on @altonbrown's holocaust "jokes". given the data that was recently released on american perceptions and understanding of the holocaust, i think it's worth explaining why brown's jokes were particularly heinous. brown clearly knows about the details of the holocaust.

if you have been to the @HolocaustMuseum in DC you likely have the indelible image of the pile of shoes at the end of labyrinth which tells the story of what happened to the jewish people during the holocaust. if you have not been i will explain.

upon arriving at concentration camps, jewish people were "assessed" and either sent to be worked to death or were immediately sent to die. if you were sent to die anything of value that had not already been taken from you was taken.

what do i mean by anything with value? heads were shaved and hair was kept. i have the vivid memory of a testimonial from a survivor saying she watched a girl begged to not have her head shaved because she wanted to die "pretty".

your mouth was checked for fillings. if you had gold fillings your teeth were pulled out before you were murdered. this is specifically what brown was referring to. it's a very chilling detail and i don't think many non-jewish people are familiar with it.

finally, you were forced to strip. hence the display of shoes. a mountain of shoes taken from people intended to be sold or repurposed. there is a particularly haunting memorial by the danube where jews were forced to take off their shoes before being shot.

there are plenty of horrid not funny "jokes" to make about the holocaust which are relatively nondescript. alton brown was particularly colorful in his description and language. you don't just pop off a holocaust "joke" about gold teeth without having given it some thought.

as brown is not jewish and refuses to acknowledge why he should be sorry or how completely detestable what he said was--i'm going to make an educated guess that brown has read up on the details of the holocaust. he knows what he said and how violent it was.

when i tell you there were piles of shoes, sacks of hair, drawers of teeth--it's not funny at all. the detail of teeth being pulled from people moments before their murders has zero humor to it. my teeth ache right now.

on a final somber and humanizing note. i think about the girl with the beautiful hair who said she wanted to die "pretty" and they wouldn't even let her have that. i think about my own hair. my mother's hair. my grandmother's hair. enviable, long, and priceless. it's not funny.