Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/02/01

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Subject: [Leica] Photographic Freedom
From: scleroplex at gmail.com (scleroplex)
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 19:38:02 -0500

my dear nathan,
as a serious student of the shoah, known as porrajmos to my people,
who also perished in significant numbers,
(99% of all romanis in the czech republic perished for example -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5811363413/)
it is impossible for me to offend anyone especially re the holocaust.

please read my email response to what aram wrote.
slowly.

the subject clearly is that automatically ascribing good faith intentions
to people in power leads to bad outcomes.
i did not talk about any particular restriction on photography.
this principle applies to all laws or policies.

the subject was made even clearer by my typing out the full name of the
book i recommended
plus pasting in the link to the book on amazon so people could clearly read
what it was all about.

in terms of verbal communication my email could not have been clearer.

please allow me to remind you dear nathan, the shoah,
known as porrajmos to my people as i am sure you are aware,
began with my people
being gassed with carbon monoxide
back in 1939 itself
by psychiatrists
and having them subjected to the attentions of doctors like dr. ritter
under police coercion
while everyone else
was sitting around listening to Bach and thinking they were all cultured
europeans.

http://www.holocaust-trc.org/sinti.htm

"*What is the way to cause this traveling people to disappear?*

Dr. Robert Ritter, Head

Reich Department of Racial Hygiene & Population Biology

1939"

here is a picture of some of my people enroute to the shoah/porrajmos -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5795925439/

naturally i am also keeping tabs on the fact that there still is NO
memorial for my people in berlin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5953844553/
or warsaw.
funny how no one finds that offensive. at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porajmos

www.lesliejyerman.com/docs/Porraimos_presskit.pdf
there was another film 10 years ago with our name as the title -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404334/

i have the habit of posting pictures on flickr of books i am reading.
you can go through my stream and see all the books on the shoah/porajmos,
unethical medical experiments and stalinism
that i have read or reread this past year.
i have collected a few of them in this set here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/sets/72157629133945133/

here is my post on holocaust remembrance day this year -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/6771107883/

and my post on holocaust remembrance day last year here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5393135911/
and here - www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5391616320/

even though it is too early to discuss in public,
i can tell you that i am collaborating with prof. benno m?ller-hill
presently
to hold accountable heartless cold nazi-style psychiatrists right here in
boston,
with the help of the world jewish congress.

prof. m?ller-hill is a good doctor who actively talks about the shoah /
poraimos
in the hope that it will prevent the next one.

his focus has been on the medical community's total involvement in all that
went on
and the fact that the medical community did not confront it's own evil.
it still has not.
as a result prof. m?ller-hill has not been awarded any prizes or honorary
doctorates by
the medical establishment.
nor shall i, if i can help it :-))
the evil need to be talked about openly and brought to justice.

his book is very much worth reading.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/6702970523/

also see my comments on doctors and today's medical students here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5379545958/

i could be cynical and say that because people are afraid that any talk
involving the shoah/poraimos is offensive,
these students are fully, totally, completely, utterly unaware
of the full involvement of the medical establishment in the holocaust.

but then, they have also never heard of the Tuskegee experiment.

which means something like it can easily happen again.

a recent PBS documentary was thus very welcome and well worth watching.
see it here - http://video.pbs.org/program/elusive-justice/

for me, as a neurologist who is appalled at people who find all talk of the
shoah/porrajmos offensive,
this film was particularly welcome as it talked about the patients and
their evil doctors in detail.

remember once again dear nathan, the shoah/poraimos started in hospitals !!

and here i am, again dragging the shoah/porrajmos in -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/6778245475/

bruno bettelheim's foreward to dr miklos nyszli's book on auschwitz could
not be clearer.

you can read his words here -

1  http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5391004911/in/photostream/
2  http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5391004931/in/photostream/
3  http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/5391616314/in/photostream/

bettelheim strongly warns against the "inertia of business as usual"
which is exactly the point i made in my response to aram.

the book i recommended, is indeed a good one.
and totally relevant to the exact point in my email.

bettelheim said if you do not talk about the shoah / poraimos every single
day, it will happen again.
he said if you think that it simply could not happen, it will happen again.

perhaps the politically correct would find bettelheim offensive as well.
i don't know how many have read or remember what he wrote about how people
just walked into the shoah/porrajmos.

one of the encouraging things recently has been the belated attention paid
to Hans Litten
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/6081992147/

the BBC has made a film about him too though it is not available anywhere.

reading benjamin carter-hett's book about the weimar republic and the
mechanics of the nazi takeover
is also something that would stop people from automatically assuming
good faith intentions on the part of people in power.

well worth reading for anyone truly interested in the effort involved to
preserve one's rights and the rule of law.

one more thing.
too few people talk about the holocaust already.
probably because any talk is immediately deemed offensive.
and people, unlike me, become afraid to talk.
which likely explains why fully 20% of young germans (between 18 and 30)
today have never heard of auschwitz!

see the jerusalem post article here -
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=255142

just as most medical students in boston have never heard of Mengele
let alone von Verschuer or Karin Magnussen. (my data!)

people who are offended by any mention at all of the shoah / porajmos
should be congratulated.

the only holocaust site i visited was the warsaw ghetto -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/3363586755/
i found it only through the Fodor's Guide as not one of the poles i came
across in warsaw would direct me to it.
they all claimed utter ignorance and gave me blank looks.
the young jewish man manning a souvenir stand there congratulated me on
actually finding my way there.

my photo of mila 18 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/4436716052/

i was 24 years old when i went to pay my respects to these sites and the
people who perished.

keeping alive the memory of those who perished in the shoah/porajmos is
something extremely close to my heart
and extremely important to me every single day as a practicing doctor.

one of my closest teachers, dr bir? zsuzsanna of the semmelweis university
physiology dept. in budapest,
still has the tattoo on her arm.
she has her arm in mine here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scleroplex/6584792197/

it is a daily part of my existence.
it is driving my current quest to bring evil psychiatrists here to justice.
and my quest to get the American College of Healthcare Executives to make
good on their ethics code
by expelling the evil.
and i stand ready to take on anyone who thinks i should keep quiet about
it.

to reiterate briefly, assuming good faith intentions behind the policies,
rules and statements of those in power shall lead to bad outcomes.

yours,
bharani

Bharani Padmanabhan MD PhD
Boston




Message: 22
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 14:27:00 +0100
From: Nathan Wajsman <photo at frozenlight.eu>
Subject: Re: [Leica] Photographic Freedom
To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
Message-ID: <8DCBFE79-F050-4E8D-A273-51837C007466 at frozenlight.eu>
Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=us-ascii

Sorry Bharani, but to even mention some relatively trivial photo
restrictions in the same context as Shoah is plainly ridiculous and deeply
offensive, at least to some of us.

Nathan


Replies: Reply from imagist3 at mac.com (George Lottermoser) ([Leica] Photographic Freedom)
Reply from imagist3 at mac.com (George Lottermoser) ([Leica] Photographic Freedom)