I heard an interview on NPR with Elie Wiesel, the famed author, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor, on Thursday. He was asked for his reactions to the shooting which occurred at the US Holocaust Museum on Wednesday.
Of course, Wiesel said, he was shocked.
But he also asserted that the actions of a deranged Holocaust-denier did not represent a growing body of opinion.
In fact, quite the contrary. More people acknowledge and are conversant with the facts surrounding Adolf Hitler's extermination of millions of Jews today than has been true for much of the past six decades.
That knowledge is important. For one thing, it reminds us all of the beastliness of which we human beings, looking for scapegoats rather than mutual progress, are capable.
But knowledge of the Holocaust also motivates us to actively oppose prejudice and ethnic cleansing every time it's proposed or happns.
I've been to the Holocaust Museum twice. I found its presentation of Hitler's "final solution" to be factual, disturbing, and deeply moving.
But I also found it inspiring.
That's because at the end of each tour of the place, visitors find themselves in an amphitheater where, in a video presentation, interviews with Holocaust survivors are shown. The survivors tell of being liberated from the camps, of the happy lives they were able to live after the horrors they'd experienced, the kindness of their liberators, and their determination to lead lives of love and courage so that what happened to them wouldn't happen to others.
It would be a tragedy if the action of one madman prevents people from going to the Holocaust Museum. That's because the shooting on Wednesday demonstrates how much we need the place. By showing people, especially young people, the horrors of hatred and the preciousness of every human life, the Museum can, hopefully, prevent the very madness that came there this week.
Thank you for this post. I did not hear that interview and will go looking for it now.
ReplyDeleteAs I read what you wrote, and thought about the opinion shared w/a group of us last night at the AJC Cleveland chapter installation of new board members, it became so clear to me that Jews really do choose to focus on where we go from here. We don't forget or want others to forget - it is part of history and memory. But in a way that it should be used to improve and do better - not as a bludgeon. My experience - and I speak only for myself - is that this is very very much true as I think back to the sermons I've heard and the books I've read, the commentators I've listened to over the years.
If you've seen the movie, Walk on Water - this theme is in there too. Yes, of course - there are people and elements w/in each of us I imagine that feel vengence about the results of hatred, as we've suffered them. But when we choose how to act, we choose actions that will neutralize, undermine or otherwise counter that violence and hate.
It makes me feel really good. (And OF COURSE I know that Jews are not alone in this approach, and that of course there are Jews who don't take this approach - I'm just saying that in general, I do think that that's the approach our religion tends to favor.)