The last week I had the opportunity to visit the monument and the museum: “Murdered Jews of Europe” in Berlin. I was very much impressed and moved for many reasons: a) I am a Jew living in Chile; b) The museum’s location in Berlin, the heart of the Nazi movement, is very significant; c) it is a testimony for the new generations. In addition, I am professor teaching human rights education for many years in Chile and Latin America and I have produced same didactical materials (in Spanish) for teachers on the Holocaust.
The museum, gives very enlightening and clear information of the atrocities committed during the Nazi’s time. What I found missing was some kind of chronicle and testimony of Nazi perpetrators, collaborators or sympathizers.[1] This can teach the visitors, particularly the German visitors, about the nature of people who have been brainwashed about Nazi ideology, confronting their past critically and, answering the questions:
- Why the majority, if not all, followed and supported Hitler and his racist and immoral ideology? ;
- Why for so many years Germany was in silence?
- Can it happen again?
Stephan Marks, a social scientist at the University of Freiburg in Germany, has said: “as to the testimonies of the perpetrators, it’s not so much what they say but how they say”.
In synthesis, in my opinion, it is important that the museum provide to the visitor not only the testimonies of the victims but also of the perpetrators, but not in order to justify the unjustified, rather to release the silence and motivate open and widespread critical thought.
- Dan Baron Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich
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