I returned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today to pick up where I left off, which was at the start of the main exhibit concerning the Nuremberg Trials.
I had covered the anti-semitism and how it had been around way before it became a mainstay of the Nazi party in Germany, the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, World War II and the Allied discovery of the concentration camp. That took five hours in the museum before I had to run to catch a plane back to Seattle. That was about 20 years ago when I was in Washington, D.C., for a conference. My apologies to The Seattle Times, who sent me there, that I can remember almost nothing about the conference besides visiting with others there who had previously worked at The Times and where I left off at the Holocaust museum.
So Kathy, who had not been at the museum before, started at the beginning of the main exhibit while I headed straight for the Nuremberg Trials. But I did stop and view the videos on America and the Holocaust, which I don’t remember being there in my previous visit. The videos looked back on what Americans knew about the persecution of Jews by Germans in Europe and what the United States did about it – not much.
There was another exhibit downstairs in the museum covering the same topic in greater detail, which I returned to after viewing the Nuremberg videos and displays and lunch at the museum café. The lunch was prompted by Kathy, who texted me, “I could use a break. Woof. This is tough stuff.”
It was. Tough stuff to ignore, which is what Americans did leading into World War II. Take more refugees? No way in a country suffering the Great Depression with 25 percent of the population unemployed. If we took more refugees would Germany respond by even tougher laws against the Jews? In a country where isolationism was the current policy, who cared what they were doing in Germany and the rest of Europe?
Refugees. Immigrants. Illegal migrants. Asylum seekers. No matter what you call them, it has been a sore subject for those of us safely within the borders of the United States. Go back to the 1920s when immigration was restricted and I think you will find that there has never been a policy that suits anyone or everyone. And there is no outlook for a future policy that will solve the immigration question.
Should Venezuelans have the same leniency shown to Cuban refugees/immigrants? They are both fleeing a communist regime.
Who could deny a Ukrainian family from coming to the U.S. now? They may be the latest victims of an aggressor trying to expand its territory, just like those who tried to flee Poland, Austria and other European states as Germany took them over and tried to rid them of Jews.
We don’t have 25 percent unemployment. In fact, we only have between three and four percent unemployment, which is considered by economists as full employment. Would more immigrants open up restaurants that can’t find workers?
The action of some governors to send migrants to other places seems cruel to those put on buses and hardly helpful to those reaching out to aid them in cities far from the southern border. Maybe a way of bringing attention to the problem, but still cruel and unhelpful.
No answers here, but some familiar tones in the awful history on display at the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I could not escape the museum without buying two books in the gift shop: “Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial” by Joseph E. Persico, and “In Pursuit of Justice: Examining the Evidence of the Holocaust”, a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
And I found a movie I have to see. Who can resist Edward G. Robinson?
I too have visited the Holocaust Museum and echo Kathy’s comment … really tough. It also is an eye opener and a soul touches. Now I would need days to view the museum in small batches. Thanks, John, for the reminder.