Teach the Horror

In Berlin, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe does not, at first glance, look like much. At its most literal, surface level, it consists of 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae," placed along a sloping area, with varying heights, organized into rows along two axes. These unassuming structures don't in of themselves convey much, if any, information, or indeed, even emotional weight.

During and after their construction, the stelae attracted their share of controversy, vandalism, and criticism. Teenagers played on them. Neo-Nazis repeatedly spray-painted them. Users of the Grindr hookup app used them as a backdrop for their profile pictures. In the New Yorker, Richard Brody wrote:

"...the memorial, as imposing and as memorable as it may be in itself, hardly serves the function for which it was intended...The mollifying solemnity of pseudo-universal abstractions puts a great gray sentiment in the place of actual memory."

His point is well-taken. Yet as with most things, the true power of the Memorial lies beneath the surface, quite literally in this case. Less visited but far more powerful is the Memorial's Information Centre, housed underneath the site.

Inside this quiet place, exhibits take pains to bring the suffering of the Holocaust into full clarity for anyone who takes the time to listen. In talking about the victims, there are three main thrusts of argument:

1. They were people.

It may seem obvious, but driving home the humanity of the victims is of paramount importance to understanding the full scale of genocide.

2. They were families.

Expanding upon humanity, this is where empathy begins. Consider the first environment of a newborn: in a caring household, we learn our basic empathy from our family members. If we are to recognize the pain of genocide, we must see the victims as people who had families as well.

3. They were murdered.

This core point is driven home in the title of the Memorial; literally, "to the murdered Jews of Europe." It emphasizes the act of genocide as a crime of the personal, and not merely the arcane. In courts of International Law, the willful destruction of thousands takes on an incomprehensible, mythical status. An act of murder, however, remains personal, and horrific.

And these points all connect to the main theme, as stated below:

For my part, I found the entire experience overwhelming.

In some rooms, they displayed family portraits of victims before the rise of the Nazis. In some cases, entire families were obliterated, their histories cut off. One portrait section consisted of a blank wall, to show how the Nazis not only decimated the Perman and Boltjanskij families, they also made sure to destroy their photo albums and heirlooms.

Another space was reserved for the final correspondence of some victims. Transcriptions of letters and telegrams, often sent in desperation (one even flung from a train bound for a concentration camp), painted a heartbreaking picture of people resigned to their fates. In their final moments, these victims sought only to convey their love and hope to the ones they would soon be leaving behind.

And in one large, empty room, dimly lit, a speaker solemnly read out the names of the murdered, with short tales of their lives and homes. A single informative plaque mentioned that, in order to complete a single narration of all six million victims, the speaker would need six years, seven months, and twenty-seven days.

By the time I reached the last room, I was in tears.

SO WHY BURY THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF HISTORY UNDERGROUND, OUT OF SIGHT?

This is a question not just for the Memorial, but for the world at large. In light of the recent events taking place in the United States and in parts of Europe (Hungary in particular), people have been evoking the ghost of Hitler's Germany with far greater seriousness and frequency than in past years. Godwin's Law, the immutable rule of the internet that someone, somewhere, will eventually call you a Nazi, has rightly been put on hold with the creep of modern Fascism. Yet all of this has had little effect on those supporting the rise of Right-Wing fanatics. Why?

The answer, I believe, lies in no small part in how we've chosen to bury the Holocaust, both literally and figuratively. In the schoolrooms of North America, the lessons we learn about World War II are all chest-thumping military might. The proliferation of "alt-history" fiction is an echo of this; we learn about who won what battle, where, and how it "could have gone the other way" (i.e. Hitler would've won WW2 if he'd only just). This perverse fantasizing not only diminishes the actual sacrifice of combatants, it fetishizes it. War becomes glorious and celebratory, military service something to be played at and fantasized about.

We learn nothing of the causes of genocide, only the righteous morality with which we confronted it. Too late, of course, to actually save any of those six million dead, but certainly just in time for the rise of a uniquely American brand of global justice. It is this monochromatic gaze of black-and-white, good and evil, that prevents our modern inability to recognize the evil brewing within our own borders.

Suppose we had actually brought the true horror of genocide to the fore in our classrooms, instead of languishing in the might and justice of our military cause? Questioning these teachings instantly labels one as "not supporting the troops," yet I would argue that the true honouring of sacrifice would be to create a world where their deployment is never needed again.

So too with the history of colonization: we learn of the explorers, Jacques Cartier, Samuel Champlagne, Christopher Columbus...we learn nothing of the Sixties Scoop, of Residential Schools, of forced cultural genocide and children stolen from their homes to "have the Indian beat out of them."

The values we place on history have repercussions in modern dialogue. The more we focus on Nationalistic Pride, and the more we hide and cover up our shames and our horror, the more likely we are to repeat them. It begins by truly honouring the victims of history. It ends when we ensure a future where there are no more.