I visited a Holocaust museum.

[Alexej]

I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
It was a very moving experience

 

[The Pandector]

Thanks for posting. A bracing reminder of where and how far anti-religious animosity can carry an otherwise sane group of people. Not much different than rank racism; often invisible to the practitioner. Timely.

 

[Rodafina]

Thanks for sharing with such informative detail, @Yeshuasdaughter. This is a nice way to experience a museum.

 

[oregano]

Thanks for posting. A bracing reminder of where and how far anti-religious animosity can carry an otherwise sane group of people. Not much different than rank racism; often invisible to the practitioner. Timely.

The book "White Fragility" gets a lot of bad press, but if you take it with its sequel "Nice Racism" you get a portrait of an elite so invested in "proving" their enlightenment from bigotry that they are blind to the bigotry that lies hidden in the dark corners of their hearts. People like to think that hatred only lives in those perceived as "lesser than" such as "hillbilly Whites" and such, when it is that belief itself that shows the hate just below the surface of the finger pointer.

Until Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese racism was not a big deal, but after many White Americans wanted to completely exterminate Japanese Americans in a similar manner as Hitler did to the Jews. Had FDR gone along, the eventual Allied victory would be considered pyrrhic today. This summer I should make a pilgrimage to Camp Tulelake, which is only a couple hours drive from where I live now. Originally a generic internment camp, it eventually became the camp where Japanese Americans who refused to sign a loyalty oath to the American government or refused draft orders were incarcerated. Tulelake is notable because it became something of a "zombie camp" after the war, with farmworkers, many undocumented, squatting in the abandoned barracks. Somebody told me that farmworkers inhabited the barracks as late as the 80s.

I have listened to speeches by several Shoah survivors, and they all noted that what happened to the Jews could easily happen to any group deemed a "dangerous other". Indeed, America's own history proves it. At various times, there have been movements to exterminate Indigenes, Mormons, and Japanese. The genocide of the Indigenous Americans is most infamous, but they are far from alone. Anybody who is old enough to remember the interethnic wars of the Balkans in the 90s knows how friends suddenly became enemies, neighbor happily shooting neighbor despite once having seemingly erased old hatreds. Today, Jewish Americans have been shocked to find "allies" chanting "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" Never Again may ultimately prove to be hollow.

 

[Judge]

Interesting to discover my state has no such museum. Only a physical spot in Las Vegas dedicated to Holocaust victims. Yet according to statistics I found, it appears that Nevada has a higher Jewish population than Oregon.

Too bad, as I'd like to think all 50 states of the union would formally have at least one museum of this kind, so people won't ever forget. To be able to see and sense the reality of a bygone era that destroyed so many lives so needlessly.

"Nie wieder" - Never again. A message that hasn't apparently gotten through to everyone yet.

 

[The Pandector]

Great post. Thank you.

‘Dangerous other’ says so much. I remember the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, when the national memories of the Jewish holocaust were fresh and raw. At that time, my grandparents held various rental properties and watched their lifetime investments evaporate in areas where blacks were moving in and whites were moving out. In fact, Gramps was an unabashed bigot who didn’t like Indians, blacks or ‘japs’. They ultimately divested; not because Gramps disliked blacks, but because of the hard fact that integration laws had removed his control over whom he might rent to, which pummeled property values/rents. This legislation failed to make Gramps love black people. When the black population revolted in the Watts Riots, they repeated the folly of Augusta decades earlier, burning their own infrastructure to the ground and Totally Alienating law enforcement. This last is something I watched fester over the years, no doubt incomprehensible to blacks born in the interim. The LA riots were more of the same.

As a young person watching these things, I wondered at the things which cause a group of people to act so entirely against their own self interest.

SPOILER ALERT: Honest Opinion ahead.
Without drawing judgments, I see the same thing happening in the Middle East today. Events ultimately proved what was abundantly obvious to begin with: it would not be in Hamas’ best interest to launch a ground offensive against unarmed Israeli civilians. How could these people be convinced to commit such abject foolishness? I submit that it’s the same thing that moved them to do their work in such a grotesquely inhumane manner.

Another personal opinion/observation. Those humans did that to those other humans because yet other humans convinced them it was the right thing to do. Without this encouragement, few humans would wake, eat breakfast, go rape and mutilate dozens of other humans. I’m trying to get to the source of this encouragement, right?

But wait. Do we need to affix blame? The salient fact is that human beings can be manipulated into the most unthinkable behavior towards others. These behaviors comprise the most unimaginable epochs in human history. So, we might imagine that people would learn, but you know we don’t.

As a Christian - especially in this particular time - I am motivated to keep a cautious eye on the thermometer. The history of Christianity, as Jesus foretold, has been a history of persecution. This fact is often loudly denied, even as today we often hear the unbalanced and uneducated deny the fact of the Jewish Holocaust. But, facts are facts, and stubborn things at that.

So, I leave a question. What does one of these epic hate-fests look like in its infancy? Sure, we recognize them in hindsight, but the dead are already strewn around the landscape. When did the socially-acceptable slights morph into social approval to actually impact the lives of the victims? When did it move from acceptable to desirable to intimidate and subjugate the victims?

I believe that, if an individual can’t answer that question, then they ought to be supremely circumspect about that line they won’t know when they crossed. (Hint: If you find yourself feeling free to treat one group differently than you treat another, if in your mind you are excused from yielding a common courtesy to one group which you provide to another, to address a group with disdain or derision when you wouldn’t do that to another… look around and see who or what may be encouraging your nascent bigotry.). Because we are all susceptible to hate, and there is a bit of the Nazi sympathizer in each of us.

 

[Judge]

When did the socially-acceptable slights morph into social approval to actually impact the lives of the victims? When did it move from acceptable to desirable to intimidate and subjugate the victims?

Perpetually throughout history- from my own perspective, having been formally educated in totalitarian and authoritarian systems and constitutional law.

Based on a social dynamic where in eras of discontent those with allegations of being disenfranchised by society generate a "boogey-man" to blame and oppose, all capitalizing on human baser instincts to push an agenda inevitably involving persecution.

When obtaining a consensus through compromise yields to raw displays of power. Reflecting that baser instincts are ultimately more problematic than competing ideologies of all kinds.

That we remain a very menacing species unto ourselves.

 

[Shevek]

I wish more people knew that "the" Holocaust was very average in numbers killed and percentage of population. Museums hint at universal truths, but I've never seen details about any of the others included.

 

[Judge]

I wish more people knew that "the" Holocaust was very average in numbers killed and percentage of population. Museums hint at universal truths, but I've never seen details about any of the others included.

It does seem at times that other groups of persons murdered by the Nazis seem to go relatively unnoticed in comparison. Another grim statistic in reality.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-the-holocaust

 

[Shevek]

It does seem at times that other groups of persons murdered by the Nazis seem to go relatively unnoticed in comparison. Another grim statistic in reality.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-the-holocaust

Aye, Hans Asperger saved a few aspies, but a lot more got lumped in to get the count up to six million, along with various other "defectives" such as homosexuals. However, all those other Holocausts I refer to were not perpetrated by the German Nazi party. Many were perpetrated by European colonizers, but there are also plenty of home-grown civil wars that killed millions.

 

[Judge]

Aye, Hans Asperger saved a few aspies, but a lot more got lumped in to get the count up to six million, along with various other "defectives" such as homosexuals. However, all those other Holocausts I refer to were not perpetrated by the German Nazi party. Many were perpetrated by European colonizers, but there are also plenty of home-grown civil wars that killed millions.

Don't forget the Turks regarding the Armenians and Kurdish peoples. Or the United States of America. And Rwanda....Cambodia...perhaps even Sudan. And "ethnic cleansing" in what was once Yugoslavia that amounted to attempted genocide. And the Soviet Union relative to forced collectivization and the Kulaks. Some consider China's "Great Leap Forward" and their oppression of the Uyghurs to be genocidal policy as well. And then some of my Irish relatives have some rather harsh theories about the Irish Potato Famine. There's also a question of Myanmar's civil war against the Rohingya people.

Sadly much of the world isn't listening to anyone saying, "Never Again". A lot more such museums to be eventually built.