Comrade Koba posted:

It was definitely a thing that happened, and in more than one place.

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ewe2 posted:

For reference, the 1970's World At War series also showed live footage of town residents made to help bury the dead, regardless of their claims they knew nothing of the nearby camps. It may well have been this very footage. There's some icky stills on that page, you have been warned.

RC and Moon Pie posted:

The Beverly Hills Supper Club was a massive country club and entertainment facility just south of Cincinnati in Kentucky. It hosted a lot of acts, from comedians to musicians.

Cincinnati TV station WCPO did a 40-year anniversary oral history of the blaze .

quote:

Inside the burning complex, initial concern was quickly turning into deadly fear. A wedding reception party had vacated the Zebra Room ahead of schedule, about 8:30 p.m., complaining that the area was uncomfortably warm, that butter was melting on the tables.

DAMMERT: “I was really busy upstairs, with one event for the Cincinnati Choral Union and one for the Afghan Hound Club of America. Those were at the top of the spiral staircase. The Zebra Room was below. I was upstairs when Fran Oaks, one of the waitresses, told me, ‘Wayne, there’s a fire in the Zebra Room, really a lot of smoke.’ So I started screaming to the people with the hound club, ‘Get out through the back!’ At one point I opened a door near the top of the spiral staircase and a wall of just unbelievable heat hit me. I thought, ‘Oh my, this is coming on fast.’”

quote:

DAMMERT: “Trying to get out through the back hallway, it was backed up. Then the lights went out. Then they came on again, and then they went out for good. It was pitch black. And all of a sudden in my mind I saw a complete color picture of my family … in a meadow. It just flashed right in front of me. It was frightening, I was at the back of the line, and I guess at that point I wondered if I’d ever see them again.”

quote:

DAMMERT: “I saw bodies lying all over the place. Unbelievable. I bet I saw 100 or more. In the garden area, that beautiful garden area, bodies were lying everywhere. I asked one waitress, ‘Are you religious?’ And I don’t even remember what she said, but I said, ‘If you can pray, you pray for the people in this area and I’ll do it in this other area.’ And I’d put my hand on their forehead and say, ‘God please take this soul to heaven.’ I did that for maybe 50 bodies.”

quote:

Those with a pink triangle later reported miserable treatment by other prisoners as well as by their captors.
Gays were among those killed in an SS-sponsored “extermination through work” program that began in 1943.
Many of those who were liberated from the camps were rearrested after the war to serve out their terms of imprisonment. The punishment for homosexuality under Paragraph 175 was two years in prison, but time spent in a concentration camp did not count toward their sentence.

After the war, the West German government began paying reparations to those who had spent time in the camps. But in 1956, the government declared that those imprisoned for homosexuality did not qualify for compensation.

Homosexuality was finally decriminalized in East Germany in 1968 and in West Germany in 1969. But in the same way that the Texas sodomy law — Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code — remains on the books seven years after The U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, Paragraph 175 was not expunged from the books until 1994. And not until 2002 did the German government grant a full pardon those who served time in prison for homosexuality.

quote:

Recently, the WeHo Times reported the tragic death of Gemmel Moore, killed a crystal meth overdose in late July.

Moore was found at the home of Ed Buck, a wealthy, high-profile Democratic Party donor and political activist. The police report filed on the incident reported the death as an "accident." However, Moore's mother LaTisha Nixon wasn't so sure that that was the case.

Nixon found out through one of Moore's friends that Moore had engaged in sex work before his death, and that Buck was a client of both men.

“I called one of my son’s friends and was like, ‘who the hell is Edward Buck?’" Nixon said. "And my son’s friend was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s that white guy, that wealthy white politician guy … he was like, ‘Oh my God …’"

The reason for the friend's horror was what he told Nixon next.

“[Buck] would have my son to go out to … Santa Monica Boulevard looking for young gay black guys so he could inject them with drugs, see their reaction and how [they] would react and take pictures of them,” Nixon said the friend told her.

John Bice, a friend of Moore's, told LA Weekly a similar story.

"Basically this guy would find young struggling black guys around town, pick them up and say he was going to help them out — make sure they had clothes and food. ... He wanted to see them get high, first with weed. Then one day, the guy wanted him to shoot up," Bice said.

Nixon believes Buck was basically conducting a psycho-sexual version of the Tuskegee experiments on the young black men.

“[Buck] would supply heroin, meth and other drugs to him to smoke or use with a needle,” Nixon said. “Buck would pleasure himself at the sight of my son using drugs.”

Moore's mother added that her son's friends told her that Buck would reward young men for taking big hits.

“The bigger the cloud of smoke,” the more money Buck would give the men. Nixon said Buck “would excitedly encourage [Moore] to increase his dosage by saying, ‘More, more, and I’ll give you $500 more.’”

Buck himself hasn't spoken out about these accusations, but his lawyer, Seymour Amster, has.

Amster said that Moore injected himself with the meth, that Buck was Moore's friend and “did not witness it being injected” and that, “This was an accidental death. This was an unfortunate death … but that doesn’t mean we can make spurious accusations and spin something out of control.”

However, Moore's journals, which were discovered after his death, tell a different story.

Social critic and political commentator Jasmyne Cannick has made it her mission to broadcast Moore's story, and posted screenshots of Moore's journal entries on her site, which gave a more personal and gruesome look to his tragic death.

"I've become addicted to drugs, and the worst one at that," Moore wrote in his diary. "Ed Buck is the one to thank, he gave me my first injection of chrystal [sic] meth, it was very painful, but after all the troubles I became addicted to the pain and fetish/fantasy."

A police report found that the coroner's investigators interviewed an unnamed woman who said Moore told her that "over a year ago" a person (whose name is redacted in the report) tied him up and “held him against his will at the residence in West Hollywood.”

Nixon said that she heard from her son after this event, and that he filed a police report about it. Although that report has not turned up, she vividly recalls what he told her.

"He filed a police report because he said that Buck had held him in his apartment or whatever and had shot him up with a needle with something he didn’t know what it was," Nixon said. "He called me crying. Three minutes on the phone hollering and I’m like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ He said, ‘This man, he shot me up with something I don’t even know what it is,’ and I’m like, My son is having a breakdown or episode. But he sent me pictures of his arm, his arm was red.”

Following the allegations, U.S. Representative Karen Bass donated the campaign contribution Buck gave her to Moore's family.

Other Democrats have yet to follow her lead, and Democratic Party official Kimberly Ellis told the Weekly that that is a very telling thing.

"It suggests money and power can oftentimes have a greater influence over our elected officials than doing what's right," Ellis said. "This is a test in many ways for the Democratic Party and our elected officials to really stand up and speak out and make it very clear whose side they're on — justice and LGBTQs or special interests and big-dollar donors."

This week, the Sacramento Observer reports that The Justice 4 Gemmel + All of Ed Buck’s Victim’s group announced that Chair of the African American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, Darren Parker, will pen a resolution calling on the entire Democratic party to return all funds donated by Buck.

“Too often there are ills in the African American community that we just don’t discuss,” noted Parker. “These issues that we don’t bring to the surface are starting to define what happens to our people. So I thought it was important – one, as a chair who believes in transparency, who believes in education even in adversity that we have to talk about the things that we’re uncomfortable with or even hearing about.”

Cannick agrees with Parker.

“As Democrats we shouldn’t be in the business of protecting predators with our silence,” Cannick said. “If we can condemn those who hurt women, we can certainly condemn those who hurt the most vulnerable in our community. As a Democrat that’s what I expect from my party’s leadership.”



The Stonewall Democratic Club Los Angeles made a similar statement, calling for a "thorough investigation."

Club board member Ashlee Marie Preston said that Moore's case is a chance for Democrats to prove that they actually care about society's oppressed, stressing that Moore was not only black, but also gay, HIV-positive and sometimes homeless.

"This is an opportunity for politicians to draw a clear line as to what their values are, what they want to prioritize and where they stand on social issues," Preston said. "What would we say if this involved a prominent GOP figure? People would be busting down the door to make a statement."

Chair of the California Young Democrats’ Black Caucus, Devin T. Murphy, put it even more simply.

“We have a responsibility not only to Gemmel’s family and friends but to African Americans, African American Democrats and Democrats period to not only talk the talk when it comes to our Party’s values but to also walk the walk," Murphy said. "All black lives matter.”

Update, July 31, 2018:

The Los Angeles Times reports Buck will face no charges in connection to Moore's death.

Police officials submitted the results of their investigation into Buck to the district attorney's office on July 10. The DA found the gathered evidence to be insufficient and declined to charge Buck with murder, voluntary manslaughter, furnishing illegal drugs or possession of illegal drugs.

In a statement, the DA's office said the “admissible evidence is insufficient to prove [guilt] beyond a reasonable doubt,” and also claimed some of the submitted evidence had been obtained through inadmissible search and seizure.

According to WEHOville, Moore's mother, LaTisha Nixon, said she wasn't surprised by the DA's decision. At a memorial for Moore following the announcement, Nixon pledged to continue fighting for her son and for other young men and women like him.

“No more Gemmel Moores,” Nixon said. “I’m definitely not going to go away. Ed Buck needs to be stopped.”

City council member Lindsey Horvath, who is white, slammed the decision. In a statement read at the memorial, Horvath wrote, "if Gemmel looked like me – there would be mass outrage.”

Councilwoman Horvath added, “The life of a thoughtful, caring and giving 26-year-old young man was cut short due to unthinkable circumstances. More young men have since come forward, sharing their concerns of similar encounters. Yet our justice system has said that their stories don’t matter, that their truth is irrelevant. It has told the members of our community that possessing narcotics, using narcotics, luring impressionable young LGBT people without resources into sex – that all of these acts are none of their concern. That anyone facing these issues is on their own. Without support. Alone."

Kanine posted:

Pink triangle: Even after World War II, gay victims of Nazis continued to be persecuted

https://www.dallasvoice.com/pink-triangle-wwii-gay-victims-nazis-continued-persecuted-1061488.html

Kanine posted:

Democratic Donor Accused Of Killing A Young, Gay Black Man By Injecting Him With Drugs Will Face No Charges

https://blavity.com/gemmel-moore-dead-ed-buck-donor-meth-young-black-gay-men-drugs

Gynocentric Regime posted:

See this is why I know pizzagate is fake, because Democrats can't keep the Salò poo poo they do secret.

MightyJoe36 posted:

Same way I know the "piss tape" is fake, because there's no way that poo poo wouln't have shown up by now.

chitoryu12 posted:

Nah, it's supposedly in the hands of the Russian government so they can pull it out at the right time. If it's real, they probably don't want to release it because that'll discourage Trump from making pro-Russia decisions.

wikipedia posted:

Serling's time in Leyte shaped his writing and political views for the rest of his life. He saw death every day while in the Philippines, at the hands of his enemies and his allies, and through freak accidents such as that which killed another Jewish private, Melvin Levy. Levy was delivering a comic monologue for the platoon as it rested under a palm tree when a food crate was dropped from a plane above, decapitating him. Serling led the funeral services for Levy and placed a Star of David over his grave.[4]:45 Serling later set several of his scripts in the Philippines and used the unpredictability of death as a theme in much of his writing.[4]:46

Serling returned from the successful mission in Leyte with two wounds, including one to his kneecap,[4]:47 but neither kept him from combat when General Douglas MacArthur deployed the paratroopers for their usual purpose on February 3, 1945. Colonel Haugen led the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment as it landed on Tagaytay Ridge, met the 188th Glider Infantry Regiment and marched into Manila. It met minimal resistance until it reached the city, where Vice Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi had arranged his 17,000 troops behind a maze of traps and guns and ordered them to fight to the death.[4]:47–49 During the next month, Serling's unit battled block by block for control of Manila.[citation needed]

When portions of the city were taken from Japanese control, local civilians sometimes showed their gratitude by throwing parties and hosting banquets. During one of these parties, Serling and his comrades were fired upon, resulting in many soldier and civilian deaths. Serling, still a private after three years, caught the attention of Sergeant Lewis when he ran into the line of fire to rescue a performer who had been on stage when the artillery started firing. [4]:49

As it moved in on Iwabuchi's stronghold, Serling's regiment had a 50% casualty rate, with over 400 men killed. Serling was wounded and three comrades were killed by shrapnel from rounds fired at his roving demolition team by an antiaircraft gun.[4]:50 He was sent to New Guinea to recover but soon returned to Manila to finish "cleaning up".

quote:

After being discharged from the Army in 1946, Serling worked at a rehabilitation hospital while recovering from his wounds. It left him with nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life... His knee troubled him for years. Later, his wife became accustomed to the sound of him falling down the stairs when his knee buckled under his weight.

quote:

For extra money in his college years, Serling worked part-time testing parachutes for the United States Army Air Forces. According to his radio station coworkers, he received $50 for each successful jump and had once been paid $500 (half before and half if he survived) for a hazardous test.[4]:58 His last test jump was a few weeks before his wedding. In one instance, he earned $1,000 for testing a jet ejection seat that had killed the previous three testers.

MightyJoe36 posted:

Same way I know the "piss tape" is fake, because there's no way that poo poo wouln't have shown up by now.

Delthalaz posted:

Speaking of World War II horrors, my wife and I had been watching our way through The Twilight Zone and I got to reading Rod Serling's wikipedia page. Holy poo poo.


After the war, Serling was understandably kind of hosed up.


During college after the war, Serling worked as an I-poo poo-you-not parachute tester. I didn't know that was a job!




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Serling

fruit on the bottom posted:

I can’t help but wonder if he was hoping the seat would kill him too, at least on some level

Koalas March posted:

Rod Sterling is legit one of my big TV Heroes and I'll take any given opportunity to gush about how awesome and ahead of his time he was. 😎

Delthalaz posted:

I’d love to hear more. I had no idea until I was blown away by this Season 1 Ep:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Tall_Wish

Something written concurrently with Adolf Eichmann's trial posted:

There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes– all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in timewhen some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth

quote:

Alternative Press spoke with a number of women who detailed the nature of their relationships and experiences with Francis. While all of their stories are different, there are some common threads among them including the tattoos for Francis, contracts signed in blood and the prayer (see below) Francis reportedly asked them to recite for him.

The Lord’s Prayer
I am my Master’s whore. There will never be another with whom I give my affection, trust, lips or touch. My Master commands and defines me, for without him I am nothing. Without him I am lost. I will follow and serve him all of my days, My only purpose in this life is providing pleasure and purpose for my Lord and Saviour in any form that he desires, be it lust, be it pain, be it suffering in the rain. I will oblige my Master always. I will put my faith and absolute trust into his charge and allow him to guide and direct me all of my days. Forever and always I am my Master’s whore.

quote:

In January of 2017, during her visit to the Extended Stay America in Federal Way, she says Francis demanded to search through her phone, and when she refused he forced a gun in her mouth. On another occasion (Aug. 25, 2016, in Federal Way), she says he forced her to flush all of her birth control pills down the toilet.

“He told me that if I got pregnant he would like to beat the baby out of my body,” she says. “I told him I thought it was totally twisted, and I didn’t want to, but he wouldn’t allow [me to refuse], so when I went home I got new pills and started to take them in secret.”

quote:

On one of her visits to the U.S. she says she didn’t have money that she was supposed to bring, but she didn’t tell him before she came because she was worried he wouldn’t see her. She says when he found out he was very angry and during their encounter he beat her like never before, hitting her in the face and stomach with his fists and when she fell to the ground, kicking her.

“He wanted to show me that I need to be punished,” she says. “At the same time, he was telling me he had never done such horrendous things to anyone else before, and that I have awakened something very evil in him and that he liked it and it made him love me even more than before.”

When asked why she would continue to see a man who treated her so horribly, Stankova says she was made to believe this was love. “Being with him was horrible,” she says, “but he made me believe that being without him would be much worse.”

quote:

Of the branding incident, Melanie says it was a direct result of her refusing to get a tattoo of a “W” on her pelvic area. “He asked me to get this tattoo, and I told him no,” she recalls. “His reaction to that the next time he saw me was to tie me down, put a gag in my mouth so I couldn’t say no and carve his initial into my chest.”

quote:

At one point in January of 2015, she says she ended up taking a leave of absence from work for nearly six months due to severe depression. “William wouldn’t let me [commit suicide], mainly because he wanted to decide when I was going to do it because he has a death fetish,” she says. “He told pretty much all of us, I think, that we would kill ourselves for him one day.”

Don Gato posted:

I mentioned it before but this is one of my favorite episodes he penned. The commandant of Dachau returns to take one last look before it is demolished and is judged by all the spirits of the people who died. Also it has my favorite closing narration:


E: crap I thought this was the TV thread. Leaving it up because the first time I watched that episode I was 10 years old and it really was what hit home for me how brutal the Holocaust was.

Don Gato posted:

I mentioned it before but this is one of my favorite episodes he penned. The commandant of Dachau returns to take one last look before it is demolished and is judged by all the spirits of the people who died. Also it has my favorite closing narration:


E: crap I thought this was the TV thread. Leaving it up because the first time I watched that episode I was 10 years old and it really was what hit home for me how brutal the Holocaust was.

Mister Mind posted:

Well, this came across my Twitter feed, and it sucks.

chitoryu12 posted:

So I recently had to stop listening to a musician, William Control (the solo electronic project of Will Francis, the former lead singer of Aiden) after a bunch of poo poo came out about really hosed up sex stuff he was doing. This Tumblr blog is where it all started and it turned into a huge thing over the past few months, while this Altpress writer worked to consolidate some information and statements from Will and his lawyer into something more comprehensive.

It was especially disturbing for me to read because of how physically close I was to some of the stories. One of the stories on the blog is from a girl who was raped by him shortly before a show, and looking at the city and date I realized that it was right before the first show I saw him at. This guy was brutalizing a young girl my age while I was driving to the venue. I feel terrible in some way because I got a few other people into his music, but also because my ex (who was one of them) is exactly the kind of vulnerable and mentally ill girl that he would target.

The short version is that he worked to create a sort of cult of personality around himself, finding young girls (including grooming underage ones) with traumatic pasts, mental illnesses, and other problems in their lives that would lead them to idolize him and crave attention from a famous musician. He would then use this to engage in horrifically violent BDSM without any limits or full consent, just brutally beating them and raping them whenever he felt like it, while relying on prior consent to BDSM and them coming back due to their lack of self-esteem to keep himself legally in the clear instead of getting charged with anything.

Here are some of the most disturbing bits from the story. Be warned that both the article and the blog have some incredibly disturbing sexual content, including graphic pictures on the blog:

Mister Mind posted:

Well, this came across my Twitter feed, and it sucks.

https://twitter.com/dsouza_claudia/status/1022795193299464192?s=21

Mister Mind posted:

Well, this came across my Twitter feed, and it sucks.

https://twitter.com/dsouza_claudia/status/1022795193299464192?s=21

Runcible Cat posted:

Deleted. Screenshot tweets, people!

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

It was a colorized photo of a smiling child. Said child had just arrived at Auschwitz and was murdered in the gas chambers along with his grandmother within an hour of that photo being taken.

You're better off not having seen it.

eating only apples posted:

I liked his band around 2006-2008 and saw them a few times, and this entirely does not surprise me. I had some sympathy for Wil after he had an article in Kerrang around 2007? where he talked about how he got over his heroin addiction, and I've always remembered that article for some reason. Haven't thought about him for years. But this is disgusting and I honestly feel like I've been waiting for this kind of news about him. The cult of personality stuff definitely rings true, he seemed that way even when he was with Aiden.

e: Fairly sure I know who one of the women is, the partner of a member of Eighteen Visions. Same scene as Aiden, the guy toured with a bunch of bands in that scene during that time.


ee: after this came out his wife left him and bands on his label were like "yeah...". christ

fruit on the bottom posted:

I can’t help but wonder if he was hoping the seat would kill him too, at least on some level

chitoryu12 posted:

chitoryu12 posted:

So I recently had to stop listening to a musician, William Control (the solo electronic project of Will Francis, the former lead singer of Aiden) after a bunch of poo poo came out about really hosed up sex stuff he was doing. This Tumblr blog is where it all started and it turned into a huge thing over the past few months, while this Altpress writer worked to consolidate some information and statements from Will and his lawyer into something more comprehensive.

Leavemywife posted:

That last sentence is one of the most unsettling things I've read this thread.