Today, after decades of refusing to do so, I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial.
In theory, I was going to meet a researcher to see photographs of Linkuva, but he called just as I got to the museum to say he has Covid. And so I did what I never intended to do, and toured the museum.
Let me say that its existence is absolutely necessary. I'm not in any way suggesting that it isn't. But is it necessary for Jews to go and see it? For years, I've held that it isnt; that we know the horrors and the history and that choosing not to go doesn't mean we're turning our back on that history. It just means we don't feel the need to see exhibits about the attrocitues.
Today didn't change my mind.
I know many Jews who've found it meaningful, and I don't begrudge them that experience. But, for me, to see pictures of our corpses heaped up on the grounds of extermination camps while large tour groups of non-Jews pushed me out of the way—their children complaining, their teenagers playing phone games—was an exercise in pointless abjection. (Why would anyone take toddlers to this place? But they do.)
Unlike walking the grounds of Mauthausen—which was a profound experience for me—there is no immediacy or scale. The Shoah is reduced to a thing one can walk through in an hour and come back out of again an ocean away from where it happened. It's too crowded to stop and reflect on what one sees, and the crush of bodies makes lingering at any one story or image impossible. And because as Jews we know the bigger story, the only value would be in those individual stories, those single striking images.
It also suggests to me a problem I've been thinking about a lot as I finish this book: when we carve the Shoah out of the centuries of European antisemitism, we suggest it was an anomaly, a thing which happened once and ended. And I think this is part of where the great disconnect in the current discourse comes from. Jews know we are fighting for a place of safety after millenia of constantly fleeing pogroms, expulsions, and attempted genocides. Other people, who only know the bit of our history in the middle of the 20th century, think we're worried about the return of this singular moment of violence, and do not know the larger, more pertinent history of Jewish life throughout the global diaspora.
That disconnect is at the heart of many of the most disheartening conversations I've had lately; conversations that end with me asking where the more than 7 million Israeli Jews will go if Israel is destroyed. The answer is almost universally a shrug.
I'm sure many of you experienced visits there as both profound and necessary. I'd love to hear about your experience. Maybe it will help me reframe my own.
I'll just say there's a lot more the museum offers than exhibits. I've done two faculty fellowships there, so that helps with pedagogy best practices and resources. I've done onsite research for a book about the MS St. Louis, notifying the research staff in advance of my visit so they could pull resources from the Maryland storehouse (this was a while ago). I find the Tower of Life the most interesting part. Those of us who teach the Holocaust are encouraged to include vibrant Jewish life prior to the Holocaust. Any opportunity I get, I will keep going.
I have been to the museum. I went with my grandparents, my brother and my cousin, quite a while ago. But... I have zero recollection of having gone through the museum. I have a snippet memory of the pile of shoes and maybe a pile of hair. But I cannot remember anything else inside that museum. I don't understand why, and I honestly feel BAD about it. I SHOULD remember! Going through that museum should be a non-trivial experience! I need to go again and maybe my memories will come flooding forth.
I have read many books that cover the topic. I do remember those. So many people just have NO idea about ALL the times and places that Jews have been displaced. I'm sure that some people would be absolutely shocked to realize that Jews have been kicked out of EVERY place in Europe at one point or another, and it wasn't always because of the Nazis.
Anyone remember the Spanish Inquisition?! There are still families, Catholic families with secret Jewish roots. Families still so afraid that the truth will get them killed that they won't ever acknowledge their heritage. Families are unexpectedly discovering specific genetic related cancers that only affect Jewish people.
If people would only see the similarities with immigration issues we face right now. Where should all of these people go when they no longer have homes? Americans don't want them here. Europeans don't want them there. Where should they go?! The State of Israel was given to all the Jewish People! All the Jewish People that no one else wanted. All the Jewish People that no one felt they had room for. They were given a place of their own where they could practice their religion and live their lives freely the way they have always wanted to. The way they were never allowed to elsewhere.
As a species, we are detrimentally learning impaired. The plight of the Jewish People is well documented in history, but the same treatment keeps coming back around and I don't want anyone to have to go through it again. More than one war has been fought about this. Jewish People living are not taking life away from anyone else! Having a Jewish neighbor shouldn't cause anyone grief! I would consider it an enormous blessing! Having a Jewish Nation was and always will be the solution for the Jewish People!
LET JEWISH PEOPLE LIVE!!
JUST LET THEM LIVE!!!
Rant over. Shalom! 🙏🏽