Camp Auschwitz Staff Member?!

okay...im not sure what it is i want you all to post on this thread, but this event has been stuck in my mind and i need a release.

Today me and my grandmother went to an outback steak house for dinner. We were sitting there discussing my choise of schools to attend in the area. A man walks in and he has extremly long hair, long beard and is heavy set. He apears to be a chilling dude. I notice the back of his shirt had the letters 'STAFF' on the back. I attend a camp that sells shirts like that and he looks familiar so i think maby he worked at this camp i attended. The front of his shirt read 'Auschwitz Work Camp Staff Force Member' in HUGE letters. This bothered me terribly. He left and i was sitting there stunned...not hearing a word my grandmother has said. A tear rolls down my cheek and my grangmother notices. When asked why i was upset i couldnt respond...honestly if i had i probably would have wept right there in a steak house. I was thinking about the million and a half recorded jewish people that lost their lives at that aweful camp, the familys that were torn apart, the raped women. I still can not get my mind off this shirt and the person waring it. I am not sure if i desire help for my feelings or just a resopns from others but i needed to tell someone that this was bothering me something terible.

Thank you for reading this...

 

And also i apologize...i didnt have the time to look for an apropriate forum to place this under. Just needed this off my chest and this whole forum has helped me before.

 

jeez, relax, take a (bad) joke... it was probably MEANT for shock value... and you fell for it.
People love offending people, and you can either turn the other cheek and let it roll off, or you can get butthurt about it.

 

No offense, IC, but "butthurt" is a curious way to describe emotional feelings about what is probably the worst atrocity of the past few hundred years. I'm not talking about war; we get lots of those. I'm talking about the systematic execution of an entire race of innocent people - numbering in the MILLIONS.

One bad thing about a history like this is that the people who didn't live it tend to forget it. It becomes nothing more than a faded footnote in a book. Eventually, jerks like Ahmadinejad will start saying that it was all a big lie, or it didn't even happen... and people will begin to doubt. Fortunately, General Eisenhower understood this and ordered the photographic records of all those concentration camps full of murdered Jews.

I don't worry about the people who get "butthurt" over it; I worry about the ones who don't.

 

Trig you said it beautifully. My grandmother lost many of her family to the holocaust, and it wasnt funny or something to brush off. and yes it didnt happen to me directly but it still affects me, to even see the sadness in my grandma's eyes, when she talks about the people she lost. Any killing of an entire people based on race, or whatnot, makes me sad. Right now my mother who has gone to africa 3 times now, has even seen it with her own eyes, same thing different people. It is horrible thing, and yes I would be offended if I saw that t-shirt, it is heartless and rude, to all those who lost ones in that horrible atrocity called the holocaust.

 

i'm all for joking around and shit, but that's going a bit overboard. i can't think of a decent person who would wear a shirt like that. i probably would've confronted him.

 

i was planning on it actually. however he left before i returned from my shock state.

 

Of course the piece of shit is free to wear that shirt but in the spirit of free speech I think I would have loudly pointed out the insensitivity to him and maybe asking him why he would wear such a despicable thing.

Also, you don't have to be Jewish to be offended, or gay or gypsy. You just have to be human because that was a crime against humanity.

 

Seeing that would have made me very angry. He either has very racist beliefs or is doing it for the shock factor. But, my guess is he'll learn his lesson soon enough.

 

I'm guessing they didn't get out t-shirts to the Auschwitz staff....

 

Uh...Stupid. Lol. Thats just...not okay to wear that.

 

I have a related story with considerable black humor. I went to a school called Mt. Ararat. I had a couple of friends who wanted to put a temporary sign over the existing one for April Fools that said Mt. Auschwitz. I was talking to 2 of my cousins about it. They looked at me completely confused and asked me what Auschwitz was. They were both about 2 years younger than I was.

When I was in college there was a picture on a bulletin board of someone riding a bicycle through Auschwitz. I was talking with a friend about the story I just related. She was 27 and asked me the same question. I couldn't beleive that she walked past this same picture every day and didn't know what the fuck Auschwitz is. Ignorance is the most deadly affliction Earth and is completely cureable.

Peace Out,
Rev J

 

why isn't it okay? Its freedom of speech. Its not illegal.

 

Of course the piece of shit is free to wear that shirt but sometimes you don't do something just because it is legal to do it.

I agree that it is not OK to wear such an insensitive and despicable thing.

 

The only positive thing I can say about it is it's like wearing a sign that says: I'm an insensitive, clueless, hateful assbag. At least by wearing the shirt you don't have to find that out the hard way, or worse yet, after you helped him change a flat tire or what not.eace:

 

Careful, it's always possible the guy wearing the shirt didn't know what Auschwitz was either.

It would really suck to pound the guys ass, only to find he's just guilty of ignorance or illiteracy....

ZW

 

i considered this...and i hate "judging a book by its cover" but if you took a look at this guy and the person he was with...you couldnt help it. i.e. chains all over the place, 666's, and a bandana that said, "work will set you free". just that saying being incorpereated in a separet peice of clothing indicates he knew what he was doing. i apologize for not puting this info in my origonal statment...slipped my mind and i was writing emotionaly...you forget some finer details.

 

^^Yeah, thanks for clearing that up. I'm guessing he put off a "Vibe" too, that's probably why you were instantly upset. How old was he? (approx)

ZW

 

forreal?
that's fucking hardcore!

 

If you only tolerate people who agree with you it isn't really tolerance. Yes this guy was wearing a t-shirt making a not very funny joke. One of my friends told me a story about being in a subway station and he saw a man wearing a t-shirt that said WP in really big letters. My friend is Jewish and interpreted the t-shirt to mean White Power. And as he got closer to the guy to administer a beat down noticed the dude had long hair and a beard and when he got closer he saw under the WP it said Widespread Panic. The funnier part is my friend is the victim of male pattern baldness and shaves his head to cover it up.

I saw a great documentary on a group called Novacosm. Their lead singer was originally in a band called Rahowa short for Racial Holy War. He essentially had a jailhouse conversion and renounced his Nazism. Now that he is out of jail and out of the life he is a part of a multi-ethnic band preaching, peace love and unity. He has donated all of his collection of propaganda to the Wiesenthal center etc....

This guy in the resturaunt is at a stage in his life. He may or may not get out of that stage. But he needs the opportunity to change his mind if you decide to change his mind with a kick in the head you are no better than he. IF you see him stomping some poor bastard than the game changes. But until then there always going to be assholes.

Peace Out,
Rev J