eBay canceled two auctions I had running because they considered them, “Hateful or Discriminatory.”
The auctions were for photographs, and were titled, “WWII portrait, Adolph Hitler w/Helga Goebbels,” and “WWII vintage stereo view, Nazi rally.”
While I can see how some people may not want to be reminded of what went on during world war II, I’m at a loss as to how photographs from the period are “Hateful or Discriminatory.”
You can sell all manner of breathtakingly racist grinning step-and-fetch-it, aunt-Jemimah nigger items from the Grand Olde Days of the South (lo, those many [fifty] years ago), historical documents, images and items from slavery days, cliched, stereotypical injuns in a million different advertising and “entertainment” incarnations, but they draw the line at historical photos with Nazis in them.
Why ignore the overwhelming racism and hateful discrimination against Blacks and Native Americans, but fling the “Hateful or Discriminatory” tag at everything associated with the Nazis? Is this some kind of, “Sorry, we can only come out against one genocide at a time” kind of thing?
The Jews who lived through the holocaust have a mantra; never forget. That’s so deep in its simplicity that it’s easy to gloss over it. Never forget.
But it seems like a lot of us are all too willing to forget. Just wipe that nasty stain out of our consciousness. Marcus Garvey said, “A people without knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots.” Hitler is history. Ugly, heinous history, but history all the same. To pretend he didn’t exist is to invite history to repeat itself.
Well, I didn’t want the damn things to wind up in the hands of some subnormal wannabe Nazi asswipe anyway, so maybe it’s for the best.
Now what am I supposed to do with them?