National Socialism

Today was the first day we actually got into talking about Nazis.

I knew it was coming. It had been mentioned before, we saw various historical Nazi sites while in Munich, and we have a trip to the concentration camp Mauthausen scheduled for the Upper Austria field trip. I have mostly been avoiding the subject, as being the only Jewish student on this trip has the potential to end up like this:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/only-jewish-kid-in-class-asked-to-talk-about-holoc,5663/

But what makes this trip and these discussions different from the plethora of other holocaust lessons in school is the realization that THIS is where it all took place, and in particular, where it took place for my family. It is one thing to be in Germany, where I have been before, and know that the Holocaust was part of the historical legacy there, and quite another to actually be in the place where my family had their homes taken away from them. My Great-Great Grandmother received money from the Austrian government after the war as reparations for taking our house. That becomes all the more real when you imagine the posters, propaganda and political rallies we are seeing pictures of being experienced by people I have actually met, like my Great-Grandmother Hilda and her brother Ernest, who just recently wrote a book about his escape story and time fighting with the American army in WWII.

One of the problems is that I have never been a gung-ho "NEVER FORGET" kind of a person. It pains me to constantly be told to feel persecuted, or alienated when my actual social reality is that of a normal American teenager who has never experienced Anti-Semitism, or at least only in jest (which still really bugs me, but I understand that it is not serious).

For our Understanding Austria class, we have to write a paper explaining whether or not we think it is importnat that young people visit Mauthausen I can honestly say, I don't know. On the one hand, it is important to learn from those mistakes, and keep the legacy of those who died alive. On the other, these things we can't unsee, and they leave scars. I feel often times that I constantly live with the Jewish ethos of victimization; After all, we say every Passover that each one of us is to personally feel that we were delivered from Egyptian slavery. But even though I have the desire to shake off those feelings and get on with my life, which is wholly American and privileged, it may be more important to subject myself to things I would rather not deal with. I will have to see what my Gentile compatriots think about this too.