רִבְקָה

The Talmud is not. It doesn't matter what translation you read, you have to sit down and focus. You have to digest it. You have to read arguments between different people. You need to engage with the text.

For a lot of people, they want a single quote that can prove or disprove a point. "The Bible is against homosexuality because of Leviticus!" But if you read the Talmud, suddenly there's discussion about what the phrase "lay with a man as with a woman" means. Is it any sexual contact? Is it only anal? There's discussion on how you prove, in a court of law, that two men were laying with each other. What's the burden of proof? How many witnesses do they need? And how do you stone someone?

That isn’t fair. It isn’t just. But it is reality. If Otto Frank had let this be included in the published version, there’s a large chance the homophobic backlash would have prevented the book from reaching the audience it did and spreading the message it needed to. It was NINETEEN. FORTY. SEVEN. The Holocaust had ended TWO YEARS AGO. The acceptance of LGBT identities was basically nonexistent. Otto Frank made a decision based on the time and place he was living in, about what the world at that time was and wasn’t ready to accept. 

Let me say this as bluntly as I can - I am a bisexual Jewish girl and I would have made the same decision Otto Frank did. Making sure Anne Frank was unambiguously seen as sympathic and heroic was more important. Making sure people weren’t sidetracked from the main issue of the Holocaust was more important. He shouldn’t have had to make that decision, without doubt. Anne Frank’s sexuality (however she would have identified in modern terms) shouldn’t be considered relevant to her status as a hero or a sympathetic victim. But in 1947, it undoubtedly would have been.

im bisexual and i had experiences like that, kissing other girls at sleepovers specifically, and it not only took me another half a decade to start identifying as bi, but all the girls i did that with grew up to be straight women.

A family living in a tent city with mandatory blackouts because their neighborhood is a target isn't going to rejoice in relief because a Tumblr user linked a book on how the Jews control the world under a post about someone's temple being vandalized with swastikas

A person who lost their family isn't waiting for a Tumblr user to make a call out post. They aren't waiting for a Tumblr user to spam subscribe else's inboxes with anon hate because they said their kid is scared to go to Hebrew school. They aren't waiting for someone to get death threats because they made a post in Hebrew that the person leaving the threats can't even read.

People Without History Are Dust

Queerness remains one of the most stigmatized and overlooked aspects of Holocaust history, often erased due to the lingering homophobia of survivors. People Without History Are Dust challenges this silence, weaving together compelling stories of German, Dutch, Czech, and Polish Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors - including Anne Frank, Molly Applebaum, Margot Heuman, and Gad Beck - whose experiences help illuminate the hidden history of queerness in a time of genocide.

Drawing on extensive archival research, this groundbreaking book uncovers the lives of those who were doubly marginalized, not only persecuted as Jews but also as queer individuals. In doing so, it confronts the ways in which history has excluded or minimized their experiences, urging us to question normative accounts of the Holocaust.

By shedding light on these long-overlooked stories, People Without History Are Dust deepens our understanding of identity, survival, and memory, reminding us why an inclusive and complex approach to history is essential - not just for the sake of the past, but in service to the present and the future as well.

Frankly, the fact that Hajokva promised to use a pseudonym and then used the woman's real name and photograph in promotional material is such an ethical breach. This is very basic stuff. If a source requests anonymity when talking about something as complex and damning as a Jew sleeping with a Nazi, you should honor that.

That's not even touching on assigning a sexuality to a Jewish child who didn't live long enough to decide whether she was queer or not. She was murdered for being Jewish. Plain and simple. Her sexuality was never a factor in her death, regardless of whether or not she was bisexual.

As for "holocaust survivor has affair with a Nazi guard" that is literally a trope in post war Nazi apologia to sanitise the violence inherent in *Jew during the holocaust exchanges sex for survival*, a circumstance that happened a lot, you don't have to be a genius to understand that.

It's not a representation issue, this is family to the Jews who are upset with you.

It's just a complete disconnect from the existential nature of the holocaust as a method of exterminating all of the world's Jews forever, and how there was a time that the Nazis thought they could logistically do it, and how the only thing for Jews to celebrate from it is "even though many of us did not, as a people we survived."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/27/received-death-threats-abandoning-pro-palestine-movement/

It wasn’t long after Hamas carried out its attack on Israel in Oct 7, 2023, that Taryn Thomas found herself swept up in the chorus of pro-Palestine activists mobilising against the Jewish state.

Even before Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza following the Oct 7 massacre,“I was scrolling through social media, and I only saw support for Palestine,” she recalls. “People I know, whether it was activists or people I look up to, were already posting their thoughts.”

Then aged 19 and studying biomedical science at the elite Stanford University in northern California, Thomas, an African American, was first introduced to the anti-Israel movement at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, where Palestinian flags were flown by some activists. “I never really understood why, but we were told that in order for us to be free, Palestine has to be free,” she says.

She subsequently helped lead large protests against Israel and, within two weeks of Oct 7 2023, had joined an encampment of activists on campus protesting against Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Like many others, she donned a keffiyeh, the headscarf worn to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians. “I really loved it because of the sense of belonging and the sense of purpose,” she says of the encampment. “It was like an instant community.”

Besides fellow students, Thomas was encouraged by “faculty members like history professors” who “validated the movement”. “It seemed like everyone was a lot more educated than me and very certain and sure of themselves that this is a genocide,” says Thomas, who is now 21. “The only safe position was the more radical one in the encampment.”

‘I was confused by what our mission was’

Thomas grew up in Riverside County, one of the few Republican counties in the otherwise “very liberal California”. That, together with racist abuse at school, influenced her political outlook. “I thought going further to the Left would be the solution to the extremism I was seeing from the Right,” she says.

Huge demonstrations took place at universities across the US in the months that followed Oct 7, with protesters confronting the educational institutions with their demands – including to divest from Israel and cut ties with counterpart Israeli institutions.

While the movement was largely peaceful, some demonstrations turned violent and led to clashes with police. “One of our protests got out of hand, and that kind of made me take a step back,” says Thomas.

This was in June 2024, when several militant students broke into the office of Stanford’s president, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. “They spray-painted disgusting things, such as ‘Pigs taste best when dead’, ‘Death to America’, ‘Death to Israel’, and ‘Kill cops’,” Thomas recalls.

“I was confused by what our mission was. At what point did the pro-Palestine movement turn into this anti-Israel, anti-America movement? We completely lost sight of the victims we were claiming to be supporting and fighting for.”

Yet those behind the vandalism “doubled down”, she says, and justified their actions, “even though Jewish students said they felt unsafe”. She explains: “They felt like they couldn’t go to their classes, they were getting harassed and doxxed [having personal information published online] and things like that. Essentially, we completely lost our minds.”

A drastic change of heart

Then, in October 2024, Thomas was one of many students who received an open invitation to the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Los Angeles. Recently opened in London, the exhibition aims to recreate the festival site where 413 people were murdered by Hamas, and many more were injured or taken hostage.

Nova exhibition

The recently opened Nova exhibition in London commemorates the 413 young people murdered by Hamas at the festival Credit: Jeff Gilbert

“Initially, I laughed, thinking, ‘What’s this propaganda?’” Something piqued her interest, however, so she decided to go. “I’d heard about the festival and was curious, but I’d only really heard the reasoning, ‘Well, why would you have a festival next to a contested border? Essentially, they were asking for it.’

“I was hoping it was going to reaffirm my position, that I would find Zionist lies and whatever. I went with a very closed mind.” Three hours later, Thomas emerged feeling “so lost”.

“I experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance – what I was seeing versus what I’d been told. It was like I arrived a year too late to a funeral. I had so many questions, but I really had no one I could talk to about this. All of my friends were from the encampment. I’d never met an Israeli or talked to them about their experiences – I was fluent in the state’s sins, but I was illiterate in its people.”

Seeing pictures and footage of the young festival-goers hit home for Thomas. “They were kids my age, just dancing, and then fleeing for their lives the next moment. I could see myself in them. I could have been sending a last ‘I love you’ message to my mum. I felt so much empathy and sadness.”

One element in particular changed everything – an audio clip of a jubilant Hamas fighter phoning his father to let him know he’d killed 10 Jews. “My heart sank because these [were meant to be] our martyrs. [This was] the resistance we were claiming we wanted. When we called for any means necessary, I didn’t realise that’s what it meant.”

Months later, Thomas was invited on a trip to Israel organised by a group combatting anti-Semitism on campus. “I knew if I was going to continue to speak on this, I needed to see it for myself,” she says.

During the 10-day trip last March, she met with Israelis, Ethiopian Jews, Palestinians, Druze and Bedouin. “I was shocked at how much diversity I saw – I didn’t even know Israel had black people,” she said.

On the fourth day, the group had to take cover during a missile attack. “Our guide told us to get on the ground, and I put my hands over my neck and prayed. “I thought about the irony of how I’d called for the divestment of the very system I was praying for,” she says. “It [the missile] didn’t care about my politics or what I posted or any of that. I was a target, a body on the ground, and I felt utterly useless.”

Fortunately the missile was intercepted and the trip continued, but the experience left Thomas shaken. She says it made her realise “how cushy and comfortable a life” she had in America, and that she’d not realised the “real consequences” of what she’d been calling for.

‘It felt like being stoned publicly’

Back home, she posted a picture of her trip online – a decision that cost her dearly. “My best friend of three years asked, ‘Is this in Israel?’ I said, ‘Yeah, do you want to talk about it?’ She immediately blocked me. I hadn’t even expressed anything. I literally said I went. Period.”

Her post opened the floodgates. “I lost every single friend”, while her classmates “posted really disgusting things”, including labelling her a “genocidal apologist”. Thomas says she was doxxed, and received death threats and racist abuse – and that her family was also targeted. “It was like a crusade and felt like being stoned publicly.”

She now takes a dim view of the encampment atmosphere. “It completely insulates you in this echo chamber and indoctrinates you. If you had any questions, you’d lose your social belonging – the last thing you wanted to be called was a Zionist.”

She adds that the protesters’ “attention turned into this hatred” and there were constant calls for the “normalisation of violence”. Some activists, for example, celebrated the assassinations of Charlie Kirk, the Right-wing political activist, and Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, she says.

The mental toll had become so heavy on Thomas that she stepped away from her studies late last year. What helped get her through this tough period is the new friendships she has formed, including some with Jewish students.

“They knew I came from the encampments and they engaged with me, intellectually argued with me, disagreed with me, but we still broke bread on Shabbat,” she says. “I learned from my [now] best friend that she was doxxed because of people within our movement. I know I have to repair some of those damages.”

‘Open your heart and put down those megaphones’

Thomas says her family are not politically engaged in the issue of Israel and Gaza and she has faced questions from her mother about her involvement. “She was just like, ‘Why are you doing this? It isn’t your burden to shoulder.’ She just wants her family to be safe and protected.”

But Thomas hopes that by sharing her story it will encourage others to experience the Nova exhibition. “I hope the people who are protesting will come – I just want them to go inside,” she says. “None of this is political. Just look and learn the stories – you don’t have to agree. Come in with an open heart and an open mind and put down those megaphones.”

As for Thomas, she hopes to return to university in September, but in the meantime, she is determined to do what she can to increase cross-community understanding. “A lot of us on the pro-Palestine side were recruited through empathy, so I think we can be reached through it too. Because of this unique perspective I have of what changed my heart, I think I can hopefully change other people’s.

when i tell people i’m russian they actually have never asked if i support the government.

JEWISH PEOPLE EXISTING DOESN’T HURT YOU

THE ONLY GOOD NAZI IS A DEAD NAZI