We're what's left 😄

[u/justjust000]

Link to original Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQJ3AkViofr

[u/Remarkable-Pea4889]

I wouldn't wear a shirt like this, but it's actually somewhat true. Research has shown that to survive the Holocaust people needed to be selfish rather than selfless.

[u/Sensitive-Inside-250 → u/Remarkable-Pea4889]

What research?

[u/Remarkable-Pea4889 → u/Sensitive-Inside-250]

For example, Survivorship and Shame: Tracing the Affective Afterlife of the Holocaust.

For some, this shame stems from the unshakeable understanding that they survived when many others did not, while for others this shame is caused by the their actions during the war which they now understand as wrong or corrupt, such as carrying out acts of perpetration towards other prisoners, using sex and prostitution as a survival tool, and acting in selfish and inhumane ways.

https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations/index.php/constellations/article/view/22032/16400

[u/crazysometimedreamer → u/Remarkable-Pea4889]

I’m a cancer survivor. I feel a great deal of sadness that I’ve known so many people with “lower stage, easier to treat, better prognosis” died. I even feel this way about people in their 60s and 70s and 80s, and I was in my 30s.

I can also guarantee you that nothing I did helped me get an edge to survive. I just did the treatment I was given. I did not have a positive attitude. I remember meeting people and thinking why I had to be the one to have the hard cancer. Or be so young. I’d have dark thoughts in support groups when people were going on about not enjoying their retirement cause they had cancer in their 70s when they’d lived 4 more decades that I was likely going to get. (And then I’d feel horrible because cancer always sucks.)

I watched people with easier cancers, a personal relationship with their God, supportive family, gym memberships, vegan organic food eaters, money, and positive attitudes get struck down while I didn’t.

I know I did nothing special and they did nothing special, it was blind chance who lived and who died. But, I still feel guilty, like I somehow cheated.

Survivorship guilt is real.

[u/Sensitive-Inside-250 → u/Remarkable-Pea4889]

So normal human behavior seen in any violent or stressful situation. That link doesn’t back up your claim that people needed to be selfish to survive the holocaust. Survivors remorse and shame isn’t proof of being selfish.

Here’s a study showing that friendship and community even in places like Auschwitz improved the odds of survival.

[u/Klexington47 → u/Sensitive-Inside-250]

My safta was a survivor and she always said "if you can make just one friend anywhere you go, your time will be easier. Friends are important". Damn she was a smart woman

[u/idkmyusernameagain → u/Remarkable-Pea4889]

That’s not the conclusion that can be drawn from what you shared.

It starts with “for some” letting you know this isn’t going to be applicable to all or even most.

Then, it classifies shame as being derived from different sources from simply surviving when others didn’t (doesn’t sound selfish to me), sex and prostitution or selfish acts.

The closest conclusion from this is “some people survived through selfish acts, others through using sex as a survival tool, means of survival for all others was not addressed by this paper”

[u/crazysometimedreamer → u/idkmyusernameagain]

Yes, they are totally missing the point of this. It’s a very common phenomenon that people who survive something that kills a lot of people feel deep shame and guilt over surviving, and come to see the people who survived as more innocent and perfect than themselves. I can tell you about all the kind hearted people I’ve known who died of cancer, and I’d probably say they’re nicer than I am. (I had cancer and didn’t die.) I know, objectively, they weren’t. They were real people with real problems and real faults, but I can tell you fantastic stories about every one of them.

But my mind has romanticized them. I know all my ugly faults, but I don’t know all of their’s. And I guess I’ve internalized the “only the good die young.”

I’m also certain that there were selfish people and people who traded sex who didn’t survive the holocaust. They just didn’t live to tell about it.