RACISM AND NAZISM

From a young age I realized that there were people that wanted to kill me because of my Jewish heritage. If I did not give someone candy I was a cheap Jew. I once visited a school playground and the graffiti said "Jews burn." My stepfather was not Jewish and he enjoyed World War II documentaries about the Nazis and there always seemed some sort of execution, Hitler speech or death camp segment on our television when it was working and not flashing pink with wavy lines. Sometimes my stepfather would give the heil Hitler salute in my face which he thought was the height of fucking funny. My stepfather did not talk much but when he did the conversation always devolved into talk of some World War II Nazi battle which made absolutely no fucking sense. My stepfather could go from mashed potatoes to the Nuremburg Trials in ten seconds flat and people would just have a shocked stare at the psychotic dumbfuckery that came with dinner. When I was 12 the temple that gave me religious instruction set up a room to show pictures of the Holocaust. They took the class to the basement and the walls were covered with Nazi soldiers abusing old women and children. There were pictures of dead bodies in pits after people had been machine gunned by the Nazis and there was a picture of this young woman from a concentration camp naked in a bath who was just skin and bones after being worked and nearly starved to death. And she was smiling for the camera because I guess that is what she thought she should do when getting a picture taken, but it was perverse because she looked like she would die any moment. I was so disgusted and shocked while being fixated by the atrocity pictures that I did not realize the class had left and I was alone in the room. I was so traumatized that when my mother came to drive me home from the temple I broke down crying. That did not stop my stepfather from enjoying his Nazi documentaries. When My mother was dying he took a moment to exit the room and enjoy a Nazi history on television as my mother lay alone in bed in a dark room waiting to die. My step father loved those Nazi histories and probably still does for all I know. Really.