131. THE MUSEUM OF THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL by un’Americana a Venezia

In questo post un’Americana a Venezia, con il suo raffinato acume e con il suo stile brillante ed efficace, riferisce anche un episodio avvenuto durante la sua visita all’Holocaust  Memorial  Museum di Washington. Per le ultime generazioni la Shoah è una realtà lontana nel tempo e circoscritta storicamente. Non è così. Il Nazismo, come evidenzia un'Americana a Venezia, è stata una manifestazione del male radicale, di quella innata tendenza che fa dell’uomo l’animale più pericoloso. La piena consapevolezza di quello che siamo è il primo gradino che dobbiamo salire per migliorarci. (R. Rapaccini) 


During the Cold War, when a nuclear exchange seemed inevitable, Carl Jung, Swiss mystic and colleague of Freud, remarked, “The only real danger that exists is man himself.”   That statement rang as true then as it had over twenty years before, when the world stood waiting like a dummy for the night train to the Holocaust.  Many agree that what happened during Hitler’s reign of terror was the most important event of the last century.  Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, concluded in line with Jung’s own thinking, “The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest danger threatening mankind.”  From the bombing of Guernica, to the building of gas chambers, to the propagandistic use of new tools of communication, to the development of the same rocket science that led to the creation of weapons of mass destruction, Hitler and his collaborators systematically coupled evil with technology and ignorance with power.  That kind of activity is surely ongoing today. Recently, I wrote in this blog about the free museums located in the heart of Washington, D.C.  One of them is unique.  (Visit ushmm.org)  Designed by architect James Ingo Freed and opened in 1993, the building itself is meant to be a “resonator of memory.”  From its 3-story, sky-lit Hall of Witness to its underground Special Exhibitions to the quiet of a sanctuary called the Hall of Remembrance, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is filled, above all, with the echoes of millions of voices who remind us of what our species—past and present—is capable of.  That’s the main purpose of the Holocaust Museum:  to educate us about the potential for inhumanity in man.  Here visitors discover how the Holocaust was set into motion and are reminded that persecution and genocide continue today.  There are countless exhibits on all four floors.  Perhaps the most powerful offering available to visitors is the opportunity to sit down at a table and speak in person to a survivor of a Nazi death camp. The Holocaust Memorial Museum reminds us of what can happen when human beings collectively succumb to appeals to their worst emotions; when they abandon reason and morality in favor of prejudice; when they fall into the trap of apathy regarding the fate of others.  Near the end of my own 3-hour visit inside the Holocaust Memorial Museum, some young teens on a field trip were joking loudly in front of other visitors about a discreetly placed image of a woman prisoner trying to cover her nakedness.  I put my hand on the ringleader’s shoulder and said, “You wouldn’t laugh if that woman was your relative.”  The boy’s face fell.  “I’m sorry, Ma’am, I’m really sorry,” he said.  His friends were embarrassed, too.  I knew that they were fundamentally unprepared to see aberrance up close.  So I said, “That photo is real.  That really happened.  All of these terrible things really happened.  Some people try to say they didn’t happen, but we can see that they did.  And bad things like this are still happening in the world.  There’s an exhibit here about a place called Sudan, in Africa.  Bad things like this are happening there now.  This kind of stuff has to stop.  You know?”  They got the idea and I was glad I had spoken up, even though others around us had not.  Young or old, we need to admit that what the world’s most dangerous animal needs to succeed is the indifference and/or inaction of others, a circumstance which becomes especially true in hard economic times.  It’s 2012.  This year, hard times or not, let’s make a special effort to remember our humanity.  In fact, let’s not be afraid to evolve. UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA