About Museums, Movies, Stories and Other Narrative Forms

The most disturbing museum in Washington is the one dedicated to the Holocaust. I was lost in it for the entire day and when I came out of it I was intensely depressed, so much so that I still find it difficult to return to Washington.

I was given a picture and the name of a person killed by Hitler. The idea was that I was that person and I was to look for myself inside the museum space into which I wondered with a gripping dread. I was very disturbed when I saw myself, dead and tortured, hair turned to wigs, gold teeth extracted to make jewelry, skin painted as an exquisite light lamp, buttons made out of my bones. My father was used by German doctors to figure out how much high pressure could be applied to a live man before his skull burst like a watermelon. My picture was on the wall, complete with family, all of who suffered outrageous torture, humiliation and death.

I wonder how the US would react if Germany decided to construct an elaborate museum dedicated to the Africans who were also equally horribly mutilated by US slave owners. I am sure it would make for a terrifying and gripping tour. How about making a movie that highlights the American cruelties against blacks with such exquisite skill and craft as did Schindler’s List, for instance? How about making a movie, or even better, a museum about the Abu Gharib prisoners?

There is no grisly monument in Washington dedicated to educate the Americans about their own godawful crimes, but we do have two in Philadelphia that are dedicated to the Irish and the Palestinian misfortunes.

I have noticed a pattern amongst my students. Every time they want to write about the crimes against humanity the almost only and the most obvious narrative that springs out is that of the Holocaust. I have read several stories and poems about Hitler killing the Jews. Why is the Holocaust given such predominance? Why does it loom so high that all other atrocities are made to pale against it? Why did I have to identify myself with an unfortunate person of Jewish origin so I could be shaken to my core and why have I never (not once) been asked to identify myself with an American Indian or an African slave or an Iraqi prisoner or a Sudra or a colonized nation or a Japanese living in Hiroshima or … I don’t even know who I should be identifying myself with so that mind shattering crimes become a part of my psyche. Why are there no elaborate narratives about these?