Victims and heroes
Is there an optimal way to memorialize past crimes so that the manner in which people are encouraged to remember strengthens their ability to oppose and resist present or future ones? I have my doubts about this, though naturally there is better and there is worse. But let me explain the context of the question.
In connection with the 75th anniversary of Hitler's taking power, Susan Neiman discusses the considerable German efforts there have been to remember the Nazis' crimes. While she's not talking 'either/or' here, she wonders nonetheless whether, in trying for 'the right sort of memory', our attention to the victims shouldn't be restrained, so that there can be more of a focus on 'the courage of those who worked to stop the criminals'. Even within this, Neiman thinks it would be better to concentrate not on those (like Hans and Sophie Scholl) whose resistance was crushed, but on others who succeeded. She refers to the occasion in 1943 when the non-Jewish German wives of Jewish men carried out a week-long protest in the Rosenstrasse in Berlin, so saving their husbands from deportation. Neiman's point is clear: to attend to the fate of the victims or of those opponents of Nazism who failed, and neglect cases such as this one, is to send a grim message not suitable for fostering opposition to criminality.
Neiman is obviously right that cases like the Rosenstrasse protest should not be forgotten. But the fact is that in the overall story of what happened they are relatively rare. The only picture that will provide 'the right sort of memory' is a full picture - recording such episodes of heroism, to be sure, but also giving them their proper weight; and this means focusing very much on what happened to the victims and on the many attempts at resistance that were defeated. It means that there must be different modes, different episodes and details, of remembrance.
It is worth recalling that there are some who object to stories of Holocaust rescue, such as that portrayed in the movie Schindler's List, because stories of rescue supposedly tell you the 'good news' coming out of the Holocaust, when there was none. The objection is wrong-headed, in my view. There wasn't much good news, but some there was; and it has to be told, while being given its proper - proportionate - place. But adequate memorialization is bound to give full weight to the experience of the victims, as to the failure of so much anti-Nazi resistance, otherwise it will falsify what happened in Europe between 1933 and 1945.
