A comment about memorials
I want to comment a bit about a facebook post I recently saw, showing the view down a railroad track leading to the Aushwitz Concentration camp in Germany.
The Holocaust and the Confederacy
There has been a lot of attention paid in recent weeks and years to the preservation and/or removal and/or destruction of memorials to the past, its ideals and its participants.
I am assuming the the original writer of this post on the left is arguing that, since there are still standing memorials the Holocaust, the monuments to the confederacy should remain. OK. Let’s go there. Your comparison, not mine.
Let’s compare the time in history that these relative memorials are referring to. Both represent a time of war, and indeed, a civil war, in which a certain segment of a people were subjugated, families ripped apart, and ruthlessly killed. If your response to my above statement is “Wait a Dixie minute, I’m not talking about slavery, I’m talking about the Confederacy.” Please note the text of the post. “Because Jews …. wanted it preserved”. Have you asked what the descendants of Confederate slaves thought about preserving Confederate monuments? I think we are now hearing their voices, As to the voices of descendants of the Confederate soldiers, using the above post comparison, how many memorials do you see to the Nazi dead? Both parties represent the vanquished in a horrifying war. I have not seen any Nazi memorials, at least in a public square. If you know of any, please let me know.
A word about context
I have not yet visited the Auschwitz Memorial. I plan to, soon. When I have talked to people that have, there is a sense of revulsion, humility, and quiet horror. I have not heard of anyone driving pickup trucks through the crowds with swastika flags displayed. At least I hope there will never be. If there were, I think most intelligent human beings would see that for what it was, extreme racism and inhumanity. Much like Dylan Roof, shown above posing proudly with his artifact. You see, the Confederate monuments, were for the most part, installed and dedicated in the public square during the Jim Crow era. Funded by the Daughters of the Confederacy, whom it could be assumed, had the intention of perpetuating and not atoning for the injustices and atrocities committed. Is they history, or are they propaganda?.. Context is everything.
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe by Peter Heisenmen in Berlin, on the former grounds of the Reichstag, where Hitler’s troops marched in parade.
If any confederate monuments are to remain in the public square, the context needs to be changed.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in Berlin sits on the former parade grounds of the Reichstag, where swastikas once hung, and goose stepping troops marched in front of Hitler and his Nazi Party. The monoliths, each one unique, represent the trains lined up taking prisoners to extermination camps. Admittedly controversial for its abstract and seemingly impersonal nature,
Many people felt that the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe should include inscriptions, artifacts, and historical information. To meet that need, architect Eisenman designed a visitor's information center beneath the Memorial's stones. A series of rooms covering thousands of square feet memorializes individual victims with names and biographies. The spaces are named Room of Dimensions, the Room of Families, the Room of Names, and the Room of Sites. Jackie Craven, 2019
Perhaps a way to both preserve and educate viewers to Confederate monuments, and memorials to the devastation of slavery, is to create commissions of artists and historians to change the context of the now threatened statues, that were once constructed and dedicated during the Jim Crow era. Commission artists that are descendants of slaves to work side by side with descendants of slave owners to create a new dialog about this time in our nation’s history. On the grounds of where the first slave in the new world was auctioned, in Hampton Virginia. On the grounds of one of our own holocausts, in the Greenwood section of Tulsa Oklahoma. If you don’t know about this, look it up.
A nation that desires to be great again needs to look honestly and bravely at the sins of its past, and come to grips with how those sins can be atoned for, so that they are never repeated.