Do countries forget or choose not to remember?

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5/20/08

Today we were watching a film about Nuremberg. It said that none of the people tried pled guilty. That is false, because Speer did. Is Nuremberg trying to look better to its visitors who are not studying history? It was only off by a little, but sometimes those little falsehoods can lead to something bigger. I do not assume that riots are going to break out because someone actually did give an admission of guilt, but there is still something to be said there. Similarly, the video at Dachau said that the residents of the town had no idea what had been happening and rushed to help bury the bodies. How could the residents of Dachau not known what was going on.? People must have known! The smell of burning flesh, the screams, the huge trains full of people coming in while no one ever left: all these were unavoidable signs that something horrible was happening behind those gates. However, people make livings of working now at the concentration camp giving tours and at the museum. Giving these small falsehoods makes the people working look better. The cities are still making an income off the suffering of others. I really do not know how I feel about that.

I loved that we got to sit down with the leaders of the Jewish community today. Since I have been in college I have been studying human rights. The thing that has kept me from nightmares every night and from being constantly horribly depressed is the fact that we do not talk about individual victims. It is numbers, facts, dates and the oppressors. That is it. Now, we are talking to the individuals who had to be separated from their families during the war, and these men were lucky to have someone to go back to after the war was over. They saw Nazi Germany and what it did to the people first hand. They saw what the Nuremberg Laws really entailed as one of the men’s father lost his business because of it. I thought it was interesting that both men returned to Nuremberg, a newly flat city, after the war; one because he wanted to, the other because of a sense of family obligation. Also, I was shocked that they said that neither of them ever doubted their faith. If some regime started going around and killing all the Catholics, I would definitely second guess my religion. Plus, I know that my family would really be targeted since my dad is a deacon. I am really impressed by how dedicated they are to their faith even through the hardship it brought them.

So things to remember is going to turn into things I am looking forward to when I go home today since we had been talking about it.
Things I miss: Free water with lemon, free refills, no VAT, air conditioning, mom’s cooking, Target, things that AREN’T carbs, ORANGES, signs in English, going to church, menus in English, and most importantly, the reading of non depressing books. Don’t get me wrong, Europe is awesome… just some things I miss from home.

Peace to all of you who read this!

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