I came over to Berlin on Thursday July 19 to speak at the International Education conference, a large gathering of teachers’ union reps from around the world. I came yesterday, Sunday July 22, to Krakow, Poland, where part of my goal was to tour Auschwitz, which is just nearby. Here are some random thoughts in chronological order.

1. I spent the first day in Berlin touring the Holocaust memorial and museum, the Jewish Museum, and the Berlin Wall Museum. The weight of history is very heavy here. But at least the Germans deal with it and address it.

I couldn’t help but think of the contrast with my visit on DC on Sunday July 15 when my family wanted to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which is a very moving tribute to the 50-plus thousand Americans who died in that senseless and tragic war. But the million-plus Vietnamese dead were a footnote, if that. And can you ever imagine a Slavery Museum on the Mall, where we would address the millions who died in transit from Africa (and afterwards), and the horrific conditions under which they lived? I can’t.

2. The second day I spoke to the LGBT caucus of International Education, and was moved by the courage of these advocates from around the world who are trying to make their schools better places for LGBT people. Then I toured the Gay Museum, the only one of its kind in the world (http://www.schwulesmuseum.de/). Its permanent exhibit, “Courage and Persistence,” chronicles 200 years of gay life in Germany. I was so proud of “my people” who, in the face of constant oppression by the state, the Church, and society, nevertheless built communities, organized for change, and found each other. It is a history to be proud of.
3. The third day I tracked down the memorial to Magnus Hirschfeld, who organized the world’s first gay rights group in 1897 in Berlin. It wasn’t much to look at, but the finding of the memorial was a moving moment to me, as it provided a tangible link to this incredibly brave man.

4. Today I toured Auschwitz. I stood in a gas chamber where thousands were murdered. I stood next to the crematoria where their bodies were burned. I saw a bolt of fabric manufactured by the Nazis from the shorn hair of the victims. There are no words.

Supposedly the lesson of the Holocaust in “Never Again.” Yet we stood by while millions of Hindus and Muslims were massacred in the “ethnic cleaninsg” that followed the partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan only 3 years after Auschwitz was liberated. We stood by in the Sixties when the Nigerian government massacred the Biafrans. We stood by in the Seventies when the Khmer Rouge committed auto-genocide by killing one-third of the Cambodian people. We stood by in the Nineties as over 800,000 Rwandans were massacred with the complicity pf their government. And we stand by now in Sudan as genocide occurs in Darfur. Perhaps we should say “Over and Over Again” is the more apt lesson as the world’s leaders consistently fail to act when confronted with these crimes.

Of course, there’s history here too. Only 9,000 of the 70,000 Germans who worked in Auschwitz were ever punished. Over 85% returned home to lead full lives, unlike the 1.5 million they murdered. Justice is always far away, it seems.

Posted by Kevin on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 2:15 pm.