I've read an interesting thing in Havi Dreifuss's Relations Between Jews and Poles During the Holocaust recently. I can't provide the exact citation as I've read it in a library, but she noted that when forced labor for the Nazi regime was getting introduced in Poland, some Jewish politicians and leaders (I think it was Zionists as one argument was "the skills will be transferable to building a homeland in Palestine") saw this as an opportunity to disprove the Antisemitic myth of Jews being unproductive.
Productivity has been a big thing ever since Enlightenment: you were productive when you did manual labor like an artisan or a farmer, more intellectual kinds of work like being a merchant or a scholar were considered degenerating to the spirit which could influence the whole national spirit. This was used as a basis for modern antisemitism: Jews were no longer evil for their religion which categorized them as Jesus-killers, but rather their national spirit has degenerated because of their occupational structure. This rhetoric was partially internalized in the Haskala ("Jewish Enlightenment") rhetoric when Jewish intellectuals started to seek emancipation and recognition by giving up the traditional shtetl (small Jewish town with traditional religious structures and trade as the main source of income) lifestyle.
The rise of Zionism was a response to the disillusionment with this idea. Recognition through productivization and forming a secular identity, similarly to other European nations, was a futile attempt. It's incredible that some people still held to the idea of recognition through work right before the introduction of the Final Solution. It was still early on in the war, but the extreme Antisemitism of the Nazi Party was never hidden. Even if you look at the milieu of this area and time period, it seems to be next-to-impossible to keep that hope: the Interwar period saw a rise in pogroms, the famous poem Es brent by Mordechai Gebirtig, often associated with mourning the Shoah victims, was actually written in 1936.
Don't trust the redpillers of your age. When you're in the out-group, you can't redeem yourself with contributing to the society. We live in a society, but we'll never be a part of it. It's also remarkable that the language used by today's redpillers is the same: it's all about productivity. Some people will cling to the hope of getting recognized this way until the very end, but it's all delusions. Arbeit macht nicht frei.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLfkRoyS-P4
Productivity has been a big thing ever since Enlightenment: you were productive when you did manual labor like an artisan or a farmer, more intellectual kinds of work like being a merchant or a scholar were considered degenerating to the spirit which could influence the whole national spirit. This was used as a basis for modern antisemitism: Jews were no longer evil for their religion which categorized them as Jesus-killers, but rather their national spirit has degenerated because of their occupational structure. This rhetoric was partially internalized in the Haskala ("Jewish Enlightenment") rhetoric when Jewish intellectuals started to seek emancipation and recognition by giving up the traditional shtetl (small Jewish town with traditional religious structures and trade as the main source of income) lifestyle.
The rise of Zionism was a response to the disillusionment with this idea. Recognition through productivization and forming a secular identity, similarly to other European nations, was a futile attempt. It's incredible that some people still held to the idea of recognition through work right before the introduction of the Final Solution. It was still early on in the war, but the extreme Antisemitism of the Nazi Party was never hidden. Even if you look at the milieu of this area and time period, it seems to be next-to-impossible to keep that hope: the Interwar period saw a rise in pogroms, the famous poem Es brent by Mordechai Gebirtig, often associated with mourning the Shoah victims, was actually written in 1936.
Don't trust the redpillers of your age. When you're in the out-group, you can't redeem yourself with contributing to the society. We live in a society, but we'll never be a part of it. It's also remarkable that the language used by today's redpillers is the same: it's all about productivity. Some people will cling to the hope of getting recognized this way until the very end, but it's all delusions. Arbeit macht nicht frei.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLfkRoyS-P4
