Holocausts

Some days have passed since the tragedy at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. -- enough time, I hope, to allow me to publish a piece which I, by coincidence, had hoped to write that very day. (Needless to say, murderers like James van Brunn are the reason why I sometimes hope that my disbelief in Hell is misguided.)

Not long ago, I proofread a student's essay on the museum, an essay which raised some interesting points I had never before considered. That essay informs this post.

In 1978, Jimmy Carter set up a commission to direct the creation of a Holocaust Museum on the Washington Mall. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in 1993.

I certainly think that Holocaust museums should exist in a wide variety of locales. But why place one on the Mall, home to the American History Museum, the National Air and Space Museum and so many patriotic memorials?

The Nazi genocide occurred in Europe. The United States was neither victim nor victimizer during that tragedy.

Those who visit the Holocaust Museum probably come away thinking: "Thank God we live in a democracy; such things can't happen here." But such things did happen here.

At the time of Carter's proposal, the Mall did not have a museum dedicated to conveying the true scope and nature of slavery. Neither was there an institution on the Mall preserving the memory of the genocide of this land's original inhabitants. Was it not a strange decision to highlight Germany's shame and not our own?

To this day, the Mall does not have a museum which tells the story of slavery the way the Holocaust Museum tells the story of Europe's murderous racism. In fact, I don't believe that such a museum exists anywhere. A National Museum of African American History and Culture is in the planning stages, but it will not focus on this nation's original sin.

A National Museum of the American Indian opened in 2004. A comparison of the architecture tells a revealing story.

The NMAI is one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed in this country, with graceful, sinuous lines that evoke the contours of rolling hills and curving rivers. By contrast, the Holocaust Museum is deliberately forbidding, unfriendly, unlovely; it is a fortress. Within, the intentionally ugly exhibits are meant to replicate the experience of being trapped in a ghetto and sent to a concentration camp.

The NMAI does not immerse the visitor in horror. Far from it: The emphasis is on celebrating Native cultures and artifacts. A foreigner entering this building might come away with the impression that Indians have usually received fair treatment from whites.

Two current exhibits:

Ramp it Up celebrates the vibrancy, creativity, and controversy of American Indian skate culture. Skateboarding combines demanding physical exertion with design, graphic art, filmmaking, and music to produce a unique and dynamic culture...

Our Universes focuses on indigenous cosmologies—worldviews and philosophies related to the creation and order of the universe—and the spiritual relationship between humankind and the natural world. Organized around the solar year, the exhibition introduces visitors to indigenous peoples from across the Western Hemisphere who continue to express the wisdom of their ancestors in celebration, language, art, spirituality, and daily life.

By contrast, the Holocaust Museum forces visitors to live out a nightmare, to confront unimaginable obscenities. The picture to your right gives but one example.

When the National Museum of the American Indian was still being planned, a writer named Carter Camp (of the Ponca Nation) expressed his disgust with the direction of the project:

Americans sensibilities will have been spared at the cost of continuing depredations against Indian people. Americans will go to the Holocaust Museum and be told the horrible truths of what Hitler and the Nazi's did to the Jews. They will cry for the victims and mourn with the survivors, in the end they too will be determined to protect the Jewish people from a repeat of the Holocaust. All thinking people support this. They will also be comforted (and exempted) to know that America defeated the Nazi, stopped the killing and helped Jews return to their homeland

Next, Americans can walk over to the museum of 'Indian' history. They will be amazed and pleased at the beauty of our past. Scenes of tipis, tanning hides and pastoral living will hide the blood covering every-square-inch of America. Our blood. They will go home marveling at our ancient art and beauty and a little sad we had to pass into history because our buffalo suddenly "vanished."

It hurts me to think about the many atrocities we may have been able to prevent had we Indian traditionalists, (for whom the American Holocaust still burns freshly) been able to tell a true history of our own people. I envy my Jewish relatives for serving their people so well. Our Indian leaders have seen fit to sell our history so the Whiteman can bend it to fit the myth they use to avoid history’s judgment. Better for tourism in Washington D.C. too.

The Native American community is not a monolith. I am sure that quite a few agree with Carter Camp, while quite a few may believe that the NMAI should continue to focus primarily on the positive. Which stance is correct? I'm not an Indian, so that's not a call for me to make; I'm not even sure that a correct answer exists. Perhaps two museums...?

Visitors to the Holocaust Museum will encounter another anomaly. When Jimmy Carter convened his commission, the directive was to create a museum dedicated to all of the victims of the Holocaust, and to all victims of other genocides. Nobody really knows how many non-Jews perished in the Nazi camps. Simon Weisenthal believed that the numbers of Jewish and non-Jewish victims were roughly equal. Proportionally, the gypsies suffered losses roughly equivalent to Jewish losses.

One would expect an American museum to represent those other victims. Yet that is not the case.

The Museum does make some reference to the crimes committed against homosexuals, but the sufferings of Gypsies, slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others go unmentioned. Moreover, the Museum was originally intended to include a permanent display on the Armenian genocide. Those plans faded -- due, it is said, to pressure from Israel, which boasted good relations with Turkey. In recent times, the Museum has devoted some space to the general topic of genocide -- for example, visitors may now see an exhibit on Darfur. That exhibit is not permanent.

When the Museum was in its planning stages, Rabbi Seymour Siegel that any attempt to include the Gypsy tragedy would be "cockamamie." Elie Wiesel (who was one of the chief planners) decided to concentrate solely on the Jewish experience. He defended that stance with these words:

...the universality of the Holocaust lies in its uniqueness. If I speak as a Jew about Jews, of course I speak about others as well. If I were to stop speaking about Jews, I would betray both the others and my own people.

An admirable sentiment -- if Wiesel is talking about one of his books. But a museum built on the Mall is not a personal statement; it reflects national decision-making. One does not expect to see "the upright pronoun" in a museum's mission statement.

A Holocaust Memorial is planned for Brooklyn. When various parties suggested that the Memorial also pay heed to the sufferings of Gypsies, gays and other non-Jewish victims, New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind offered words that were far less eloquent that Wiesel's. In fact, Hikind got downright ugly:

To include these other groups diminishes their memory," said Hikind, as he stood next to his 89-year-old mother, Frieda.

[...]

"These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust," Hikind said following a press conference at the memorial. "It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims."

Actually, and as I keep reminding my readers, you can compare anything with anything else. But anyone who would label Hitler's non-Jewish victims as "political prisoners" is incomparably callous.

I honestly don't know the right answer to these issues. My intent has been to engender thought and, perhaps, discussion.