I disagree. Even if you can’t control your knee-jerk internal reaction to something you KNOW isn’t intended to be offensive (something I don’t necessarily agree with, but for the sake of argument), you absofuckinglutely can control whether you deal with it privately or attempt to impose it on others who mean NOTHING negative.
Everyone is entitled to their own experience. They are NOT entitled to bully others with it 65 years after the fact when the others in question have suffered the same as they have and have completely benign intent. That’s a choice and it’s a jerky choice.
It’s just another example of something that drives me crazy, which can be summed up as people looking for reasons to be offended. If a bunch of kids shot a comedy at Auschwitz, I wouldn’t take issue with survivors being offended. But in matters small and large I think people invest WAY too much of themselves in picking at their wounds instead of healing them.
And this is an example of something that drives me crazy, which can be summed up as people being completely unable to listen to any view which contradicts their own.
People have explained over and over again why someone might be offended by this, and the evidence is there that people with good reason to be offended are. Continuing to insist that there is no reason someone would be upset by someone acting this way at the grave of your loved ones (and I notice you ignored the part of my post where I pointed out that some of those sites most definitely are graves) is just stubbornness.
Considering that the ovens were there, they most likely WERE graves.
If Grampa wants to do something like this, why not go to a cemetary like, oh, what was the one that Reagan visited back in the 80s? The one the German chancellor scheduled for his visit, that turned out to be almost all Nazis? Go THERE and literally dance on their graves.
If I’m going to a place where I saw my children/brother/sister/mother brutally murdered and/or tortured, or just plain died, I’m going to be pretty pissed if I see some people dancing around to some disco tune. How the hell do I know what they’re doing? They look like a bunch of morons goofing off? How do they KNOW it isn’t intended to be offensive? Is there a big sign that says, “Please don’t worry, we don’t mean to offend anyone – we’re celebrating our lives!”
And no, the idea that “it’s 65 years later, no one’s suffering anymore!” is bullshit. There are PLENTY of people still dealing with what they went through. As I said, PTSD? Hell, we still have Holocaust deniers.
Make a video? Fine. Just don’t do it at Auschwitz or Dachau. “Not entitled to bully others?” That goes both way, sweetheart. I don’t think I’d want to go through some place like a concentration came and see someone boogieing down to Gloria Gaynor.
You would have to be pretty dense not to see this as anything but a celebration of life. If it has to be explained to someone to understand it (because of the language) and they still don’t get it then they have already died inside. The video was a flower that grew out of the ashes of those who perished.
If your communication is unclear, it is not the fault of the person getting message, but the person sending it. To assume that every person responding is deliberately mischracterizing what you say, rather than you not making your point properly, is taking on a persecution process.
As for your point: All that stuff about doing what ever you want doesn’t work if you MAKE A VIDEO AND PUBLISH IT TO THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. At that point, you know it’s going to be offensive to some people. And, when you find out that this is a sizable number of people, but keep it anyways, then you have just declared that you value your own catharsis more than you do all the people in the world. This makes you a dick, no matter what your background.
The main reason we want to believe that the kids got him to do it, is because to believe that someone who actually went through it would ignore the suffering of others who also went through it–that is just jerkish on so many levels.
And Dio is right. Funny how he didn’t get offended by it in any form, but just said that he didn’t get characterizing it as revenge, since the people to get revenge upon are mostly (if not completely) dead. Everyone else’s is just hypocrisy: How is your getting offended on behalf of the video creators any better than them getting offended on behalf of the people who were offended?
BTW, if you just come in on the new page, not reading the preceding comments (as I did at first), it actually sounds like you are arguing the opposite. That’s how much you’re having to stretch to make your opinion work.
The celebration of life that was portrayed in the video is the exact opposite of what Nazi Germany represented. To dismiss it because someone finds offense is an acknowledgment that the Nazis ucceeded in removing all sense of life from those who survived.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “ideological revenge.”
Neo-nazis think the Holocaust never happened anyway, so it doesn’t mean anything to them to see a Jew survive something they think is a fiction. They’re just going to think he’s a grandstanding liar, and that will confirm their ideology. These are not rational people we’re talking about, nor are they people capable of being shamed.
I’ve been to Buchenwald, I’ve walked through the crematorium, I’ve seen the giant piles of shoes (and reading glasses and buttons and…) and walked through the gates with “everyone gets what he deserves” above them. My memories of visiting are nothing if not of absolute despair and depression. The fact that someone - anyone - could have survived living there, begun a family, prospered and healed sufficiently to revisit the place of those atrocities and exhibit any amount of joy gives me absolutely no ammunition with which to deny that person and his family the right to express their victory in any way they choose. Watching them do so fills me with pride and hope.
Who’s denying their right to do it? No one’s saying theyu don’t have a right to do it, but not everyone is obligated to fel the same way you do about it. Especially not other survivors.
Ther’s an implication there that somebody is denying their right to do it? If you’re not implying that, than what does their right to do it have to do with the conversation?