 |
|
Daylife/Getty Images
|
|
|
On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, two experts on Auschwitz argue for and against the idea that the former Nazi death camp should be allowed to crumble away.
ROBERT JAN VAN PELT, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR
Many Auschwitz survivors have told me that a visit to the camp can teach little to those who were not imprisoned there.
Their view is best summarised in the text of Alain Resnais’ celebrated movie Night and Fog (1955), written by the camp survivor Jean Cayrol. As the camera pans across the empty barracks, the narrator warns the viewer that these remains do not reveal the wartime reality of “endless, uninterrupted fear”. The barracks offer no more than “the shell, the shadow”.
Should the world marshal enormous resources to preserve empty shells and faint shadows?
WLADYSLAW BARTOSZEWSKI, CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL AUSCHWITZ COUNCIL
The only people with a full and undeniable right to decide the future of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial are the hundreds of thousands murdered in this concentration camp. The prisoners whom I met as prisoner number 4427, when I was detained in Auschwitz between September 1940 and April 1941, are among them.
To some I owe my survival. They saved me, guided not only by the impulse of the heart, which was heroic at the time. They also believed that the survivors will bear witness to the tragedy which in Auschwitz-Birkenau became the fate of so many Europeans.
But the moment when there will be no more eyewitnesses left is inexorably approaching. What remains is the belief that when the people are gone, “the stones will cry out”.
Because we preserve an archive of evil we remind and remember what that evil was and did to the world. There is no less reason to preserve Auschwitz than to polish and paint the Statue of Liberty or temper the air in the Louvre.
# 60 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, “Just like Auschwitz, eh? ”
Nope. Who said it was like Auschwitz?
Adjust meds before reading posts. It’ll help ya.
#61, Cow-Paddy,
Nope. Who said it was like Auschwitz?
You did. By your logic, any comparison automatically means you said it.
Anyways, I don’t see where this monument has helped people to learn from past mistakes. Genocide and democide continue unabated.
# 60 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, “Just like Auschwitz, eh? ”
Well? Have the drugs worn off yet?
Paddy had to find some way of linking a Democrat (FDR) to the Nazi’s, however tenuous or demeaning.
# 65 Hugh Ripper
Actually, if I’d really wanted to link ’em, I’d of posted this:
One day in January 1942, Roosevelt proclaimed to a shocked Crowley: “Leo, you know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance. It is up to both of you [Crowley and Henry Morganthau, a Jew and Secretary of the Treasury] to go along with anything that I want at this time.”
Well you already DID link em…
“# 15 gmknobl said, “Of course, one good place of these should be kept as a reminder, not only of what the Nazis did but of places like Gitmo ”
I don’t know if they still exist but, here’s a picture of a concentration camp set up by FDR in the CA desert for imprisoning American citizens.”
…so I fail to see the point of your latest irrelevancy.
# 67 Hugh Ripper said, on January 27th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Well you already DID link em…
“…, not only of what the Nazis did but of places like Gitmo ”
I don’t know if they still exist but, here’s a picture of a concentration camp set up by FDR …”
Oh, I see your confusion. I was linking to Bush’s Gitmo, not Nazi’s.
#68 Fair nuff. My Bad.
Still a pretty stupid comparison, however. 😛
These places weren’t meant to endure. They were meant to do a job and then vanish.
It will be seriously expensive to keep these places up. If you want to contribute check around. I’m sure somebody will take your money and some of them will even use it wisely.
There is no comparison to the camps where millions died. I went to Dachau 20 years ago and I still have shivers up my spine when I think about it. The Holocaust camps must be protected. A couple of years ago the U-Tennessee men’s basketball team went to Europe to play preseason warm up games and there is a story they visited a concentration camp on the trip and not a single one of young/big/thug ball players didnt break down and cry. Yeah. its that powerful.