{"id":3671,"date":"2019-10-21T22:32:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T22:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/?p=3671"},"modified":"2019-10-21T22:33:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T22:33:43","slug":"what-we-can-learn-from-the-germans-about-confronting-our-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/10\/21\/what-we-can-learn-from-the-germans-about-confronting-our-history\/","title":{"rendered":"What we can learn from the Germans about confronting our history?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cultural Comment by Lizzie Widdicombe, New Yorker 10\/21\/19<\/a><\/p>\n

\nFor argument\u2019s sake, let\u2019s imagine that Trump\u2019s tweet was wrong, and the \u201cCivil War like fracture in this Nation\u201d doesn\u2019t come to pass. Instead, he and his allies lose the 2020 election. A new Administration comes in, dedicated to helping the nation \u201cwork off\u201d its historical crimes, to avoid the coming of a Trump 2.0. What can we learn from the Germans? A few things, Neiman said. First of all, any attempt at Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung must be \u201cmultifaceted.\u201d It can\u2019t be confined to schools or museums. \u201cOtherwise it\u2019s boring, and it takes on the character of propaganda,\u201d she said. Germans don\u2019t learn about the Holocaust in just one way. \u201cYou really can\u2019t escape it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s in art works, in literature, in movies, in television, done in different keys and in different registers. There\u2019s no one message.\u201d
\nSimilarly, government initiatives can\u2019t just be a top-down, federal effort. \u201cIt needs to be local, spurred by citizen engagement,\u201d she said. She talked about the Stumbling Stones project, which a German artist began in 1996, and which is now the largest decentralized monument in the world, with plaques all over Germany. \u201cIn many, many parts of the country, it\u2019s citizen-financed,\u201d Neiman said. \u201cSo if you want to put a stumbling stone in your house or in front of your building, you have to research the history of the people who lived there, you have to come up with the fee, a hundred and twenty euros, and get permission from the city. It\u2019s quite interactive. And thousands of people do this.\u201d<\/strong> Meanwhile, white Americans are still getting married at plantations\u2014a practice that Neiman said Germans would probably view with horror. \u201cAfter all, plantations were concentration camps for black people,\u201d Neiman said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cultural Comment by Lizzie Widdicombe, New Yorker 10\/21\/19 For argument\u2019s sake, let\u2019s imagine that Trump\u2019s tweet was wrong, and the \u201cCivil War like fracture in this Nation\u201d doesn\u2019t come to pass. Instead, he and his allies lose the 2020 election. A new Administration comes in, dedicated to helping the nation \u201cwork off\u201d its historical crimes, … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13,14,17,19],"tags":[2181,2175,2177,567,2180,2174,2172,2186,902,2185,2182,2176,2178,2179,2184,2183,2173,1867,2187],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-sergneri","4":"post-3671","6":"format-standard","7":"category-ethical-and-green-living","8":"category-politics","9":"category-racism","10":"category-thinking-about","11":"category-trump","12":"post_tag-auschwitz","13":"post_tag-civil-war","14":"post_tag-convict-leasing","15":"post_tag-donald-trump","16":"post_tag-einstein-forum","17":"post_tag-frederick-douglass","18":"post_tag-german","19":"post_tag-harriet-tubman","20":"post_tag-jeff-sessions","21":"post_tag-john-brown","22":"post_tag-kristallnacht","23":"post_tag-lynching","24":"post_tag-mass-incarceration","25":"post_tag-racist-labor-practices","26":"post_tag-ralph-waldo-emerson","27":"post_tag-sojourner-truth","28":"post_tag-stumbling-stones","29":"post_tag-white-supremacist","30":"post_tag-woody-guthrie-paul-robeson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3671"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3674,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3671\/revisions\/3674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}