Remembrance of the sins of the past and especially of despotic and criminal regimes such as fascism and communism is not destined only to the Germans but to the whole world in order to fight any repeat of the same, therefore the usefulness of maintaining the mentioned sites
Neil McGregor wrote in his book „Germany-Memories of a Nation“ a fitting idea:
Nobody got it so far to bring the Holocaust into a fitting historic narrative. The Holocaust is a history broken, a complete failure of the German civilization. And can not be satisfyingly explained or put in perspective. It has to be remembered and put under scrutiny by every generation anew.
That is why the extreme right is tempted to make it a ‚normal, but cruel‘ part of a but longer and successful history.
Which makes it easier to oversee that the Nazis deemed certain human beings unworthy of living. Not for what people did, but for what they were.
Time is the ultimate trivializer, but with time should come some balance. To what extent does the Schuldkultur/Errinerungskultur offer cover for the Israeli atrocities against Gaza?
I lived in Berlin during the seventies when young Germans of my generation were just beginning to learn the extent of what their parents' generation had wrought.
I also saw in East Germany many memorials to the struggles against fascism that I never saw in the West.
We in the United States could learn much from how Germany has (hopefully) learned /is learning from its past. Our reigns of terror spanned far more than 12 years. We are only very slowly coming to terms with it and even that movement is being hyper-criticized.
Our past teaches us many lessons, some painful, some joyous. We should not let one overshadow the other.
Considering the Nazi treatment of the Jews was used to justify the creation of Israel and all the ongoing protests it's very wise to keep these memories alight. Unfortunately a bunch of concrete blocks does a very poor job of arguing that we shouldn't do that again, against well-written and well-researched social media posts arguing that the events perpetrated by the Nazis weren't at the scale we have been told they were. The concrete does a very poor job countering these narratives.
Welcome back, Jörg!
Remembrance of the sins of the past and especially of despotic and criminal regimes such as fascism and communism is not destined only to the Germans but to the whole world in order to fight any repeat of the same, therefore the usefulness of maintaining the mentioned sites
My feelings exactly
Neil McGregor wrote in his book „Germany-Memories of a Nation“ a fitting idea:
Nobody got it so far to bring the Holocaust into a fitting historic narrative. The Holocaust is a history broken, a complete failure of the German civilization. And can not be satisfyingly explained or put in perspective. It has to be remembered and put under scrutiny by every generation anew.
That is why the extreme right is tempted to make it a ‚normal, but cruel‘ part of a but longer and successful history.
Which makes it easier to oversee that the Nazis deemed certain human beings unworthy of living. Not for what people did, but for what they were.
Time is the ultimate trivializer, but with time should come some balance. To what extent does the Schuldkultur/Errinerungskultur offer cover for the Israeli atrocities against Gaza?
I lived in Berlin during the seventies when young Germans of my generation were just beginning to learn the extent of what their parents' generation had wrought.
I also saw in East Germany many memorials to the struggles against fascism that I never saw in the West.
We in the United States could learn much from how Germany has (hopefully) learned /is learning from its past. Our reigns of terror spanned far more than 12 years. We are only very slowly coming to terms with it and even that movement is being hyper-criticized.
Our past teaches us many lessons, some painful, some joyous. We should not let one overshadow the other.
Considering the Nazi treatment of the Jews was used to justify the creation of Israel and all the ongoing protests it's very wise to keep these memories alight. Unfortunately a bunch of concrete blocks does a very poor job of arguing that we shouldn't do that again, against well-written and well-researched social media posts arguing that the events perpetrated by the Nazis weren't at the scale we have been told they were. The concrete does a very poor job countering these narratives.