January 27, 1945
It’s an anniversary.
76 years ago today over 7,000 prisoners of the German Nazi #Auschwitz camp, including some 700 children, were liberated by the soldiers of the Soviet Army. 1,689 days of murder, pain, suffering, and humiliation were over. Today we all remember. We must remember. | #Auschwitz76 pic.twitter.com/63Z0DtshPi
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 27, 2021
My grandfather, Siegfried Herrmann, was one of them. His parents and brother were not, burned in gas chambers and shot on a death march. We must remember. #Auschwitz76 https://t.co/QVuYSPGjoP
— Dr. Victoria Herrmann (@VSHerrmann) January 27, 2021
Every day we commemorate the victims & educate about the tragic human history of #Auschwitz.
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Support our mission & let people know we are here. pic.twitter.com/3hKYKDvHql— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 26, 2021
Meanwhile, in Alaska:
Yes that’s definitely someone you don’t want on a state commission that investigates discrimination complaints. Farking hell.
Oh, FFS. Yes it literally translates to “realm” in English, but nobody who speaks German uses it that way or “in a benign sense”. “Reich” has always implied empire, and “Dritten Reich” specifically the third empire after the Roman and Holy Roman empires. There are plenty of analogous examples in English of words that we use in a non-literal sense, which everyone completely understands. If I were to say “the economic collapse has decimated my industry” would you (a) think that the poor economy has caused many firms in my industry to fail, or (b) believe the literal sense of “decimate” and think that somehow every tenth firm has been destroyed by the state in retribution for cowardice?
As long as we’re on this topic, “Führer” means “leader”. So benign, right? When the Proud Boys were holding outstretched arms and fists and pledging allegiance to their Führer, Donald Trump, it was all just good American loyalty being given voice, eh?
Also even if Germans in fact did use “Reich” in a benign sense that doesn’t mean that USians do. Third Reich has only one meaning to us, so no, it’s absurd to say it means a completely harmless third empire of some sort on a US license plate.
The Holy Roman Empire was the first Reich, and the German Empire (1871-1918) was the second Reich.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Empire
It also means “rich” .
Reichtum = wealth.
Königreich = Kingdom ( and my German is rusty as hell but it might be feasible that for example, in a fairytale, where a phrase like “all the realm” is likely to come up more often than in the real world, the word “Reich” could be used without looking… wrong somehow)
There’s probably plenty of other uses of “Reich” in german that are totally innocuous that escape me right now. It’s fine because it’s being used as a normal word in normal sentences by people who are just communicating about non-Nazi related things in German. Also, and this is important, it’s not ever spelled with the number 3 as the first letter.
Reich is also a surname, and I’ve seen comments where people are creating scenarios where the 3 might be appropriate. But we have neighbors named Reich with three kids, and I strongly doubt they would put that on their license plate.
… I’m not sure what all this relativizing is about, the attempts to find an innocuous explanation or really convoluted chains of associations
it’s “Third Reich”
(alas, it cannot ever be proven (as in for a court or something), those in the know will know regardless)
there’s a somewhat famous example, Austrian politician doing some modified Hilter salute (Kühnengruß), with 3 fingers, claiming he ordered 3 beers, same energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz-Christian_Strache
What A Maroon, they could refer to their youngest as the third Reich (child). But I expect they know better.
This has just reminded me of a thing that happened when I was in school. We had a teacher who was a bit of a comedian and liked to go off on tangents and tell funny stories, and of course we encouraged this as much as possible by asking follow-up questions or making funny comments. It was like an improv workshop. Once, he
seemed to just be getting to the end of a little interlude when he said “anyway, I think what we all need now is”, and paused for effect. One of the girls blurted out “a Holocaust!” Stunned silence. She looked around at all the horrified faces and said “What? Is it bad? I don’t know what it means, I just like the word!” Seventeen years old and in a German grammar school, and somehow she had not picked up the meaning of the word. The mind boggles.