Holocaust Museums - Today's Reality

There was a time that a museum was a happy place to visit.  As children we couldn't wait for our annual school trip to the museum.  I remember meeting my first mummy in the Brooklyn museum.  That was an unforgettable experience.  Imagine seeing a man thousands of years old wrapped up to last forever.  "Who knows," I would think, "maybe he is the Pharaoh that had enslaved the Hebrews way back in the Bible times."  His sleeping place was in the largest casket I had ever seen.  

Soon I was to meet "the metal man" as I fondly called him.  He was a full size knight in uniform clad from head to toe in protective metal.  The scene of knights dashing off in a wave of thunder to do battle would run through my mind.  Was he a "knight in shining armor"?

Other times we would be introduced to the men of the civil war, the early pioneers and the Indian war chiefs.  A museum was an exciting place and a pleasure to visit.  It had objects of old that would inspire us and instruct us to remember how far man has progressed. This was a place to take your friends or visiting family. That was then.

This year new museums have opened and they are not  pleasurable.  The museums are holocaust projects!

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto's uprising of Jews against the Nazis.  Around the world many ceremonies are being held.  In the United States President Clinton, 8,000 guests and the fading population of holocaust survivors attended the dedication of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.  In Poland Vice-President Gore, together with the prime minister of Israel, attended a  memorial service.  In the very Jewish state of Israel, lo and behold, none other than the son of the hated Martin Borman, top aide of Adolf Hitler, came to pay his respects at Jerusalem's holocaust museum.

In Los Angeles  a new museum called the "Museum of Tolerance" has opened.  New fancy gadgets whisk you away to the hell and carnage like never before.  Slick gadgets fused with the new and exciting multimedia can transfer you to the most unimaginable horror.  Make believe  public areas are completely rebuilt to mentally transfer you to the lands where the holocaust took place.  Highlighting the exhibits are the doors to a gas chamber and the ovens for burning the human dead.  Atrocities thought unbelievable come alive.

Each of the museums teach and explain the horror and terror that was experienced during the second world war.    

By entering the museums and viewing the past atrocities we assure our selves that what we see is the past. After all, we are in the 90's.

This month the American Jewish committee was presented with the findings of the latest U.S. survey taken by the Roper Organization.   

Thirty-nine percent of the U.S. high school students don't know what the term "holocaust" refers to.  Twenty-one percent of adults don't believe the teaching of the holocaust is relevant today.  The biggest shock was hearing that 22 percent of adults think it seems possible that the holocaust never, ever happened!.

I have  begun to wonder for whom  the museum is for and who will visit it.  Certainly it won't be the 22 percent who believe it never happened nor will it be the 39 percent who don't know what the term means.  They will never take the time to visit.!  For those who are for ethnic cleansing, the museum shows how it can be done. 

The brutal display of unbridled genocide may give a negative message to the nonaffiliated Jews.  Here is another reason for them to melt into society and assimilate as soon as possible.  "Maybe this time they won't catch us," they think. 

For  Jewish survivors of the death camps there is no need to remember.  How could they ever ever forget?  If anything, there may be more damage in exposing them to the past trauma, and for their new families there is always the fear of becoming the victim.

In the past centuries there has never been a collection or a museum for documenting the world injustice to the Jews. There has never been a need for museums of past crimes, as the atrocities against them are not in the past.  They are alive in the Mid East and are being resurrected newly in Germany.  Victims and families  never  forget their  persecuted  brothers and sisters in their prayers. 

They are a walking museum.        

You may say it's for the new world order, those born after World War Two, the children of the 60's, the baby boomers who have never heard of the tragedies.  They should visit the museum and realize the crimes of compassionless governments.

Why look in a museum for lessons of intolerance when we  have a living clearer and better picture.  Turn on the television and pick a channel.  You can watch the ongoing starvation in Sudan, Somolia.  If you need some real action, watch the blowing up of little children and the firing on convoys of escaping refuges in Bosnia.  If you like an English version of violence, turn to live British television and witness London being blown apart.  Try the mid-east Gaza Strip if you need eastern coverage.  For fighting, tune in to China or see what's happening in Pakistan and India.  For local coverage, try the tragedy in Waco, Texas. 

We see the current wholesale destruction of children and families, the starving, the bombing and the terror taking place daily.  They have no need for a museum.  A museum is for things from the past.

We must remember that hatred is a process that takes time.  Germany did not begin to hate Jews suddenly.  Nor did the annihilation begin spontaneously.  The hatred was taught by the leadership and educators of that generation beginning in the 1920's and it continued through the 1930's.  By 1940 the time was right to express the hatred and implement the holocaust.  Maybe if the message of the museum were taught early on and was documented in our children's textbooks, we would truly get the message of the holocaust across. 

Now please don't accuse me of being apathetic to the holocaust.  I have first-hand exposure.  Most of my school friends and teachers were survivors.  My home library has dozens of books and films on the gruesome period.  I have written comments that have been published nationally.

But, I wonder if the museum will do the trick.  I wish it did.  If only there was a way to guarantee that the message would be received in a positive and meaningful manner.           

Sure, President Clinton wants us to learn the consequences of intolerance just as Elie Wiesel searches for answers of "why the world was silent."

It's wishful thinking to believe that by having a museum we stop man's injustice to man. If anything is to be learned, it is that we haven't learned anything.