Rebecca Erbelding (she/her)
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rerbelding.bsky.social
Rebecca Erbelding (she/her)
@rerbelding.bsky.social
970 followers 630 following 140 posts
Historian of American responses to the Holocaust, author of "Rescue Board" (Doubleday, 2018). Love cats, books, TV, travel, teachers, fighting for a better world. Opinions mine.
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rerbelding.bsky.social
DC weather tonight #nokings
A weather report showing a 98-99% chance of thunderstorms all evening
June 14, 2025 at 9:34 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
#noking protest in Riverdale Park, MD
A pink and blue lettered sign that says "If not fascist why fascist shaped?"
June 14, 2025 at 2:48 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
The average American has three friends.
May 2, 2025 at 3:04 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Duolingo on point today.
Duolongo Spanish asks me to translate "That stomachache is very normal."
January 20, 2025 at 7:12 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Me at singalongs
December 23, 2024 at 3:16 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
When the world feels bleak and people in power are counting on our surrender, remember that #OTD 80 years ago, American commander Anthony McAuliffe, in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge, looked at the German demand and answered "Nuts!"
A pretty pixilated purple typed font from 1944 on cream colored paper. It is an excerpt from a Christmas message distributed by the 101st Airborne during World War II conveying a German demand for surrender and the American commander's reply of "Nuts!"
December 22, 2024 at 7:24 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Stolpersteine in Rome are mainly for the ca. 1,200 people picked up on the Oct. 16, 1943, razzia, but we found some as late as May 1944. Four weeks before the Allies liberated the city. Can you even imagine.
November 28, 2024 at 2:34 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
My husband @arecoleman.bsky.social is annoyed because I'm making him think about the Roman empire.
November 27, 2024 at 10:10 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
The rose window and arches over the American church in Rome, where American Friends Service Committee aid workers Roswell and Marjorie McClelland worked with Jewish refugees in 1940-1941. It's a refugee center today.

They would have liked that.

So glad I got to see it.
Red and white horizontal striped marble surrounds four arches containing painted religious scenes. Above the arches and below a darkened round rose window is carved "Gloria in Excelsis Deo in Terrra Pax"
November 26, 2024 at 5:58 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Marnie, the snuggliest writing companion
An orange, black, and white calico cat has her head almost upside down on a gray blanket and looks at the camera with one green eye
November 5, 2024 at 4:46 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
I got served this ad and immediately thought of @swordsjew.bsky.social 's important new book. One of these things is definitely not like the others, wtf.
An advertisement for "80s t-shirts" with six t-shirts shown. One is black with the MTV logo, another is blue with the Blockbuster logo. And one is gray with the text "wooden spoon survivor" and a drawing of a wooden spoon.
November 2, 2024 at 11:04 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
A political cartoon from the 1930s with the headline "Whenever He Opens His Mouth." A overweight man wearing a "Nazi Bund" uniform with a swastika armband stands on a stage in front of a crowd. His left leg is standing on a parchment paper on the stage labeled "free speech" and his right leg is in the air and his right foot is in his mouth with the bottom of the boot labeled "Treason"
October 27, 2024 at 10:16 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
One house in my neighborhood put up Trump/Vance signs and I swear every other house immediately purchased and now prominently displace Harris/Walz signs.
a comparison in chart form of number of donors and money raised in the 20782 zip code; Biden/Harris has 983 donors and raised $200,000; Trump has 11 donors and raised $6,000
October 24, 2024 at 1:41 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
How is this in an actual peer reviewed book?
A typed bibliography page that credits Elie Wiesel with writing "Survival in Auschwitz"
October 22, 2024 at 3:28 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Marnie, an A+++++ writing buddy.
An orange and black calico cat sitting on a gray blanket looks politely into the camera
October 19, 2024 at 1:19 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Dr. Seuss knew what Lindbergh was doing
A Dr. Seuss editorial cartoon from Sept 1941. A character marked Lindbergh is wearing a gas mask and shoveling trash off a pile marked the "Nazi anti-semite stink wagon"
September 29, 2024 at 12:49 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Behold, my last stalling exercise before I finally write this book.
An overhead view of more than two dozen printed calendar pages from 1944-1946 covered in tiny writing
September 21, 2024 at 8:36 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
The Library of Congress has, hands down, some of the prettiest spaces in DC
A very elaborately painted grided ceiling at the Library of Congress
September 19, 2024 at 2:42 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
She looks so much like my Marnie!! Also the best.
August 28, 2024 at 3:39 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
How many more will suffer before the medical establishment does something about this scourge?
1940s newspaper clipping with headline "Senator Moses of North Dakota is Victim of Death"
April 23, 2024 at 1:40 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Some news! I'm beyond thrilled and honored to be able to tell this important, heartwarming, and heartbreaking story. Coming to a shelf near you (hopefully in your house or local library!) in a few years
A Publishers Marketplace book announcement for "Holocaust history and author of Rescue Board Dr. Rebecca Erbelding's "Shelter on the Lake", the story of 982 people housed in the only shelter on US soil established for Holocaust refugees during World War II, and the upstate New York townspeople who came to love them, pitched as a wartime 'Come from Away' to Tzipora Chein at Simon & Schuster, in a pre-empt, by Anna Sproul-Latimer at Neon Literary (world)."
February 28, 2024 at 10:59 PM
rerbelding.bsky.social
A skeet about new tweets outside my office.
A photo taken from the attic window of a brick house. On the window sill is a small nest with two young chicks with mottled black feathers.
July 26, 2023 at 3:07 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Ohhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhh
A 1950s missile is in the foreground of a black and white photograph. Behind the missile are two scaffolding towers connected at the top, giving the impression that the missile has clumsily broken through the scaffolding.
July 19, 2023 at 2:03 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
Five years with the bestest of kittens
A black, orange, and white cat, and a black and white cat are intertwined, curled up and asleep on a cat bed.
July 8, 2023 at 4:12 AM
rerbelding.bsky.social
An orange, black, and white cat is sprawled on a gray couch with her paws in a supplicant position. She is very cute and her eyes are closed.
July 6, 2023 at 12:17 AM