Everything about the Third Reich leaves me torn...one of my grandpas barely survived Auschwitz and the other one was part of the SS. Of course there is a longer story to all that, but when I see such a picture I always feel weird and cloistered away for days.
I went to Auschwitz when I was 21 and that was the only concentration trip I ever need to take.
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.
I too went to Dachau as a child and it was horrifying. I will never, ever, forget it. And FYI, Dachau concentration camp was in the middle of a town. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING TOWN. Like, you know, Central Park.
I really, really want to go to one of these sites, because I have always been fascinated by World War II and everything to do with it, but I'm concerned that I'll never be the same afterward. I feel like the pain and horror and death in a place like that would seep into my bones and never go away. But I also feel like it would give me a new perspective on life and a new appreciation for everything my ancestors went through.
I have never been so moved as when I visited the Holocaust Museum in DC many years ago. I actually had to leave the building and compose myself several times.
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.
I had a memory this morning about visiting Dachau when I was 6, which is: when I was in Germany with my family and my parents told me us we were going to visit a "Concentration Camp" I thought we were going to see how orange juice was made, because on cartons it said "Not from Concentrate," and that was the only context I'd ever seen the word. Of course I figured out quickly that it was a bad place and we were there because it was important, and I'll never forget the jarring reality of it against my childish expectations.
My dads best friend from high school (who he's still friends with) has two survivors as parents. His dad was 16 when he went the forced "death march" he was with his father who was in his 40s at the time but of course totally starved and ill. His father just sat down at one point and said I can't go on, you have to go on, they'll shoot you, go. and he had to walk away from his father, 16 yrs old.
@bluebears: My dad had a prof in college who was a survivor; his family had hiked out over the Alps, Sound-of-Music-style. The man was really young at the time--like four I think. My dad said that one day a student went up to him all whiny about how he couldn't finish a paper on time because his life was so hard/busy/whatever, and the prof sat back in his chair and said, "Let me tell you a story about a little Jewish boy during World War II..." Puts things in perspective.
@bluebears: Oh my god. I cannot imagine. Stories like this really remind me how good we have it that we probably won't ever have to make a decision like that.
@NellMood: I know. If it makes you feel better that 16 yr old moved to the US, got married, had 2 sons who are successful and happy, and several grandchildren and he is alive to see all of that. I think that his father who couldn't go on would be happy about that you know? The Nazi's couldn't "exterminate" them completely.
@bluebears: I'm imagining myself in that man's shoes, walking away from my father, and it makes me want to put my head down on my desk and weep. I've been reading Holocaust memoirs since I was a teenager, but it never ceases to horrify me when I hear stories like this. The image of him walking away... MY GOD.
@bluebears: I'm weirdly glad to be crying right now... I feel like that anecdote gave me a tiny bit of insight into one of the millions of personal stories that make up the Holocaust. Thanks for sharing it.
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.
@Vivelafat says Sweep the leg, Johnny.: I want to go very badly but don't have any money to travel. My grandparents, both of whom were born in America but lost family in the Holocaust, went about twenty years ago. They still cry every time they talk about it.
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god (aka Mrs. BrutallyHonestHobbit): I think this makes me different, but I really do NOT want to go. My grandmother was in Auschwitz nearly since its inception. And my grandfather was also in a camp until he escaped. My parents were "children of Holocaust survivors", which should be a category. I've read books, listened to everyone's true-life stories, gone to museums, and I sometimes I just don't want to give this more power by actually attending it. I feel like I've been saturated by it, and while I'm happy I have been, further immersion just makes me lose faith.
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?
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god (aka Mrs. BrutallyHonestHobbit): @VeryFancyBunny: It was, and continues to be, a defining moment in my life. I feel like, no matter what the emotional cost, attention must be paid. People died. The least I can do in my life is be a witness to their suffering. I will pass it down to my children and my children's children so that it will never be forgotten.
@Vivelafat says Sweep the leg, Johnny.: I went when I was 16...I couldn't get past the parking lot. I just sat on the bus, overcome by the sheer weight and enormity of it all.
@Vivelafat says Sweep the leg, Johnny.: I actually really liked visiting Dachau when I lived in Germany. I think it's really moving, but very accessible and not (on the third visit anyway) so overwhelming that you can't do anything for the rest of the day. The museum may have been expanded since you were there; now there's a ton of information, but still not many graphic photos. I think that's deliberate. The video you can watch, however, is pretty awful; I felt like crying during most of it.
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.
@Vivelafat says Sweep the leg, Johnny.: I don't know if I'd be able to handle that. Although my great-grandparents left Europe a decade before the Holocaust, as a Jew and a human being with a heart, it still affects me very much.
Every year my local Hillel reads names of those who died in the camps and it destroys me every time.
@Glitterbug (likes life shaken, not stirred): The second worst day of my life was the day I visited Dauchau. It was, like Vivelafat said, totally normal-seeming. The video of the inmates playing on a constant loop amongst the huge pictures of starving people was unnerving. The back of my neck prickled the whole time I was there and my roommate threw up in the bushes. Just thinking about that place gives me the shakes again. I'm generally mistrustful of psychic phenomena, but I fully believe that some imprint of the suffering remains there.
@PaintedTrollop: There's the Crazy Horse Memorial in the black hills, South Dakota. About an hour drive from Mt. Rushmore and it was a moving experience.
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.
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god (aka Mrs. BrutallyHonestHobbit): Yes, I really appreciate the snap judgments lately. I almost think they need a new name because Snap Judgment sounds a little bitchy and they have just been so beautiful and moving lately. Thank you, Jezebel editors!
I have nothing but support for remembrance of the Holocaust but I have to wonder why this museum was built in Washington and there are no museums dedicated to the crimes committed against Native Americans and African-Americans in the United States. 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.
No I'm not anti-semitic in any way, shape or form. But I've always wondered.
"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.
@Katxyz: I hear what you're saying. I have a degree in history and have had a longtime fascination with the Holocaust. I keep hoping I will read something to explain HOW? How could people have done this and how could so many know and let it happen? How could the Danish save their Jewish populations and the French hand them over before they were even asked?
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?
@Katxyz: Sorry, I forgot to add that I do know about the SS St. Louis and the fate of it's passengers. Ironically, many Jewish refugees were welcomed in Caribbean countries like Trinidad (where my mother is from and remembers the refugees coming) and Cuba. Nonwhite countries that had more humanity than the US, Canada, Great Britain and the rest of Europe.
@topsy: IMO, the fact that the HMM memorializes brutal genocide that Europeans perpetrated against other marginalized Europeans is not a reason why we shouldn't have such a museum here. I definitely think this museum has a place here in the US- not least because so many survivors and their descendants are here now. Besides, everyone all over the world has a responsibility to honor the lives lost and the people who survived. But I do think that because it is a museum memorializing a holocaust that we Americans didn't directly commit, it's less complicated for people to grieve and not feel implicated in the same way that they might about the African and Indigenous holocausts on which the US was built. It would be incredibly powerful if there were resources and support for the creation of a space which would powerfully honor the experience of surviving (or not surviving) slavery in the same vein as the HMM. The reason why it probably won't happen? Start with an "R" and ends with an "acism."
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.
@HoneyBoom: I never looked at the Holocaust Museum as a 'feel good' kind of place, allowing folks to weep copiously while ignoring the crimes committed in their own country, in that very city! Does it take a movie to get people to care. Spielberg already tried his hand at coloured folks and failed miserably, so there's no help there. Should Spike Lee work on this. If that's what it takes. Maybe he can co-direct with a Native American director for a two-birds-with-one-stone type of thing.
@topsy: The best "how this happened" I've read is Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism. It's a long, hard slog, but worth it. Arendt spends the first two parts of the book on historical antisemitism and imperialism, examining how they laid the ground for the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Second-best is her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
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.
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.
06/05/09
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06/05/09
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.
06/05/09
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?
06/05/09
06/05/09
06/05/09
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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06/05/09
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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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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06/05/09
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?
04/22/09
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