How Do You Properly Remember the Holocaust?
The Holocaust, though it was less than 100 years ago, is perhaps the most difficult piece of history to remember properly. It stands as a monument to mankind’s infinite capacity for cruelty. Being a few generations removed from the Holocaust, many find themselves wondering how anyone could perpetrate something like this or even stand by and watch it happen, let alone the number of people who did. Therefore, an important part of remembering the Holocaust is not only working to show what happened, but how and why. To that effect, the Holocaust exhibit in the Imperial War Museum succeeds in tracing the gradual death of morality in Nazi occupied territory.
In Poland, instead of being carried out right away, “the mass murder of Polish Jews… was initiated after more than two years of German occupation, and more than a year after the Jews had been consigned to ghettos.” (Snyder 253). The IWM’s exhibit shows both the slow growth of the Nazi party and the radicalization of its members as well as the slow buildup to what would become the Holocaust. It has an extensive collection of anti-Jewish propaganda that shows the subjects of Nazi indoctrination, which leads into a collection of photographs of Jewish ghettos. It shows Kristallnacht, the night Jewish homes and businesses were vandalized. It details the decline of rations and living standards for people in the ghettos as well as the increasing restrictions placed upon them. Then, after an already agonizing walk through these images, one arrives at a massive façade of a train car, representing the vehicle in which civilians were sent to their deaths. The exhibit has pictures of victims of the Holocaust, some their original size, some with the victim cut out and made life-size. There there stories, final recorded words, objects confiscated from them, letters from family members that never reached them, and so much more. Every level of the exhibit reinforces the innocence and humanity of each victim, and the fact that they were killed despite that. But alongside this narrative there is a parallel story. It shows SS uniforms, medals, knives, and the various other privileges afforded to them.
Telford Taylor, an American prosecutor during the Nuremberg Trials, said something alarming to most about SS officers: “Most of them are ordinary people just like you and me.” (Terkel 464). Over the course of working on the trials, Taylor learned that “Moral standards are easily obliterated” (Terkel 464), and that just the same way ordinary people can become heroes, they can also shut their eyes to atrocities or even perpetrate those atrocities. In order for the Holocaust to have killed so many people, it meant the participation of thousands upon thousands of Nazi soldiers, train engineers, police, camp employees, and so on. It also required millions of German, Polish, and other civilians to turn a blind eye to the obvious fact that Jewish people all over Europe were being taken away. This is perhaps the most difficult part of the Holocaust for people to understand, as they want to think that if they were there, they would have at least said something. But the sad reality is that even the Holocaust can be normalized if the right mix of propaganda and fear is placed behind it. Taylor said “the safe way in life to be comfortable is that way: following orders” (Terkel 464). That was one of the most common things Nazis said when interrogated: they were following orders. And sadly, that’s often all it takes to live a monstrous life. Behind the Holocaust, at the highest levels of organization, there were scores of monstrous men, and there were certainly monsters working on the ground as well. But Millions of innocent Jewish people were executed by normal people with families, simply because that was the path of least resistance. Through the IWM exhibit’s exploration of not only the atrocities but the luxuries and status afforded to those who agreed to perpetrate them, it makes a chilling point that sometimes all it takes to be a Nazi is to close one’s eyes. For that reason, the IWM Holocaust exhibit creates its own value, as such a thorough examination of the Holocaust is a powerful weapon in getting ordinary people to keep their eyes open and prevent monstrous behavior wherever it might crop up.
