In 1943, a team of ingenious Italian doctors invented a deadly, contagious virus called Syndrome K to protect Jews from annihilation. On October 16 of that year, as Nazis closed in to liquidate Rome’s Jewish ghetto, many runaways hid in the 450-year-old Fatebenefratelli Hospital. There, anti-Fascist doctors including Adriano Ossicini, Vittorio Sacerdoti and Giovanni Borromeo created a gruesome, imaginary disease.
The doctors instructed “patients” to cough very loudly and told Nazis that the disease was extremely dangerous, disfiguring and molto contagioso. Soldiers were so alarmed by the list of symptoms and incessant coughing that they left without inspecting the patients. It’s estimated that a few dozen lives were saved by this brilliant scheme.
The doctors were later honored for their heroic actions, and Fatebenefratelli Hospital was declared a “House of Life” by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
I am so absolutely pissed off that i never learned this in school
Another little-known story: Carlo Angela, another anti-fascist doctor, hid fellow anti-fascists and Jewish people in his mental health clinic, forging medical cards, changing names and nationalities.
A guy called Giorgio Perlasca changed his name to ‘Jorge’ and pretended to be the Spanish consul-general in Budapest. Using extraterritorial conventions, he proceeded to literally bullshit his wayinto saving more than 5,000 lives. Also, this happened:
In December 1944, Perlasca rescued two boys from being herded onto a freight train in defiance of a German lieutenant colonel on the scene. The Swedish diplomat-rescuer Raoul Wallenberg, also present there, later told Perlasca that the officer who had challenged him was Adolf Eichmann.
And there were so many small gestures that were never widely known – someone ‘losing’ a list of names, or ‘misplacing’ it, or having it ‘stolen by unknowns’. “Oh, we can’t get those Jews for you, they fled and we think they are now refugees in, uhhh… Monaco. Yes. All of them. What do you mean, too many to hide there? You’re not doubting my word, are you?? Rude.”
There were the people who hid them in their houses, and there was that Black Shirt who showed up at my grandmother’s apartment block and, pretending not to have noticed the dozen or so heads peering from the windows, he LOUDLY informed the concierge that THEY WOULD BE THERE THE NEXT MORNING TO CHECK IF THERE WAS ANYONE THERE WHO SHOULDN’T BE, THIS IS STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL BY THE WAY, I REPEAT, TOMORROW MORNING, STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL DON’T TELL ANYONE. (That night, the nearby church had more rough sleepers than usual. It’s hard when you lose your house to a bombing, isn’t it?)
Armed Resistance is often celebrated and for good reason, but these are good reminders that you don’t need to hold a gun and shoot to make a difference. Resistance can be losing a list of names, forging paperwork, claim you have “no knowledge whatsoever of the people you’re looking for would this face lie to you”, pretending you’re the official of a foreign country (admittedly, not as easy), let information slip by and reach the right people. It’s in the small things and everyone can do their part.
In short:
… And if you don’t see helpers, it’s time to be one.
it’s interesting how eleanor shellstrop acts like she’s lazy when she’s actually incredibly hard working. instead of just running away, she got herself legally emancipated from her neglectful parents and worked to afford her own apartment, (as well as presumably school tuition and healthcare). she was the top salesperson at her job for multiple years. the tech startup she was a temp for wanted to hire her full-time and thought she would make a great member of the team. she threw herself into learning ethics and moral philosophy, reading incredibly difficult books multiple times in order to understand it. when she threw a party for the neighborhood residents, even tahani, who threw huge parties as a living, thought eleanor did a good job.
eleanor puts on a big show about not caring about anything, but in reality she cares so much.
guys the democrats losing the senate isn’t a sign of anyone failing. the senate is stacked towards conservatives anyways, and it needs to be changed. or abolished. we’re sweeping the house, that’s the body of government that represents the will of the people because representation is proportionate to population. don’t be upset about the senate. we did it, we stood up and we voted, against gerrymandering, against voter suppression, against ill-equipped polls, we went out and we spoke out and no one should see this as a loss because it’s not.
Conservatives all over the internet are bawling right now that the House now can (and will) completely block Trump’s wall and many of his other plans, so yes, big and very important victory last night that happened because tons and tons of you voted this time.
Don’t be. You’re hearing media do what it does: harp on one person’s lack of enthusiasm and make it seem that that one opinion is held by thousands.
This race went precisely as I thought it would. Precisely.
And it was absolutely a massive success.
So let me tell you why, so that you feel better and can easily put down the annoying crowing that republicans are going to do, because they managed to cling to a few things.
If the votes fall as I believe they will, the democrats will have retaken the house by some 30 seats. This is impressive and somewhat unique in our country’s history. The GOP, upon taking the house originally, jerrimandered these districts in impressively screwball ways. Wherever that rigging has been overturned, the districts have gone blue. Which is, of course, why they did it. Democrats have the house now, 30ish flips in republican rugged districts. 15 of those being female candidates.
That is absolutely impressive.
A few key candidates to whom many people were paying close attention did not perform as people desired. Abrams, O’Rourke, Gillum. Well…I’m not surprised. Abrams faces absolute state wide fraud. Her opponent being the person also in charge of voter registration, withholding some 50k votes of which 70% were black. Voter intimidation. This is blatant corruption. And yet still…her race was very close. So too with Beto. Ted Crews was a presidential candidate! When he took Texas, he did so with a wide margin. Last night in Texas he was fighting tooth and nail. Gillum’s goobenatorial race for Florida was a figurative dead heat. 99% of the vote in—49% Gillum, 49.7% DeSantis. These are CLASSICALLY and FULLY republican regions in which Trump took the presidency by huge margins. That these races, with all those challenges, were as close as they were PROVES that something unprecedented happened.
3-400% voter turnout increases for a midterm election. Mostly with the youth.
But let’s talk about what it means to have the house.
Now I know you’re probably concerned about the federal judgeships that are about to pop up for consideration, and it’s true that the Senate was needed to stop approvals of those candidates, but…
Control of the house means that Democrats now take hold of some critical committees. These committees are the very ones that will be overseeing corruption allegations. Ways and Means, energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Intelligence, appropriations, foreign affairs, armed services, judiciary, transportation and infrastructure, and…government reform.
How do you feel now?
The worst political fallout of a GOP controlled government, the worst sound bites that weren’t Trump’s, the worst slaps across the face? All came from footage of those very same committees. Those committees now belong to Democrats.
Massive policy shifts also occurred in many classically conservative states—legalizing marijuana votes, Florida giving the vote back to former criminals who’ve served their time thus giving the vote back to a HUGE portion of the African-American Community that has been held in check by a racist and classicist policing method, then there were upsets in many small ways too.
I promise you…this is all excellent and it will have truly important and forceful impact. In 2020, if we can keep that same enthusiasm and rage, the entire government will shift. But that can only happen if we keep moving forward, if the candidates who won keep their noses to the grindstone and push back hard, if you and I and everyone on the ground continues to talk about this and force out bigots and greed.
Do not be discouraged. I promise you…this was an amazing election. Don’t focus on a few bright stars and think that all is lost because they fell. There is a great deal happening here, and one thing I know from being at sea—when a wave is building, there is first a terrifying shift, as the water level begins to build. The ship will begin to dip and then of a sudden, the swell will begin. The ship raises and passengers suddenly realize that the were much higher than before, with an incredible view. Then the wave crests and destroys what’s in its path.
We didn’t see a wave crest tonight. So what. That means it’s a much larger wave than we realized. It will crest in the future. But only if that fluid pressure is maintained.
This is good. It is. So long as everyone keeps working. This is good.
Calm down. Have a glass of champagne. A cup of tea. When they Trumpet all their noise…say nothing. Nothing needs to be said. You’re higher than you were with an excellent view of the ending. So relax. Don’t fret.
Consulting Witch 