America, El Memorioso
Matt Yglesias doesn’t like the World War II memorial in D.C. Nor the Korean War memorial. But, clearly, if we’re going to start tearing down Washington memorials, first on the list to go has got to be the Holocaust Museum. It was one of the greatest crimes in history, but America was neither a perpetrator, nor a victim, nor the ground on which the crime was committed, and our role as rescuer is much exaggerated. It’s a valuable museum, but its presence on the Mall is just bizarre.
Wow, getting into edgy territory there, aren’t we, Noah? You might just whip up your fellow right-wingers into apocalyptic frenzy…
Am I right in understanding that what you’re saying is that the museum is valuable, as is, but it has no place in the Mall? Where as what Yglesias seems to be saying is that the current WWII memorial belongs in the Mall but not in its present form …
— scritic · Jun 2, 04:16 PM · #
Yep – that’s about right.
— Noah Millman · Jun 2, 04:47 PM · #
But of course the Holocaust Museum is not on the Mall. It is close to the Mall, in fact it is across the street from the Mall, but it is not on it. Is your point that the Holocaust Museum has no place in downtown DC? No place in the Capital City at all? Or can in be in Washington, but just not that close to the Mall? What exactly is your point?
— Gary Imhoff · Jun 2, 04:53 PM · #
How about the fact that the Holocaust Museum utterly disrespects the event and its victims by making the Holocaust into a theme park ride? I don’t know if this is still the case but when I went you literally got an identity number and the “persona” of a victim. That is an unbelievably crass thing, and a poor statement on Americans— we can’t absorb anything without the trappings of stimulation and entertainment.
— Lifafa Das · Jun 2, 05:24 PM · #
Gary:
There’s a good column from a number of years ago by I forget who – Richard Cohen, perhaps? – about the incongruity of the presence of the Holocaust Museum, a memorial to a foreign crime and a foreign tragedy, in its current location, when events more central to American history are not similarly memorialized. I basically agree with that sentiment. I think the current placement has a political meaning: it assimilates the Holocaust to the American story and the American experience. And I don’t think that political point is true either to the memory of the Holocaust or to the American story. And I can imagine that, if I were descended from American slaves, it would stick in my craw pretty hard – which resentment, in turn, would probably drive political pressures to make the Holocaust Museum itself more “universal” and, hence, undermine its own witness and its own integrity.
If I had my druthers, I would have built a Museum of Slavery and Anti-Slavery on (or near) the Mall and, if we want to have a Holocaust Museum in downtown D.C., put it nearer the State Department.
My apologies for describing the museum as being “on the Mall” – I don’t live in D.C., and have not visited much, and I recalled it as being on the Mall when last I saw it, so I guess I’m either slightly off in my geography or slightly wrong about what “on the Mall” means, or both.
— Noah Millman · Jun 2, 05:29 PM · #
<i>our role as rescuer is much exaggerated</i>
I suggested you do some reading on the history of WWII and talk to veterans like my late grandfather (ok he’s unavailable but you can still find others) who helped liberate the concentration camps. Beyond that the American forces were instrumental in stopping and then pushing back the Nazi advance such that liberation could be achieved. Greatly exaggerated? Hardly.
— krizoitz · Jun 2, 09:04 PM · #
krizoitz:
By “exaggerated” I didn’t mean “nonexistent.” America’s contribution to winning the war against Nazi Germany was, obviously, enormous, and, obviously, greatly to our country’s credit.
But the overwhelming bulk of the fighting in the European theater took place on the eastern front, between Nazi and Soviet forces. The Soviets liberated all the major death camps: Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, and of course Auschwitz. Of course, by the time Soviet forces reached them, these camps were largely evacuated by the fleeing Nazis, the inmates having mostly been either exterminated or force-marched into Germany (where, indeed, some survivors were liberated by American and British forces). But the fact remains: the war in Europe was won in the east, and the east was where the Nazi killing fields were.
Was Overlord crucial in enabling the Soviets to break the back of German resistance in the east? It’s possible, though I doubt it; I suspect that, had D-Day failed, the Allies would have won the war anyway, albeit a bit more slowly. But even if one wants to make that claim, it still amounts to saying that the allied landing was a vital diversion rather than the main thrust.
Was liberating the death camps an important allied war aim? No – and I don’t know any historian who claims it was. Germany, for ideological reasons of its own, diverted men and materiel to the cause of annihilating the Jewish people. The allies were, properly, focused on winning the war.
Americans did not have the opportunity to save individual Jewish civilians that civilians in Poland, Denmark, Bulgaria, France, etc. did, because America was not occupied by the Nazis. But that was part of my point: Americans were peripheral to the Holocaust. And, in fact, on the diplomatic front, America was among the less helpful of the allied countries in terms of trying to save Jewish civilians. There are lots of countries with more reason to memorialize the Holocaust because they played more of a role in rescuing those who were its victims.
No one is belittling the American contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany, certainly not me. Members of my family (not my grandfather) served honorably in WWII, and other members of my family (including my mother, and hence me) would not be here today if the Allied war effort had failed. But lots of Americans think we defeated the Nazis basically single-handedly, and that we fought the war to stop the Holocaust. Neither statement is even close to the truth.
— Noah Millman · Jun 2, 09:45 PM · #
I agree with you almost entirely, Mr. Millman. I also agree with the commenter who said you are getting into edgy territory, though I don’t understand what he meant by “whipping right-wingers into apocalyptic frenzy.” My only disagreement with you is that I think the Holocaust already has been assimilated, quite ahistorically as you point out, into America’s collective historical narrative. It’s one of the few things most Americans know, or think they know, about WWII, and WWII is something of an American civic religion.
— cyrus · Jun 3, 04:07 PM · #