Heterosexual Male Told To Check Privilege At Gas Chamber Door

“I’m a homosexual, so the Nazis are doing this to me for two separate reasons, as opposed to your measly one.”

Oswiecim, German-occupied Poland, July 11 – Some of the newly-arrived Jews being packed naked into the gas chamber at the Birkenau extermination facility have told others they may not weigh in the situation without considering how accident of birth and upbringing has granted them privileges not automatically enjoyed by others in the room, sources at Auschwitz are reporting.

Academics of the humanities and social sciences among the trainload of Hungarian deportees now being herded into the spare room with fake shower heads, ostensibly  for delousing, responded to statements made by males in the group and asserted the latter had no right to pass judgment on the proceedings, as their sex, skin tone, presumed economic status, and access to education had blinded them to the suffering and circumstances governing the lives of those not fortunate enough to have the same privileges.

“Check your privilege,” said Professor of Feminist Theory Bela Nagy to retired physician Leopold Cohen as they and more than a thousand others were violently crowded into the chamber in Crematorium III. “You can’t speak for anyone else here, with your white, male, heterosexual background smoothing your way in life, while so many others struggle against sexism, economic disadvantage, and homophobia.” She had to yell to be heard over the din of hundreds of panicking children and their mothers all around them as the realization spread through the room that the shower heads were fake and there could be only one purpose for their surroundings.

“You just think about how life might be different for someone without all your privileges before you open your mouth,” added nearby sociologist Berel Friedman. “I’m a homosexual, so the Nazis are doing this to me for two separate reasons, as opposed to your measly one. You have no right to pontificate on anything here. It’s so cisgender-privilege of you to speak like that, as if your point of view encompasses the voice of reason and morality, when in reality you have no idea what it’s like for anyone different from you.”

Cohen was unable to respond, having difficulty breathing as more and more elderly people, mothers with small children, the weak, and disabled were pushed into the concrete room. Nagy and Friedman took his silence as acquiescing to their argument, and proceeded to lecture the mothers of light-skinned screaming infants that they have no right to cry as intensely as the swarthy among them, who were doomed to much more struggle and suffering ahead, given the way their appearance determines how society treats them.