A video that shows a Jewish woman smashing a piece of crockery emblazoned with a Nazi insignia has been widely praised online.
In the viral video uploaded onto TikTok by Adam Feldman, a woman can be seen smashing a gravy boat dated to 1942 with a hammer.
The video started with a man holding the camera pulling away from the item before asking: “What are you going to do with it?”
In response, the woman looked into the camera and said: “We’re going to smash it [to] bits and give it the treatment it deserves.”
Adam Feldman
Seconds later, the woman took a hammer to the crockery, which shattered onto a towel that had been put down to stop them from scattering away too far.
Since being shared on January 23, the post has been viewed more than 2.1 million times and attracted some 309,000 likes.
The New York-based theater critic told Newsweek the two people in the video were his parents, both in their 80s and Jewish.
The act was symbolic and cathartic for the family, who lost relatives in the Holocaust. Feldman told Newsweek his late grandfather Sidney moved from Poland to Montreal before the war, but most of his family stayed behind. Sidney’s parents, brother, two of his sisters, and 10 of his nieces and nephews would end up being murdered by the Nazis.
When his parents recently started to talk to a neighbor in Florida, who was originally from the Netherlands, the Second World War came up.
The neighbor said she came across a piece of dinnerware with a Nazi symbol on the bottom of it. She then handed it over to Feldman’s parents, who did not know what to do with it.
Feldman added: “They didn’t want it in the house, because it was creepy. They contacted a few museums but there was no interest in it.
“It is a mass-produced dinnerware item of no particular historical value. They could have sold it for a few bucks—it could probably fetch somewhere between $50 and $100 on an auction site—they didn’t want to make money off it—my mom said it would feel like blood money—and also they were advised that it was best not to keep it in circulation, especially since many of the people who collect such things are of dubious political sympathies.
“So they decided it would be cathartic to smash it! Which they did. My dad took a 20-second video of my mom smashing it, and sent it to me and my siblings.”
Feldman told Newsweek he “got a kick” out of the video and posted it to TikTok in the hope that other people would also enjoy the symbolic gesture.
He admitted that the video’s popularity took him by surprise and that an overwhelming majority had a positive reaction to the item being smashed.
TikTok user Milly X said: “As someone who is studying archaeology and working at a museum, I fully endorse this.”
Rainbow Starmoon added: “[It] could have been solid gold and encrusted with diamonds and this would still have been the only option.”
Hercilla commented: “Me being a history major and thinking it should go to a museum but then realizing it’s not worth **** and smiling at that hammer falling.”
Feldman did note there were several trolls and antisemites who shared offensive comments.
Feldman concluded: “Again, though, I am really heartened by how many people—the overwhelming majority—have liked the video and celebrated the spirit behind my parents’ decision to rid the world, in a cathartic way, of an object that celebrated the genocidal Nazi regime that killed her family.
“And as for the potential teaching value of this object, the cup has been preserved on video, and that video has now reached millions of people. Far more people have seen it than would have had it been stowed in some museum’s warehouse or collected by some fan of Nazi memorabilia. So I think it’s fair to say it has served its historical purpose, and then some.”
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Anders Anglesey