[Thread] Ok, I suppose I should talk a little about this wh…

A brief grading of her statements:
Jews were beaten in the streets by neighbors including children ✅
Not by Nazi soldiers❌
History is edited❌
Govts made neighbors hate Jews✅-ish
This isn't different from conservatives being criticized❌

Carano is a conservative known to post offensive right-wing statements (it's not the 1st time) and the suggestion that conservatives are in any way similar to Holocaust victims is certainly offensive. Interesting how she got some things right while missing her own absurdity.

BUT...I'd really like to talk more about this image which is graphic and shocking and is now flying around the internet with no context. As I am finishing a book on #Janowska that covers the local circumstances of this image, I thought I would take a moment to talk about it.

The image of the woman was taken in Lviv, Ukraine (Lvov/Lwow/Lemberg) in July 1941 shortly after the Nazis had invaded and occupied the city. The majority of those pictured later abusing Jews ARE neighbors (Ukrainian or Polish) and this July Pogrom was encouraged by the Nazis.

Lviv had a Jewish population of 160,000 (3rd largest in Poland). When the Nazis arrived, they discovered the bodies of a large number of prisoners murdered by the NKVD and other Soviet authorities shortly before their withdrawal. (These were political prisoners-incl. Jews)

The Nazis immediately recognized the opportunity for a propaganda coup. They (and local collaborators) forced Jews to drag the bodies out of the prisons and later to bury them, implying that the Jewish community was responsible. This footage made Nazi newsreels.

Here is that newsreel footage. Hitler praised it, saying "it was the best Wochenschau we have made so far."

https://t.co/oK7SaTd4Gz

More footage of the liberation of city and the prisons

https://t.co/RNjE06jnJ6

Here is Alfred Rosenberg on the propaganda goals.

Images from Lviv prisons...

Given the real privations that the local population (incl. Jews) suffered under the Soviets, legitimate anger mixed with a desire for revenge and pre-existing local antisemitism leading to increasing displays of spontaneous violence known as the July Pogrom or Prison Aktion.

Some of the perpetrators were members of the "Nachtigall" Battalion, a German-led unit made up of Ukrainian nationalist volunteers who participated in Operation Barbarossa.

Initially, leaders of the Einsatzgruppen killing units hoped that local pogroms would do much of the killing work ("self-cleasning") for them. This excerpt from an EG document illustrates this policy.

In Lviv as elsewhere, this ideal was not realized, but mass violence took place throughout July. As one survivor recalled, the Nazis “started by giving the Ukrainians two days for them to dance, as they themselves called it later. So they danced.” Another said:

This "dance" consisted of brutal beatings, rapes, and murders throughout the city, in broad daylight and in public. In addition, the Nazi killers went about their more systematic business of eliminating their targets as well.

In a separate aktion during this period, the Nazis executed over forty university professors and their families.All in all, during World War II in Poland, the Nazis killed 57% of lawyers, 39% of physicians, and 29.5% of professors (both Jewish and non-Jewish.)

The communal and public nature of these assaults can be seen in these photos. Many of the participants had traveled into the city to participate in the violence.

Much of this violence was directed at women, including the image Carano shared. Most of the images are too graphic or objectifying for me to share. But these illustrate the point, I think. Women were subjected to sexual violence and humiliation as part of this.

Here is Nazi newsreel footage of the assaults.

CW: graphic violence

https://t.co/rPjztTBpZg

Perhaps as many as 5,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered during these assaults. Throughout Galicia, perhaps as many as 12,000 were killed.

So, Carano was most obviously wrong about a lot but, in her offensiveness, perhaps she presents us an opportunity to learn more about the woman whose image she is hijacking for her nonsensical #Holocaust comparison.

It is ironic that a supporter of a party that seems intent on extralegal violence would identify with the victims of REAL extralegal violence while missing the point that until recently it was her government inciting neighbors to violence.

For more on this and the Holocaust in Lviv, see:

Lower, Wendy. "Pogroms, Mob Violence and Genocide in Western Ukraine, Summer 1941: Varied Histories, Explanations and Comparisons." Journal of Genocide Research 13 (2011): 217-46.

@TarikCyrilAmar's study here:

https://t.co/WOj3aL2AVZ

https://t.co/N3MjqyntBu

https://t.co/qT78kbYkAo

https://t.co/wCipmeAqPh

https://t.co/wCgdV3uxnm

https://t.co/pa3vC4k5Vo

https://t.co/h6ckXThDrm

As always, support your local historian and punch your local Nazi.*

(Metaphorically, of course.)