Thoughts upon visiting Buchenwald

I'm not completly sure why this is so, but I'll try to make a stab at it before I explain my reaction.

When my Dad was here 30 years ago, or so, he went to the camps and immediatly had to get out of the country. It was an amazingly intense and negative experience for him, one which destroyed Germany for him.

A couple possible reasons for our differences:
1. My generation has had pretty comprehensive holocaust eduction; we have grown up with high quality, systematic multi-media education in it, so nothing that i saw was a suprise in that way. It was more intense, more real, but not a suprise. There was nothing i hadn't seen before.
2. I have known two Germans very fondly. Between Lise-Anne's (the ex-girlfriend, for those not in the know) father Johaness and my friend whom I'm staying with, Michael, I have become close with two Germans, both of whom are very open about the Holocaust and have always encouraged me to talk with them about my feelings as they specifically related to them... This helped, I think, get out a lot of the anxst about everyday Germans... are at least meant that I had dealt with a lot of it to some degree.
3. When Dad was here, anyone over the afte of 55-60 would have been involved in the Shoah. For me, they would have to be 85-90. It's funny, though, I still see old people and get uncomfortable. It's a combination feeling of wanting to not let their shaddow touch me and wanting to spit in their face... or at least that's the best way I can think to describe it. But not having actuall 'nazis' around everywhere, i think this makes it easier, too.
4. The museum at Buchenwald is pretty amazing. For obvious reasons, they have an enourmous collection of source materials, and use it very, very well. There is NO applogetic-history there... But one think I was struck by is the fact that a TON of the information is not translated into English. This didn't make sense, as I would imagine that the museum would attract a lot of 'tourists'. And then I realized that it's not for me. The Museum (and to a certain degree, the camps) is not for me. It's for Germans. It's so school children can come (and they do, by the busload everyday) and see this, and never be able to whitewash history; so that they too can attest, "We did this". Which in a way is why i went. it was so another generation of Jews can stand up and say, "This Happened."


So enough, to my reactions---(and as a side note, I had gone back and forth the whole time, and decided in the end (and I appologize if this word doesn't quite convey the right meaning) that I would wear a kippa, as this was a holy place...)

My overwhelming, visceral, intense feeling was that I was a real big middle-finger, a big "Fuck You" to everyone involved in the Holocaust. To Hitler, to the Nazis, to the everyday Germans who stood back and washed their hands of it. I was a big "Fuck You" to all of them. I came there to see THEM in a museum, not the other way around. WE made it; WE are alive, and thriving and surviving. WE have our own state, our own dream. It was YOU who were relegated to history books--to only History books. I'm still here.

Not sure if that makes sense...but that's really how it felt....

Which is not to say there wasn't sadness and depression. There was--particularly the cremetorium--- In an odd way, just when I was feeling the most....intense.... is when I was the most reassured by other Jews.

The whole time I was there, i didn't see anyone I thought was Jewish (which is not to say that there wern't people there...just none that I saw and thought "ah chah!").

So I was standing in the crematorium, and felt the overwhelming need to pick up a rock, and place it on the ridge... I went to go get a rock, and when I came back, that's when I noticed there was a row already there. There was a row of rocks. Probably most of the non-Jews who came never even noticed them, but I did. Rocks, proof that I wasn't alone there--proof that there were other Jews, who if they weren't with me at the moment, were still with me... i can't describe how comforting this was. The Jewish memorial was the same way... rocks upon rocks...just so comforting.

I said a Kaddish in the Crematorium, vistited the rest of the site, and left; feeling a little more depressed and somehow, a yet somehow a little more..comforted. You don't need to go to a Museum to discover our culture.


Daniel