Austen Erblat

A few photos of my amazing (and super fashionable???) grandmother, who passed peacefully in the summer of 2023.

In the meantime, I’ll leave it to those who have more to say.

explain why so much more of that history was lost, indeed, stolen from us. It should go without saying that we should never forget and make sure *never again.*

There’s so much more to say. I’ve recorded a few dozen interviews with my grandma that I hope to turn into a book someday…

we can’t even imagine and even people who were children at the time, bear the physical and mental scars decades later.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I just wanted to get some thoughts down on #HolocaustRemembranceDay to share a small aspect of my family’s history and…

my great uncle or learn about my grandma’s aunts and uncles and cousins because she didn’t get to know them. It’s a tragic reality, that only scratches at the horror of what happened in the Holocaust.

It’s clear that my grandma and so many others experienced unspeakable horrors…

so she did not yet have a large collection of memories of them. And as those humans were taken from their families and taken from the earth in such a violent and destructive manner, it’s made worse by the fact that photo albums, diaries, and memories went with them. I never got the chance to meet…

how much of that era could she really have known or remembered?

A childhood stolen, a life forever changed by the things she saw, heard, smelled, had to do. She may not have known the family that was taken from her all that well. She was a child when the Nazis invaded…

I got more serious about trying to learn about her childhood and time throughout the Holocaust, but it was clear she didn’t like to talk about it. She fondly recalls her childhood before and the moment she met my grandfather, soon after they both returned in Poland.

But even if she wanted to…

that she wasn’t there for long before the end of the war.

Toward the end of the war, she and a number of others were able to escape.

She doesn’t talk about this time without being asked. When I studied history in college and began writing for my college paper…

At some point, they were transferred to the Krakow concentration camp. It was a labor camp as well as a death camp, like Auschwitz, where cousins and aunts and uncles she only met a few times were sent and murdered. She was lucky, in a sense, in that she wasn’t murdered there and…

was separated from her family.

Lucky ones, like her father and brother, were shot in the street. My grandma was a child at the time. She watched them get killed. She didn’t go to Auschwitz, she and her mother were forced to work in the home a Nazi officer took over in her town of Krakow, Poland…

Short thread I wrote on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2021: (some of this is present tense, but should now be passed tense, as my grandma has since died)

Much of my family were murdered in Auschwitz. I don’t know much about them because the only surviving family member from that era, my grandmother…

That’s no fun. I had my morning coffee and then another cup about a half hour ago. Hoping that’s enough

Because loud or tired? Or both?

Concert venues should have quiet rooms for when you want a little nap

They flew the servedrones into the motherslayship

I was the only one on my block someone did this too. Show yourself. I just want to talk*

*actually be friends. This was funny during an otherwise miserably cold morning.

“Say cheese”
Sox:

I can dig that

Aurora police killings in 2024 have outpaced 2023 Deadly APD shootings were down in 2023 compared to 2022, but are back up again this year. In 2023, the department also had more total use of force incidents despite responding to fewer calls than in 2...

The Aurora Police Department released its 2023 “use of force” report. I took a look at the department’s deadly shootings (which are up from last year), racial disparities in its use of force incidents, and what the report doesn’t say.

How the US Media Helped the Biden Administration Distance Itself From the Horrors of Gaza White House–curated stories of performative outrage and feigned helplessness provided cover for an administration arming death on an industrial scale.

for over a year, US media has helped the WH distance itself from the horrors of Gaza by employing 3, largely fictitious reporting genres.

I and my pseudonymous co-author detailed these 3 genres and how they helped successfully take pressure off the Biden admin www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Question for Denver folks: Does “Denverite” refer only to people who are from here or anyone who lives here?

What say you?

One of my favorite podcasts @killjamesbond.bsky.social is back! Check them out for hilarious and interesting takes on 007 and tons of other movies

Trump selects Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as secretary of Energy Wright has been one of the industry's loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change and could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export ...

"Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive who grew up in Colorado, to serve as energy secretary."

"CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Wright is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking."

www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-s...

P-minus

I put together a new starter pack on Bluesky for Colorado Media Organizations and Journalists

only about 35 on here right now but I expect it to grow

please let me know of anyone I should add!

bsky.app/starter-pack...

Hi y’all! I got some new followers in here so a short introduction:

I’m a digital producer, editor, occasional reporter, and even more occasional assignment editor at CBS News Colorado in Denver.

For news tips, DMs are open, you can email me at austen.erblat@cbs.com and I’m on @signal.bsky.social.

Atmosphere, but due to my curfew, I had to leave before they went on. First show I saw from start to finish was Mos Def.

Fashionably late. As per usual