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New York, 12:12 AM
Fri Nov 27
3 posts in the last 24 hours
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06/05/09
06/05/09
I know a lot of people are deeply moved visiting concentration camps, but the whole thing felt really surreal to me. There were people taking pictures of the big pile of shoes and it felt like some of them were just ticking off part of the itinerary. It was an incredibly sad place to visit, but it just felt kind of wrong to be there. I felt similarly when people started visiting ground zero while they were still looking for body parts, like it was somehow voyeuristic.
I'm not saying people shouldn't go, but I don't think it is a must do. I think learning about the individuals who died in the Holocaust can be a better testament.
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Not sure if they still do this, but it used to be that you would receive a person's name when you started your tour and at different station you would follow this person's life. It made the experience so real.
OK--crying again....
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06/05/09
They also have a really well done exhibit where you walk through a young boy's home and read pages in his diary.
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@bluebears: I'm glad he was able to have a full, happy life. I just can't imagine the actual walking away, you know?
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I visited Dachau when I was 14. My father made me go. It is absolutely startling in its normalcy. Your feet crunch the gravel. You stare down rows upon rows of innocuous identical shacks. You constantly remind yourself what happened there, who stood in the courtyard before you. They have a tiny museum that you go through ,very sanitized and unoffensive, with the exception of one picture. This picture is of a man hanging by his arms (bound behind his back) from a 10 foot post, as punishment for stealing food. You step into the harsh daylight and see in front of you what looks like an army camp. You think, "This isn't so bad." Then you see the post in the middle of the courtyard and you think back to the picture and you start balling.
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06/05/09
I think about it with regards to my own kids - how much do I want them to know about it? How much will it improve their lives to understand these concepts? I don't want to censor it, but how necessary is it to visit a site of evil, when you're intimately acquainted with it?
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I was lucky enough on one visit to get a tour from a man who had grown up in (the city of) Dachau. He talked very candidly about the shame residents of Dachau (the city) felt about having lived in a place associated with such horrors (and for not doing anything, in retrospect). He said when his daughters were born, they went to a different hospital so the birth certificate wouldn't say "Dachau." Very interesting.
One of my favorite things is that at the back of the camp are three chapels--a protestant, a Catholic, and a Jewish memorial where people of all faiths can pray and remember. I think they're both interesting and powerful.
So moral of the story, I recommend visiting Dachau.
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Every year my local Hillel reads names of those who died in the camps and it destroys me every time.
06/05/09
amen.
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06/05/09
How about in Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile?
There's too much remembering to do.
06/05/09
Will we ever have such a memorial right here in the US for the millions of Indians slaughtered by the European invaders?
06/05/09
[www.unitednativeamerica.com]
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06/06/09
The Indians are opposed to this monument - on their sacred Black Hills. White folks decided to build a big guilt monument, without their support, in what is essentially their church. Crazy Horse never had his picture taken - he had strong beliefs about having his image replicated - so in addition to everything else, it's a completely fanciful big guilt monument.
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Never again. Never Forget.
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04/21/09
No I'm not anti-semitic in any way, shape or form. But I've always wondered.
04/22/09
"The Holocaust is one of the darkest chapters of history but it happened in Europe. It was a crime done by Europeans to Europeans. Many of the survivors moved to the US but it was after the fact. I know there is finally a Holocaust Museum in Germany but wouldn't this museum be better situated in Poland, France, Holland, etc."
I agree with you on somewhat, at least in that it is shameful how difficult it is for us to face our own dark chapters in history, but you may want to look up the St. Louis, amongst other things. The Holocaust was like all other genocides--we knew it was happening. Americans first knowledge of what was happening was not when we liberated the camps. America cannot wash its hands as easily as it would like.
Many relatively weak Europeans did much to help their fellow Europeans. Many powerful American leaders contemplated how best to protect America's interest, which did not always include Europeans.
Beyond that, the Holocaust museum is not there to punish the perpetrators, or remind people's grandchildren that they may have failed. It is to honor the lives of people lost and to educate to prevent the deaths of more. In that regard it is just as important in the U.S. as in any other country.
And I know for a fact that Holland and Poland, and I assume that France, have their own museums and memorials to the Holocaust.
04/22/09
But you didn't really answer my question. The Holocaust happened IN EUROPE. Not in the United States. There is limited space for museums in Washington. Why this museum and not one for the physical and cultural genocide inflicted on Native Americans and African-Americans in the United States for centuries? Why no museum dedicated to the Cambodian genocide or Rwanda or Dafur. These atrocities all took place while the world watched and did nothig.
I guess what I'm really asking is; Is the World War II Holocaust considered more important because the victims were mostly white?
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04/22/09
Also... there is a HUGE museum in Washington dedicated to Indigenous cultures in the Americas. And I appreciate the fact that it is not purely focused on the way our people were decimated via colonization/genocide. I say that because it's hard for me that the common belief now about Native peeps is that Indians were killed on such a scale that we don't exist anymore and thus we are HISTORY. And the belief that we're history means that those of us who are here today (Millions!)are rendered somewhat invisible.
04/22/09
04/22/09
Obviously, the Holocaust wasn't the first genocide. (Now there's an understatement...) But it was so wide-reaching and long-lasting that whole new words had to be invented to describe it. Plus, it was excruciatingly well-documented: When it comes to the nuts and bolts - numbers, logistics, etc. - we have information that goes beyond what's available for, say, Cambodia. And yet, that information can illuminate genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, the Americas - because the sad, awful truth is that hatred of the "other" has been going on since humans invented the concepts of "us" and "them". All that's changed is the technology.
But that technology can also help us see what thousands-year-old grudges can do if we let them dictate our actions. Something like the HMM has the power to make people stop and think about genocide in the present day. And maybe if enough people stop and think, we can finally do something to stop it. It seems like a pipe dream, but you gotta start somewhere.
04/22/09