewish queers. So I read up on the other victims of the Holocaust.

Why am I writing this?

Because history continued to rely on the fact that men are more important than women.

As many of you know, Berlin has Holocaust Memorial instillations. A huge Jewish one and across the road from it, a Gay one. It was installed in 2008 to commemorate the gay victims of the Nazi regime. It includes a continued video of two men embracing and kissing. Very sweet.
I remember back when it was installed how happy I was that this piece of history, general and gay, was being recognised and promised myself that when I was in Berlin I'd go (as though I wouldn't any way). It was also stated that every two years the image would be replaced and this year it would be two women embracing and kissing.

Woe.

This, some say, is not historically accurate:

[..]Alexander Zinn, a board member of the foundation that maintains the former Nazi concentration camps near Berlin, said such a move would distort history as there were no known Holocaust victims targeted for being lesbian.

"Historical truth must remain the focus," Zinn told AFP.

He has banded together with other Holocaust experts and fired off a letter of protest to Culture Minister Michael Neumann and Berlin's openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit.

Neumann defended the plans as true to the original concept of the memorial in addressing present-day discrimination against lesbians and gays as well as the plight of homosexuals at the hands of the Nazis.

"The option of using a lesbian film motif in the memorial is in no way meant to put on the same level the persecution of homosexual men and women under the Nazi regime," he said in a statement.

Yeah, gay women didn't suffer enough under the Reich.
That's basically what's being said.

I'm not saying that Lesbian women were persecuted in the same way. Obviously, they were not. Mainly because, women's sexuality doesn't exist without the presence of a penis. That's the crux, these "anti-social" women refused to marry, continued to wreak havoc on the ultra-masculine, misogynistic and fetishistic society that had managed to infect Germany during Weimar.

Regardless, Lesbian women were persecuted for being gay, just, as mentioned, not in the same way. To deny this, is to erase an important part of War World 2 history, the history of the Holocaust and the history of queer women, who are erased from history with fervour any way!

Lesbians Locking Lips on the memorial for the persecution of gay people during the Nazi Regime is just as important as gay men doing so. It is different. The outcome may have also been different, but the motivation was not.
How could it be historically inaccurate?

This is what happens when I read the news on Peach eve.

Who isn't talking about the fact that Kate Winslet finally got the Oscar she deserved five nominations ago.
Life imitates art as she won it for playing the role in the Holocaust film The Reader... well, post-Holocaust film really. I haven't seen it, so I really cannot comment on her acting in it.
But throughout award season there have been references to her performance on Ricky Gervais' show "Extras" in which she satirises herself - saying that she's doing a Holocaust movie in order to finally get the Oscar the whole world says she should have.

For your viewing pleasure:


Schindler's bloody List indeed.

In any event, good on Winslet, I don't know if this is the movie in which she should have won, but she should have won long ago.
Her craft as an actress has always been beyond superb.

That's what the Oscars are about you know.
The craft of the film - that's why I'm never surprised when the most conventional and conformist movies get nominated and win.
It's kind of why I haven't seen most of the Oscar nominated movies - they're all so conventional and conformist.

The only categories in which truly artistic films - that is, films whose craft are not of the "classical" British or Hollywood made - have a chance at winning an academy award are the Animation features (both long and short) and the foreign language film.
Probably the most arbitrary category in existence!
Because a "foreign language" is a genre.
Really.
It's not.

As most of you know, Waltz with Bashir didn't win the foreign language film category.
I was rooting for it.
But I didn't think it would win.
My own theory is that it didn't win because it was too avant-garde. And the old men and women of the academy, recalling the bygone days of the 50's, 60's and yes, maybe even 70's, could probably not let themselves give an academy award to a cartoon.

Unlike some paranoiacs the Academy did not deny Israel an Oscar because they're anti-Zionst. *snort* not bloody likely.
Bradely Burston, the Ha'aretz English Edition columnist who writes about Israel from the Jewish-American perspective (I can only assume) wrote a very negative column about the Oscars and Jewish portrayal titled Winslet, "Waltz", and how Hollywood likes its Jews:

Hollywood knows exactly how it likes its Jews: Victims. Civilian victims. Targets of genocide. None of this Goliath stuff. None of these pre-emptive, disproportionate, morally amorphous behaviours.

I suppose one shouldn't mention the latest "Holocaust" movie Defiance?
Never mind.
Burston's point is that the Israeli narrative doesn't sit well with the Hollywood ilk.
Because Israelis are and I quote:

Israelis are complicated, angry, unhappy, family-oriented, insular, often flawed human-beings.
Perhaps, in the Hollywood context, the problem with these Israelis, is that they are not identifiable as Jews at all

There.
That's the point.
Israelis, in the classical and historical sense are not really Jews.
We are not wanderers, we are parochial, we are not rootless, we are a cohesive nation (as much as a "nation" of that kind exists) and we are no longer persecuted.
Merely surrounded by enemies.
No, Israelis are not classically identifiable as Jews - that is probably why the Jewish Diaspora is in two minds about Israel - Look at what the Jewish people have become out of the ashes of the Holocaust.
What indeed.

Let's ignore the fact that a bunch of Israelis come from places not even touched or affected by the Holocaust - wouldn't want to disrupt the meta-narrative of Israel's existence.

So because Bashir was about a wholly Israeli experience, with it's avant-garde package of docu-drama quasi-psychological dream-hallucinations and real life footage flashbacks... it didn't win.

As far as I can recall, there is nothing specifically "Jewish" about Waltz with Bashir except that snippet in which the Holocaust is used in an attempt to colour the actions and reactions of the protagonist.
Unsuccessfully I might add.
The only thing the mentioning of the Holocaust does in the movie is bring to mind that Israel commits war crimes and crimes against humanity and that the Holocaust cannot be removed from Israeli conciousness by virtue of it being the worst and last time, Jews were victimised.

But Israeli Jews consider themselves the "real" Jews. And with it comes the double-think.
We are no longer the weak effeminate victims, we are macho land workers etc.
At the same time we are surrounded by enemies who only want to shove us into the sea and we must not allow this - we have the biggest weapons and the biggest allies - *smash-smash-smash*.
Not to mention the over-all disdain a lot of Israeli Jews have towards Diaspora Jews: the Jews who support Israel but don't come to live here are cowards and those who don't support Israel are self-hating Jews who when the going gets tough will probably flock here in droves.

I've been accused of being naive, you know, because I'm "enamoured" of the Palestinians.
I'm not enamoured with anyone.
Is it too much to ask that everyone be allowed to live in dignity and self-determination?
That the recognition of wrongs be made official?

Waltz with Bashir isn't about those things.
It's about the cognitive dissonance of Israeli soldiers raised in a culture of overt masculinity that relies on reliving and relearning the victims that we are.

In the words of Kate Winslet "We get it. It was grim. Move on".
Moving on doesn't mean forgetting or putting aside - anyone who has been through a traumatic event knows this - it does mean that it doesn't overshadow and colour your entire life all the time.
It also means that we will be able to empathise with those are currently being victimised without believing that we suffered more and are thus always oppressed.

It's something to look forward to.

I had lots of links open up to share with you but in the end figured they weren't actually all that interesting (except for me).

Tense times friends, tense times.
Not that there are any other kinds of times, but the pressure and tension I'm feeling around because of the up coming elections are not kind.

I envy you actual democracies.
You know for how long your heads of government are in for and you know when they're going to be replaced.
*sigh*

So... today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Antisemitism raises it's multi-faceted head.
Summit on Holocaust: Gaza war legitimized equating Jews with Nazis
Yeah...

The problem comes from two places I think;
First, that much of Anti-Zionist critique is brought upon by an Antisemitic agenda cannot be denied. It is unfortunate because it disables pretty much any kind of discourse that comes to criticize Israel and the policies it enacts.
And second, that Israel itself (and other Diaspora/Non-Israeli Jewish leaders and groups) encourages this conflation. Israel is the homeland of all Jews wherever they are. An attack on Israel is an attack on Body Judaic - to borrow a phrase.
The fact that an Israel under attack is an attack on certain Jewish people is important, it's also important to acknowledge that 20% of the citizens in Israel are non-Jewish.

The connection between Israel and Antisemitism can't nor should it be denied.

I think a narrative of paranoia fuels the fire of perceived (and not so perceived) persecution even more in Israel - not to mention the disproportional coverage that the Occupation and the Conflict get in the News compared to other humanitarian disasters elsewhere in the world - though the disproportional aid that Israel receives from the Uncle Sam may also be a factor.
Just sayin'.

Fact is.
Israel is used as a Scapegoat by much of the world so that Their problems don't need to be dealt with, or at least denied.
Fact is.
Israel does a whole lot of Scapegoating itself by telling itself stories of persecution, victimisation and "lack of choices" and then bombs the hell out of a population that is effectively in a cage.

Antisemitism is an Issue.
The fact that the categories of Jew and Zionist are conflated both in Right and Left wing discourse is disturbing.
The fact that Anti-Zionist graffiti is sprayed on Synagogue walls, that Jewish businesses are burned down through cases of arson and that Jews and Israelis are harassed, simply because they are Jewish and/or Israeli, due to enactment of policies and acts of military aggression they very likely have little to do with, is a problem.

But fuck it right?

Sometimes I think about the Holocaust, and especially today I do because it is Holocaust Remembrance Day; the public television networks are showing documentaries, the radio is playing dirges and at ten AM a siren, the siren used for air raids and times of emergency and war, was heard, stopping everything – traffic, exams, fights, classes, shopping – creating an ear piercing moment of silence that continued to ring in my ears for a few more moments.
It is surreal, to see the stillness while your brain is screaming that the noise is painful. It forces you to remember what today means and why we must never forget it.

In Israel, we use the word "Shoah" (שואה, eng. Holocaust) lightly, at least in my circle of cynical friends; "This exam is going to be a holocaust" – "המבחן הזה הולך להיות שואתי". We make jokes about German Sheppard's (Alsatian dogs, ya know) in Jewish ghettos and ask how many Jews you can get into one car – one in the boot, two in the front, three in the back and the rest in the ashtray.
Morbid, which is putting it lightly.
I don't know how other nations that have gone through genocide handle the memory.
Do they also make jokes?
Do they go on school trips to Poland to see where our families were murdered, where their hair was shorn and used to make water proof socks and their fat was used to make soap (everything you saw/read in "Fight Club" is true).

I don't think it's the magnitude of death that makes the Holocaust unique as genocides go.
I think it was the industrial-ness of it, the careful methodical planning of it all. The loss not only of life but of an entire culture that had been cultivated over centuries. The pornographically photographed naked women, children and men; dying, dead and piled up in heaps, each body indistinguishable from the next.
Nudity takes away individuality.
The numbering of the people, which took away a little bit more of their humanity in the eyes of the perpetrators; the lies that hid the material reality: "You'll be getting your luggage back soon" a smiling Nazi clerk would say and everything was catalogued in that meticulous bureaucracy the Germans would pride themselves in.

My own opinion on the genocide that massacred the branches of my family on both sides has changed over the years - Those that went on to create what is now my quite large family, who live around the world, left Latvia and Lithuania before Operation Barbarossa, indeed before WWII even began.

It's easy to succumb to the idea that Jews are eternal victims and that the Holocaust was the largest and latest of Pogroms. At the same time, there is the fact that from this incident of violence a new kind of Jew arose, one that is strong, stronger than ever before, with a country of his own and an army that is the strongest in the Middle East. It is with this new strength and army, the Jews will never fear for our existence again.

I'm pretty sure Israeli Jews are the only majority population in the world that fears for its continued existence, not "way of life", but actual life. It is for good reason; Jews are surrounded by nations who don't want us here (when are we ever "wanted" any where).
I always think it's ironic that we went from one ghetto to another, only this time we built the walls, the snipers are ours and we pushed those we didn't want out.
The Holocaust brought about the existence of Israel, it probably would have happened at some point, but the genocide of the Jews made the process that much more urgent, that much faster.

Israel was built to be a home for those who became homeless.
*sigh*

The conclusion Jews and Israelis in particular, must take from our tragedy, is that we must strive to be better than we were.
Than we are.
We must strive to create a country, a world, in which persecution, racism, antisemitism, orientalism, genocide, auto-genocide are History and not reality.

That's my conclusion as an Israeli Jewish girl and that's what I derive from the Holocaust and that's why I make sure to remember, remember and never ever forget.

.לזכור, לזכור ולא לשכוח לעולם

Remember - יזכור:
The Jews
The Palestinians
The Bosnians
The Darfurians
The Rwandans
The Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania
The Cambodians
The Tibetans
The Armenians
The West African Slaves
The Original/First/Native Nations of the Americas
The "Witches"
The Inquisition
There are more, many more, too many. Who else must we remember?

A few days ago former Knesset Speaker and former Jewish Agency chief Avraham "Avrum" Burg gave a speech and interview about Israel, Palestine, the Jewish nature of the state, the state of Judaism in Israel and lots of other things in this close to 90 minute session - yeah, it's long. But if you get some spare time (like I had yesterday) listen to what he has to say.

Avrum Burg Speech MP3, via Jewschool

Perhaps a little background information is needed on the man, in order to appreciate the speech. I unfortunately am not that good at summarizing a man's life, so I'll refer you to his wiki page - Avraham Burg, which is as good a starting point as any I suppose.

What one really needs to know about Mr. Burg is how he is now perceived in mainstream Israeli society. He is viewed on the negative side, due to his criticisms of Israel's policies, nature and over-all screwed upness. This is especially hackling to most Israelis because, as before mentioned, he's a former MK Speaker and former Jewish Agency chief (pretty much as Zionist as can be) and he's now been flagged, and if I'm not mistaken (though don't take my word for it) has said about himself, that he is a post-Zionist, his stronger critiques have called him an anti-Zionist.
His politics and opinions became very public after the publishing of his (semi-biographical/semi-autobiographical) book about the Holocaust and Israel and his own family's history on the subject. The book is called לנצח את היטלר (english: Defeating Hitler) and I recommend it heartily, I found it moving and correct in it's assessment of the trauma that Israel has incorporated into its national identity.
Over the book's publishing in the summer of 2007, he was interviewed in the Ha'aretz magazine - which you can conveniently read here in Hebrew and in English - and it was the kiss of death to his mainstream image.
I liked what he had and still has to say.
Suffice to say, I'm in the minority here.

hagar_972 wrote a beautiful post about Holocaust Memorial Day

Here's an excerpt of what she wrote:

How do I paint to you a world without great-grandparents, without the brothers and sisters and cousins of your grandparents, without even cemeteries? How do I let you understand this wish of two generations before me, to have been born from the sea, to lose in its waves the past, because the past is murder and hatred, your neighbours turning in your parents and you hiding in the attic for three years eating potato peels, the past is death marches and public tombs?

She also trasnlated this post of mine.

Here's the body of the text:

"Memorial Day songs on the radio are simultanously beautiful and depressing.
Fun, as they say.

I thought i'd be writing some post about the meaning of humanity, about mercy, history and history repeating itself and how people never learn from history or from the mistakes with which we have to live, but I don't need a Holocaust Day for that, so perhaps on another day, when I don't feel so optimistic.
Yes, optimistic. Surprising, isn't it?

Today at work - I am taking care of a six-months-old baby - I heated up her bottle and then I realized it was almost ten, and I didn't know what to do. I figured it's only a couple of minutes, she can wait while I stand at the siren.
Only bummer, just then she started to cry.
So I picked her up - just as the siren started - and as she calmed down once I held her, I just stood in place holding her, rocking gently from side to side to keep her calm.

I have to say it was something, so whisper a lullyby for a baby during the memorial siren for those who were murdered in the Holocaust.
I am very glad to have held all this potential in my arms as we all grieved for all that was lost.

So yeah, I am optimistic."