Madrid exhibition tells story of Spaniards sent to Nazi concentration camp

I have no particular reason for making a copy of this Guardian link other than to remind myself and anyone who happens to read it of the depth of depravity to which human beings can sink.

 About 7,500 Spanish Republicans who fled to France were deported to Mauthausen camp in Austria

Sam Jones in Madrid
@swajones
26 Jan 2023

When, on 5 May 1945, two tanks from the US army’s 11th Armored Division finally rolled into Mauthausen, one of the camp’s prisoners caught a glimpse of himself and his fellow inmates in their liberators’ faces.

“Before their eyes,” recalled Alfonso Maeso, “marched a dismal procession of men devastated by years of suffering, massing before them, some whispering, others sobbing inconsolably.”

The 186-step ‘staircase of death’ at Mauthausen.
Photograph: Fototeca Storica Nazionale/Getty

Mauthausen, which was built on a hill overlooking the Danube near the Austrian city of Linz, was the last Third Reich concentration camp to be liberated. Of the 190,000 people who passed through its gates – among them Jews, Gypsies, LGBTI people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, “asocials” and political opponents of nazism – about 90,000 were murdered or were worked, or starved, to death.

Less well known, until comparatively recently, is the fact that almost 5,000 of those who perished in the camp were Spanish Republicans who had been stripped of their nationality and deported from France. Eight decades later, an exhibition at Madrid’s Sefarad-Israel Centre is hoping to reflect the shared experiences of the 50,000 Jews and exiled Spaniards who endured the camp.

Their intertwined stories are told through memories, official documents and personal effects. Alongside these are first-hand accounts of death, and life, inside Mauthausen and its surrounding sub-camps

One of Mauthausen’s most notorious sites was its granite quarry and the 186-step “staircase of death” up which starving and exhausted prisoners were forced to march carrying 50kg (8st) rocks. [110 lb.]

Some prisoners – especially Dutch Jews – were simply pushed over the quarry cliff. Such murders were officially recorded as “suicide by jumping”, but the guards had another name for the victims: “parachutists”. Other inmates, starving and worked past the point of human endurance, threw their bodies against the electrified fences. Then there were the medical “experiments” to determine what kind of pain and paralysis resulted from injections to the heart, and to see how long people could live on gruel.

The exhibition also tells the story of the Greek Sephardic Jews whose centuries-old community in Thessaloniki came close to total destruction after the Nazis deported and murdered more than 90% of the city’s Jewish inhabitants, and of the Spanish civil war’s International Brigade volunteers who found themselves sent to Mauthausen.

The idea, according to the exhibition’s curator, historian Josep Calvet, is to provide the historical context that led to Mauthausen and explore how the camp became “an encounter between Jews and Republicans”.

Five hundred thousand Republican Spaniards fled to France in early 1939 after it became clear that Franco’s Nazi-backed nationalists were going to win the Spanish civil war, which had begun almost three years earlier with an attempted military coup against the elected government. About 60,000 Republican soldiers joined the French army, only to find themselves at the mercy of the Nazis and the Vichy regime after France fell in 1940.

Almost 10,000 Republicans were rounded up and deported from prison and prisoner-of-war camps, with about 7,500 of them ending up at Mauthausen. Declared “stateless” and forced to wear inverted blue triangles on their camp uniforms to denote their lack of a country, they found themselves alongside tens of thousands of Jews whose striped clothes bore a yellow Star of David.

The stitched shapes were not the only thing that separated the two groups, as the Spaniards soon realised. While Mauthausen’s Spanish prisoners were stateless slave labour, its Jewish prisoners, like those in other camps – and like the Sinti and Roma – were victims of genocide.

The Republican soldier Juan Romero, the last Spanish survivor of Mauthausen until his death a little over two years ago, was always haunted by the memory of a young Jewish girl he saw one day while collecting the clothes of the newly arrived for disinfection.

“A group arrived at the camp,” Romero recalled. “There were men, women, tiny children … They passed in front of us and a girl smiled at me … the poor little thing, in her ignorance, didn’t know she was going straight to the gas chamber. And that hurt me terribly … There are many nights when I still remember her.”

There are also examples of survival and defiance. Mauthausen’s prisoners included Simon Wiesenthal, who would go on to hunt down Nazis after the war and fight to ensure the Holocaust was never forgotten. Francesc Boix, a Spanish Republican soldier and photographer, used his camera skills to document camp life. His pictures and testimony were used at the war crime trials at Nuremberg and Dachau.

Perhaps the most poignant story of all is that of Siegfried Meir and Saturnino Navazo. Siegfried, a German Jewish boy who was just eight when his family was sent to Auschwitz – where his parents were murdered – was transferred to Mauthausen in January 1945. Assigned to the Spanish prisoners’ barracks, he was taken under the wing of Navazo, a Republican soldier and footballer. With Navazo’s help and protection, Siegfried managed to survive the camp. After the war, Navazo adopted Siegfried and the pair settled in France. Navazo died in 1986. Siegfried, who went on to find fame as a singer in France, eventually moved to Ibiza, where he died in 2020.

Calvet acknowledges that the exhibition has come a little late for those survivors who are no longer around to share their stories. “Until a few years ago, the story of the [Spanish] deportees had been completely forgotten,” says the curator. “Why? Because the great majority of these people didn’t come back to Spain. They settled in France and never came back. By the time Franco had died and democracy restored, a lot of them were already dead. That meant the memory of all this remained distant.”

That distance suited the Franco regime all too well as it sought to dissociate itself from Hitler and Mussolini and cosy up to the victorious allies after the end of the war, says the journalist and historian Carlos Hernández de Miguel, the author of The Last Spaniards of Mauthausen.

That responsibility, he adds, led the Franco regime to bury the story of Mauthausen for almost four decades. “We know, 100%, that if Hitler sent them to Nazi camps it was after discussing it with the Franco regime – and very probably after receiving instructions from the regime.

“The true reality of these 9,000-plus Spanish men and women who passed through Nazi camps didn’t make it into the history books or into school textbooks. Let’s hope that this exhibition can go some way to paying this debt to the past we have as a country.”

The sentiment is shared by the Spanish government, which has organised the exhibition in partnership with Madrid’s Sefarad-Israel Centre and with the support of the German and Polish embassies and the Austrian government’s cultural forum.

During the course of his research in Catalonia last year, Calvet was surprised to discover that some families still had no idea their uncles or grandfathers had been in Mauthausen. “This needs to be told so we can look at the mistakes of the past and make sure they don’t happen again,” says the curator. “Memories that don’t help us look at the past and stop ourselves repeating it are not memories.”

Twitter thread about dancing

Among other things Twitter is a prison where long-form writers are trapped in tiny segments that must be cobbled together in hard to follow segments called threads, infested with advertisements and other distractions that make reading something like following subtitles in a foreign-language film. Here is a transcription of a wonderful thread that begins with this tweet.  And this is the Substack version.  

I was raised as a Fundamental Baptist. Our lengthy credo was always expressed in the negative. One preacher expressed it well when he said, “I’m here to tell you 32 things I’m against and 2 things I’m for. One thing I’m for is Jesus, the other is being against everything else. 

If you wanted a brief list of the “fundamentals” of our faith you could find them very easily right there on the church sign. “Independent. Fundamental. Premillennial. Separated. King James 1611.” We were the aisle-running, hanky-waving, slobber-slinging, pew-walking edition. 

Although it is en vogue to denigrate one’s heritage these days, I have few regrets about the way I was raised. My only real regret is that I never learned how to dance. 

We were taught that “dancing feet don’t go with praying knees,” so that was the end of the discussion. Our folks were concerned that dancing would lead to sex. And of course, it does, if you do it right. 

So we didn't tap, or clog, or shuffle, or ambulate in either squares or lines. All dancing was dirty. We even viewed the Lawrence Welk Show as racy because couples did the waltz right there in front of God and everybody. 

People who did dance did so in places like The Hideaway Lounge and Uncle Elton's barn. But most of them were degenerates and rogues like the Cumberland Presbyterians. 

When I was in the 7th grade, I asked my grandmother if I could go to the school dance. “Dancing is for married folks,” she said.
“Well, don’t I need to learn how to do it before I get married?” I asked.
“Remember how you learned to swim?” she said.
“Yes ma’am. Daddy picked me up and threw me headfirst into Lake Chicot.” I answered.
“That’s right,” she said. “And after a little sputtering you took to it like a fish. When you marry you’ll either dance or drown.” 

But I can still remember peeking around the corner of the hallway late at night and watching her and Grandaddy dance around the kitchen as George Strait sang about all of his former wives from the Republic of Texas and thinking that it looked a little different than dog paddling.
Then Bob Wills started fiddling, “Take Me Back to Tulsa,” and my grandpa picked Grandmother up like a sack of taters and swung her all over the living room. I was in a state of shock. 

My Grandaddy is a rugged man. A hard worker. A wizard with steel and iron. It was natural to think of him cutting trees or cutting the head off a freshly caught fish, it was surreal seeing him cut a rug. Yet, there he was. Twisting again like they had done for so many summers. 

I practiced in front of the bathroom mirror a few times that night, but I looked like a malfunctioning robot. “Apparently you really can’t do it unless you’re married,” I thought. “It would be like trying to learn to swim in a sandbox,” I imagined. 

However, I have tried it with a live girl on occasion. The first time was at my cousin’s bonfire the summer I learned how to drive. (I reckon there is some truth to what they say, “Every southern boy is a good Christian until he gets his driver’s license.) 

After roasting a few hot dogs on the end of an old fishing rod, I got up the courage to ask this girl named Lauren if she’d like to dance. She giggled and said yes. 

Skynard was playing, “Tuesday’s Gone,” and I put my sweaty palms on her hips. And once I was sure that I wasn’t going to pass out or die and go to hell right on the spot, we swayed back and forth like bobbleheads with oversized heads. 

I was dancing! It was beautiful and exhilarating and sad. I don’t think my knees ever bent. And as good Baptists, we tried to keep a foot of daylight between us. Space for the Holy Ghost, as it were. We looked like a couple of elderly people trying to pass wind. 

Most of the girls I’ve dated since never expressed much interest in dancing. One did, but when she commenced to “backing that thing up” and “dropping it like it was hot,” I decided, for the sake of my never-dying soul, never to date another Pentecostal. 

The hardest part of being a bachelor is hearing a good song and not having anyone to embarrass myself with in the kitchen. “One day,” I tell myself. “One day I will finally learn to dance. And I’m going to do a proper waltz at my wedding. Right there before God and everybody.”

Brazil and Bannon -- file copy The New Republic

[File copy]

Steve Bannon Wants to Turn Brazil Into the Next MAGA Battleground

Right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro wants to preemptively undermine the results of the next election. Bannon is happy to help with that.

Andre Pagliarini
August 17, 2021

Former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, indicted on charges of fraud and money laundering last summer, is plotting a political comeback. And going by his appearance last week at a madcap “cyber symposium” hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, he seems to have his sights set on Brazil. South America’s largest and most populous country could be on the precipice of seeing its 2022 election turned into MAGA’s last stand.

Lindell’s cyber symposium was dedicated to the baseless notion that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. Bannon gave a curious performance. First he criticized Lindell for not providing enough evidence for the otherwise “very powerful” stolen election theory. Then he warned that a different election might be at risk: the reelection of far-right authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a Brazilian congressman, also attended Lindell’s conspiratorial shindig. He was there to draw specious parallels between his country’s electoral system and that of the United States—a bad comparison, since Latin America’s largest nation has a world-class electronic voting system, mandatory voting, and not a single credible case of fraud in 25 years. Despite winning a resounding victory in 2018, President Bolsonaro has taken to openly questioning whether Brazil can carry out a free and fair election next year, and engaged in a quixotic push to change the way Brazilians vote. He has even raised the prospect of military intervention to supposedly ensure the integrity of the vote, parading army tanks and troops in Brasília on August 10. To all but his most ardent supporters, the president’s real intentions are obvious. He is preparing to reject an unfavorable future outcome by sowing doubt now.

After Eduardo addressed Lindell’s audience, Bannon took the stage and called next year’s presidential race in Brazil the “second most important election in the world,” blithely asserting that “Bolsonaro will win unless it’s stolen by, guess what, the machines.” In reality, every major polling outfit for months has predicted Bolsonaro will lose badly to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, head of the center-left Workers’ Party and the most prominent voice of the opposition. Brazilians, not “machines,” seem intent on ousting Bolsonaro. But Bannon dismissed Lula as “a criminal,” calling him “the most dangerous leftist in the world.”

Bannon was echoing the hyperbolic rhetoric that Brazilian conservatives have long used to describe Lula, a former union leader who became the first working-class president in Brazilian history upon his election in 2002. Even before Bolsonaro’s election, center-right politics in Brazil were becoming defined by the dangerously misguided notion that Lula and his party were not simply democratic opponents to be defeated at the ballot box but criminal conspirators to be extirpated by any means necessary.

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s appearance at Lindell’s event appears to be the next step in this strategy. Bolsonaro is now attempting to link events in Brazil to the broader network of fantastical delusions, resentments, and outrages that fuel the Trump base and, by extension, much of the Republican Party. Bolsonaro—with Bannon apparently on his side—wants to make Brazil the next MAGA battleground.

This isn’t the first time Bannon has tried to take his show on the road. Three years ago, Bannon visited several countries in Europe and beyond in an attempt to stitch together a transnational network of right-wing nationalists who could jointly withstand what he considers to be the noxious tides of globalization. As Ian Buruma wrote for Project Syndicate at the time, “Bannon sees this effort as part of a ‘war’ between populism and ‘the party of Davos,’ between the white, Christian, patriotic ‘real people’ (in the words of his British supporter, Nigel Farage) and the cosmopolitan globalist elites.” A boastful Bannon proclaimed that “we’re open for business.... We’re a populist, nationalist NGO, and we’re global.”

Despite his meetings with France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, and Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister (and Tucker Carlson’s new idol) Viktor Orbán, Bannon’s so-called Movement had little discernible impact on European politics. This is because, despite the aura of penetrating insight he cultivated as Trump’s Svengali, Bannon doesn’t actually know much about how the world works.

“While on tour, Bannon’s diatribes tend to focus on Trump, his miraculous election victory, and the president’s vision of tearing down the ‘global liberal elite,’” Prague-based journalist Tim Gosling observed in Foreign Policy in 2018. Bannon thrives when serving up the warmed-over remains of Trump’s shocking upset, but has never managed to come up with new recipes that can be tested elsewhere. “He pushes all the right buttons: defense spending, trade imbalances, and Crooked Hillary. But Bannon does it from a blinkered Washington perspective,” Gosling wrote. Bannon’s foreign incursions were self-serving mythmaking exercises, grist for an ongoing grift. Not until now, with Bolsonaro, has Bannon found a foreign far-right movement thoroughly interested in this Washington-centric approach. Bolsonaro’s sons and supporters are thrilled by Bannon’s support in ways that European conservatives never were.

Brazilians outside the far right, however, were immediately concerned by the Bolsonaro-Bannon alliance on display at Lindell’s event. Writing for The Intercept Brasil this past Sunday, journalist João Filho said Bannon’s involvement should be seen as a sure sign that the 2022 election will be contested. “Even if Bolsonaro is not re-elected,” he fretted, “Bolsonarismo will remain alive. And they will continue to use Bannon’s know-how and invest in conspiracies against democracy.” Thomas Traumann, a well-connected and highly respected political observer writing for weekly news magazine Veja, described Bannon as the link between Bolsonaro’s “tropical version of Trumpism” and the current insurrectionary paranoia that has gripped Trump’s true believers. Ciro Gomes, a former governor, cabinet minister, and congressman who will seek the Brazilian presidency for the fourth time next year, has harped on the Bannon-Bolsonaro connection since 2018, decrying the influence that Trump’s erstwhile adviser has had over the Brazilian president. Bannon’s ability to shape political outcomes around the world may be overstated, but his involvement will likely draw the attention of American ultraconservatives to an election that they might otherwise have overlooked.

Bannon endorsed Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2018 election, and met with Eduardo that year as well. After their conversation, Eduardo announced his and Bannon’s intent “to join forces, especially against cultural Marxism.” Last year, Bolsonaro and his sons openly rooted for Trump to win reelection, sensing that a Biden victory would isolate and constrain the Brazilian government for its careless handling of Amazonian deforestation, among other issues that have raised international alarm. It is not clear, however, that Bannon has followed Bolsonaro’s administration particularly closely.

Up until now, the Brazilian president’s steadfast support of Trump has gone without much public reciprocity from either Trump or his supporters. Bolsonaro stalled for over a month before recognizing Biden’s victory. Tactlessly, he reportedly repeated false allegations about fraud in the 2020 U.S. election in a meeting this month with Biden’s national security adviser. And while in the United States for Lindell’s symposium, Eduardo met with Trump and invited him to visit Brazil. Bannon’s endorsement of the Bolsonaro claim that the election will be stolen represents the kind of MAGA world validation that the far right in Brazil, slavishly attuned to the U.S. right wing for inspiration, craves.

Despite their well-documented tensions, Bannon remains closely associated with Trump, always receiving at least partial credit for the surprise victory in 2016. As a result, the Bolsonaro clan remains drawn to him. As Bannon signals his willingness to engage in the 2022 Brazilian election, his relationship with the Bolsonaros might become clearer. It is not unusual for U.S. political strategists to take their services overseas, of course. It’s unlikely that Bannon could guide Bolsonaro to victory—but legitimate victory is probably not the point. Bannon’s main pursuit is grievance, victory merely a happy accident. The Bolsonaros are offering Bannon a chance to be a player in a major democracy’s high-stakes election, to be fawned over by unthinking partisans, and, of course, to keep the grift alive.

Forbes sketch of Sandi Bachon

This is my file copy of a 2021 Forbes article.

The Acclaimed Documentary Maker In Her 70s With More Stories To Tell
By Sheila Weller

At 76, Sandi Bachom is one of the most tireless documentary filmmakers of the past 10 years of political turmoil, from Occupy Wall Street to the January 6 insurrection. "Like Zelig with a camera," as the liberal cinematographer/director/producer/editor is often called (and a straw bowler and often a natty vest over a starched white shirt).

Over the past dozen years or so, Bachom has won awards for her short films such as "Shadow Boxer" and had her footage shown on every major network.

Four years ago, on August 12, 2017, while aiming her camera at the Confederate-flag-waving marchers in Charlottesville, Va., chanting "Jews will not replace us!," she was pepper-sprayed, doused with urine and knocked to the ground. She cracked her head open and broke her arm.

Bachom's January 6 Capitol Footage

To say she got up and carried on is an understatement. "After Charlottesville, I started following right-wing extremists everywhere. To Portland, to Washington D.C. on December 12 — that was a really bad one! — to the rally on January 5, when Roger Stone and Michael Flynn and all the Stop the Steal people spoke, to January 6 itself."

Bachom documented that last one's entire day, explosive increment by increment. It's on a timeline on her website. 

She was just finishing the timeline when, one day in late July, she and I had a long talk by phone, during which she described a life of resonance lived over seven decades and friendships with bold-face name celebs — along with considerable challenges. 

Bachom was raised in Hollywood and environs by her grandmother after her film-industry artist parents divorced, when she was three. After attending Orange Coast College, she went to Fullerton Junior College. During that time, she became friends with singer-songwriter Jackson Browne. "He called me his mentor because I introduced him to the music of Bob Dylan. We went to these [L.A.] clubs together — The Troubadour, The Golden Bear."

In 1967, Bachom and guitarist boyfriend Stuart Sharf moved to New York City and, since Sharf was a friend of Paul Simon, ended up being with Simon "when he played `The Boxer' for the first time. We also went to London with Paul and Artie [Garfunkel] at the height of their fame, when they did "Bridge Over Troubled Water." 

Through Scharf's friend, she met an ad agency producer who knew a director looking for a $50-a-week assistant. "He hired me because I was smart and pretty. You could bluff your way into jobs back then," Bachcom recalls. 

A Woman in the 'Mad Men' Days

Bachom then soared in advertising for four decades, producing thousands of award-winning commercials.

"I worked with all the greats — creative geniuses at the peak of their power who taught me how to be a filmmaker and not settle," Bachom says. These included Young & Rubicam's Steve Frankfurt, often cited as the inspiration for "Mad Men"'s Don Draper, and Bill Backer at McCann Erickson, who wrote the iconic 1978 Coke ad, "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.'"

In 1980, she married an ad copywriter and their son Grant was born in 1988, a year after Bachom stopped a robust drinking habit.

In the early '90s, Bachom became head of production at the edgy ad agency Mad Dogs and Englishmen, but then things started falling apart.

"I was laid off a couple of months before 9/11," she recalls. "There I was: fifty-seven, getting a divorce, broke and I'd lost my career. It was like running off a cliff." Grant was 13. "It was a terrible time," Bachom says.

But she has a theory about terrible times: "They take you to a place where you wouldn't go of your free will."

Bachom learned that lesson from a friend whose father was a Holocaust survivor — Werner, a professional magician. In the first of her video series grouped as "The Last Eyewitness Project," Bachom was at first stunned to hear that Werner and his fellow Auschwitz prisoners had joke sessions every night. Werner explained it: "Even if I wasn't happy, I would still be in Auschwitz. So, I might as well be happy." 

The Lesson That's Stuck With Her

Bachom would hold Werner's lesson for later: "For every challenging time I come upon, I can either be consumed with the pain and sorrow of death or I can live the best life I can," she says.

That lesson helped her maintain her sobriety (30 years now) and got her through being run over by a car in 2010 and, she says, defrauded by a personal injury lawyer who forged her name on an AllstateALL +0.3% check. It helped her get past being briefly evicted from her New York City apartment and endure a shattered ankle in 2011. 

That year was the beginning of a particularly hard time, when Bachom, then 66, had to move into a friend's house in the Hamptons on Long Island. "I put my stuff in storage and lived rent-free, on Social Security, with no car, owing American ExpressAXP -2.4% forty thousand dollars," she recalls.

But she had something vital: a good video camera.

When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, Bachom took her camera to the hard-hit Rockaways in Queens, N.Y. and recorded interviews with people "who had lost everything in a matter of minutes. Rather than feeling sorry for myself, I lost myself in my craft. My work saved my life."

Then, she started shooting breaking news in New York City. "The next thing I know, I get my press pass — at seventy," says Bachom. "That's as proud an achievement for me as any award I've ever won."

The 'Oldest First-Time Filmmaker'

Documentary maker Michael Moore invited Bachom to show her Occupy Wall Street footage at his Traverse City (Mich.) Film Festival, where he introduced her as "the oldest first-time filmmaker." From then on, she was off and running — documenting, in New York and elsewhere, breaking news and the gathering political events, while seeing her social media reach multiply.

The months of the pandemic were highly emotional for her. Last April, she videotaped herself on YouTube, crying after the death and funeral of a friend who'd had Covid-19. "I'm scared," she said. "I don't want anybody I love to die… I don't want to die. I have a lot of work to do."

In the past two years, she has continued to drive and fly around the country to document the intense times — from the George Floyd protests to the MAGA rallies, from Minnesota to Washington, D.C.

On January 6, she arrived in front of the Ellipse and was horrified.

"By the time I got there, there were thousands and thousands of people. I tried to follow where they were going; they were trying to get into the building. There was such chaos," she recalls. "I had no idea what was going on! Thousands of people were crawling all over the place. There was no phone communication."

Afterwards, back at her hotel, an exhausted Bachom got a heartbreaking call: Her son Grant, a gifted musician and actor, had died just a month shy of his 33rd birthday. This "kind, generous, hilarious young man had a disease that lied to him," Bachom says.

It was similar, she notes, to the way Rep. Jamie Raskin's son Tommy would later leave a poignant note for his father: "Tonight my illness won."

Somehow, a version of Werner's lesson soon rang in Bachom's ear. She was able to carry on.

The last time I spoke to Bachom for this article was July 26; she just returned from watching former President Donald Trump's friend Tom Barrack plead not guilty in court and be freed on $250 million bail.

"Life is about acceptance and forgiveness," she says. And then she gets ready to edit her footage for her forthcoming documentary about the January 6 Capitol storming and its repercussions.

Sandi Bachom Twitter Thread

I cannot find much information about Sandi Bachom but this link is from a Forbes article which is long and informative. I transcribed that article in another post on this blog.

At 76, Sandi Bachom is one of the most tireless documentary filmmakers of the past 10 years of political turmoil, from Occupy Wall Street to the January 6 insurrection. "Like Zelig with a camera," as the liberal cinematographer/director/producer/editor is often called (and a straw bowler and often a natty vest over a starched white shirt).

Over the past dozen years or so, Bachom has won awards for her short films such as "Shadow Boxer" and had her footage shown on every major network.

Four years ago, on August 12, 2017, while aiming her camera at the Confederate-flag-waving marchers in Charlottesville, Va., chanting "Jews will not replace us!," she was pepper-sprayed, doused with urine and knocked to the ground. She cracked her head open and broke her arm.

This is from a Twitter thread dated Aug. 3, 2022. It includes numerous images and a lengthy string of follow-up exchanges.

IMPORTANT THREAD: On Nov 9, 2020 AFTER Trump lost he fired Esper and installed Chris Miller 'Acting Sec of Defense' and Kash Patel. In DC the only people who can deploy the National Guard are POTUS and Sec of Defense.
These are the 14 times Miller denied the National Guard

#1 The breach of Capitol grounds at 12:53pm when the Proud Boys broke through the barricades. 5 minutes later Capitol Police Chief Sund ask Senate Sgt At Arms to declare emergency and deploy the National Guard, told he will 'send it up the chain of command.

#2 At 1:09pm Capitol Police Chief Sund calls Sgt At Arms for a SECOND time with urgent request for National Guard. Thousands have stormed into the lawn on the US Capitol.  During the Kavanaugh hearings they weren't allowed within 2 blocks of the grounds.

#3 At 1:34pm Mayor Bowser makes 3rd request for the CD National Guard to Army Sec McCarthy who reports to Acting Sec of Defense Chris Miller, Bowser is told request must come from the Capitol Police (This is false, Miller is the only person who can give the order)#4 At 1:49pm Chief Sund makes a 4th 'frantic call' requests immediate assistance 'dire emergency' for DC National Guard. Maj General Walker loads buses in anticipation of Sec of Army McCarthy's approval to deploy.

#4 At 1:49pm Chief Sund makes a 4th 'frantic call' requests immediate assistance 'dire emergency' for DC National Guard. Maj General Walker loads buses in anticipation of Sec of Army McCarthy's approval to deploy.#5 2:10pm Capitol Police Chief Sund asks for immediate assistance for the 5th time. Receivers a call from Paul Irving, House Sgt At Arms with formal approval to 'request the National Guard'

#5 2:10pm Capitol Police Chief Sund asks for immediate assistance for the 5th time. Receivers a call from Paul Irving, House Sgt At Arms with formal approval to 'request the National Guard'

#6 Capitol breach took 19 mins, 2:11pm when the first window is broken on west by Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola till 2:30 when Oath Keepers broke the east door.  At 2:19pm DHS Dir Charles Rodriquez advises National Guard 'Windows are being broken at the Capitol' This is 6th request.

#7 The 7th urgent request 'I've got to get boots on the ground' Mayor Bowser receives the call. Chris Miller, Acting Sec of Defense refuses the National Guard.

#8 At 2:36 pm the House Oversight Committee later reports 'Capitol Police Chief Sund asks for backup, it's the 8th request.

#9 At 2:40pm Police Chief Sund calls for  the 9th time to request National Guard. Tear gas is deployed on the west side of the Capitol as the mob breaches the wall by the scaffolding where the inauguration is to take place.

#10 At 2:42pm the 10th request by DC Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee when he calls for the National Guard.

#10 (A) Ashli Babbit is shot at 2:44pm.  At 3:19pm Army Sec McCarthy has phone call with Pelosi and Schumer, explains full mobilization of DC National Guard 'verbally approved' by Acting Sec Chris Miller. (They don't arrive until 5:30pm as fighting continues for TWO MORE HOURS.

#11 At 3:26, house oversight committee later reports, Capitol Police Chief Sund calls for immediate assistance from the National Guard, for the 11th time.

#12 At 3:46pm House Oversight Committee later reports: Capitol Police Chief Sund calls for 'immediate assistance' from the National Guard for the 12th time.

#12 (A) At 4:03pm Insurrectionist announces 'Mayor Bowser called the National Guard in here to clear us out. The Defense Department told her no thank you'.

#12 (B) At 4:08pm Mike Pence calls Acting Sec of Defense Christopher Miller and demands he 'clear and secure the Capitol'

#13 At 4:22pm House Oversight Committee later reports Capitol Police Chief makes verbal request for the National Guard for the 13th time!

#13 (A) At 4:23 Insurrectionist reads Trump's 2:24pm tweet. 'Mike Pence didn't have the courage'

#14 At 4:23pm House Oversight Committee later reports: Capitol Police Chief Sund gets verbal approval for National Guard support on 14th call.

#15 I created this timeline shortly after January 6. I took all available reporting from wikipedia to Bill Moyers to all the networks and print media and made an excel spreadsheet then plugged into the footage of where I was.  It hasn't changed since I did it.

#16 Thank you for taking the time to read my threads, always grateful for your support of independent journalism  http://paypal.me/sandibachom

If anybody has a better idea why Chris Miller must be subpoenaed and explain why he did it. Kash Patel actually did a film with Epoch Times blaming the Capitol police for what he did.