no, Jews didn't survive the Holocaust by being “useful.” holy shit, what the fuck is wrong with you people

there is not one abysmal act of inhumanity that Republicans can't find some way to snidely shrug it off as just one of those things that happens

here we go again.

three days ago, I wrote about Florida’s despicable decision to teach its children about the “positive aspects” of slavery.

there was nothing funny to say about this moral travesty, but I did allow myself one slight ha-ha at the end. I wrote:

in Germany, schoolchildren are taught about the Holocaust. it’s mandatory. and they don’t sugar-coat it with stupid fairy tales. they don’t try to pretend that Jews learned useful skills like how to hide in an attic.

it’s a ludicrous notion, but guess fucking what: yesterday, on the Fox News program The Five, Greg Gutfeld went there, saying that Jews survived extermination camps by being “useful.”

Greg, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.

nobody survived an extermination camp by being useful.

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do you know who started this bullshit lie?

the Nazis.

this is the front gate of the Auschwitz extermination camp. the sign above the gate reads “Arbeit Macht Frei.” that’s German for “work will make you free.”

it’s a lie. not one person imprisoned at Auschwitz — or any Nazi extermination camp — worked their way to freedom.

can we pause here for a little bit of a history lesson?

it’s 1944 in Europe and you’ve been rounded up by the authorities and crowded onto a cattle car and sent by rail to a camp.

let’s say you survive the journey.

you arrive, you’re taken off the train and everybody stands in a line for a fun little process called sorting.

a Nazi doctor looks you over. if you’re too old, too young, too frail, too fat — or maybe the doctor just doesn’t like the look on your face — you’re immediately sent off to be murdered.

millions of people died this way. millions. off the train, one look, dead.

if you’re “lucky” enough to pass, you’re assigned to do slave (there’s that word again) labor.

that’s it. there’s no intake process, no interview, nobody asking if you have any useful skills. just one look and you’re either dead or enslaved.

and the only way anyone survived a camp (except for the tiny handful who managed to escape) was by not being murdered, or worked to death, or starved to death — and to somehow miraculously still be clinging onto life when your camp was liberated at the end of the war.

this is what Greg Gutfeld calls “being useful.”

holy shit.

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the Auschwitz Memorial and the White House issued statements condemning Gutfeld's remark. neither Fox News nor Gutfeld have responded.

this is your Republican Party, ladies and gentlemen. there is not one abysmal act of inhumanity that they can’t find some way to justify, some way to snidely shrug it off as just one of those things that happens.

children working in factories, ten-year-olds forced to give birth, migrants caught in razor wire booby traps, enslavement, extermination. it’s not Greg Gutfeld’s fault if you can’t escape these fates. next time, try being more useful.

once again, what the fuck.