Holocaust Rememberance 60 Years Later

A week ago was the dedication of the new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany. The memorial was created by U.S. Architect Peter Eisenman and is made of 2,711 grey slabs of varying height that are formed into a tight grid. Visitors are encouraged to move between the blocks. Different reports I have read talk about children playing hide and seek among them which makes me smile. They are often described as being like the headstones on grave sites, but after seeing pictures, I am loath to compare it to the beautiful cemeteries where my grandparents and loved ones bodies are laid.

I learn today that the term Shoah, is actually the Hebrew word meaning "desolation" and has come to be the preferred Jewish term for the Holocaust. Until seeing this on a website today I believed it only referred to Spielberg's Foundation that preserved the memories of those who were there be they persecutor or persecuted. For both sides have much to teach us as to why such atrocities not only happened, but continued to happen unabated by anyone for so long.

It has been 60 years since the end of WW II and although no media service has had the audacity to label anything else a “World” War since that most tragic time, I am unsure if mankind has learned as much from it as once was hoped. Perhaps we have not listened hard enough to our elders; perhaps we are doomed to continue repeating the same mistakes of the past for power, for money, for revenge. I think the most startling moment in my adult life recently was realizing how many deniers there are out there. On the internet there are websites dedicated to the “lie of the Holocaust”. That this could happen in the modern age and be substantiated and upheld on the technological medium of the internet is incredibly disturbing. Thankfully, there are equally outraged and determined people arguing with these boneheads (who are just plain useless to argue against for the most part) and proving through meticulous science and CSI-like evidence gathering that the deniers are WRONG HEADED and IGNORANT.

Admittedly, I am without that kind of patience and my anger would most definitely get the better of me. More then that I am ashamed to see that there is denial about genocide going on right now in our very midst and that our government is more worried about oil then about civil wars in developing countries. To think that people are still being murdered in this world for religious beliefs, race, gender, sexual preference, in most continents of the world. People are still being persecuted on a daily basis for all of those and more (age, looks, weight) in our very country.

Do I, like my grandparents who lost so many in the Shoah, still believe that people are essentially good? Yes, but it does not mean that I don’t expect more from them and from myself.