Reliving the Past
The Dangers of Repeating History in Europe Today
While learning about the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazi Party in Munich the past few weeks, I was able to draw many, sometimes frightening, parallels between some of the problems facing Europe today and those which plagued the continent during the 2oth century. What I found on JOURNEYcourse, when my History seminar got to Munich to study for a week, is that in some ways history is repeating itself, which, in this cases, is a scary thought indeed.
At the National Socialist Documentation Center in Munich, we learned about the gradual rise of anti-semitism which occurred in Germany and other countries during the early 1900s. The German people did not just wake up one day and decide to take away all human rights from their Jewish neighbors. It was a slow, painful process. The slippery slope which ended in mass extermination began as a simple distinction and restriction of a human’s basic rights.
Unfortunately, there has been a steep rise in anti-semitism across Europe in the last few years. In 2015 alone, France has seen an 84% rise in anti-semitic feelings resulting in over 508 attacks on people of Jewish faith, of which a quarter were violent. This extreme rise within the last year or so is greatly concerning to me and indeed all who have studied the rise of anti-semitism during the 20th century. After the war, the world vowed never again to support the resurgence of such hateful feelings, but here we are, only seventy years later, facing much of the same hatred towards the Jewish people that was seen not so long ago.
The rise of anti-Semitism in our world today is happening despite the fact that Germany has taken many steps since the end of the war to make up for the atrocities of the Holocaust and learn from their past mistakes, in order to improve the future. Most recently, the Chancellor of Germany,
The German prime minister, Angela Merkel, has vigorously defended an open border policy in Germany, which has seen the country become a beacon of hope and the most desired destination to refugees from Syria, seeking asylum in Europe. Unlike the Nazis, whose skewed mixing of hate, fear, pseudo-science and xenophobia saw them develop a political and cultural idea about keeping Germany “pure” from any outsiders, Merkel and the German government are taking pains in their positions on the refugee issue to assure a nervous world that Germany is indeed a welcoming haven today for those who’ve been oppressed elsewhere. How long this positive view of the situation will prevail is anybody’s guess, but to argue that Germany’s commitment to this posture of openness is unrelated to the legacy of the Nazi past is all but impossible.
From what I learned in Munich, Nuremberg and at Dachau, I think the Germans have done an excellent job addressing and rebuilding from the terrors of the Nazi regime. They’ve handled teaching and learning about their past very well by thoroughly educating their younger generations about the horrors of the Nazi regime, while not memorializing or martyring that deeply horrible history. However, the debate about whether or not to preserve these sites or to relegate Nazism to museums continues to this day.
Some argue that destroying or repurposing some of these Nazi sites destroys the history and prevents learning about these atrocities in Germany.
While some history might be lost because of these decisions, I believe it is far more important to make sure these places do not become pilgrimage sites for Neo-Nazis or people who agree with the tenements of the National Socialist party. By destroying or repurposing places such as the Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds or Hitler’s bunker in Berlin, Germany has made sure Nazi memorabilia exists only in museums, where it belongs, instead of in the hearts and minds of German people.
While Europe and the world still face many problems regarding racism and hatred towards people who are different, overall, Germany and other European countries have done an adequate job educating their younger generations and dealing with these sites which represent the terrors of the Nazi party. Yet, we must all continue to be diligent and work to make sure tragedies like the Holocaust never happen again.
The past is never dead. It isn’t even past — William Faulkner
