Sunday, September 14
It could happen again...
At the entrance to the exhibition of the Holocaust Memorial is a quote by Primo Levi that says something to the effect of "What matters is that it happened and therefore it could happen again". The memorial is really something everyone ought to see at least once. It not only makes the past atrocities tangible and immediate, but as a piece of art or sculpture it is quite breathtaking.
We let the girls run around and play a game of hide and seek among the monolithic grey columns for a bit. Despite the obvious gravity of the memorial, there is a sense of playfulness about it. People were having fun darting in and out of sight of each other. The massive installation covers a city block. Rows of undulating rectangular stone columns in varying sizes. It's random and systematic at the same time. The game with the kids began innocently enough but soon became scary. One second you could see people down every aisle, T & S were laughing - the next it was empty - row after row, aisle after aisle. And then in an instant the people emerged from behind the columns as if they had always been there. At one moment I wanted to stop the game - what if the girls got lost? It could happen.
I am reading an excellent book right now by Bernard Schlink called "The Reader". It's a meditation on German guilt. It's spare and painfully lucid. Here's a quote:
"What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews?...Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose? ... But that some few would be convicted and punished while we of the second generation were silenced by revulsion, shame, and guilt - was that all there was to it now?"
At the risk of sounding hollow and invective, I have to say - it is happening again - this time in Sudan. The world sits and idly watches a genocide take place from the warm comfort of our living rooms. Inured to the horrors by the dull hum of our plasma TVs. I guess I don't have to get into that now.
We are all guilty.
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The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is indeed breathtaking and wonderfully contemplative, but I disagree about its being tangible and immediate. I found both the memorial and the Holocaust Museum were disappointingly abstract. Perhaps I'd have felt differently if only the memorial were abstract and the museum were informative, but there seems to be a severe reluctance to confront the realities underlying the holocaust. (Not so with individuals our age who, touchingly and unnecessarily, seem to bear the weight of the grandparents' guilt.)
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