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Barbara spoke about the groups of schoolchildren that visit Buchenwald and
her opinions on that. She feels that if a child of 15 comes to visit with
school, then when they are 20, they will feel that it is not necessary for
them to visit because they already know all about it, when, in fact, a 15-year-old cannot possibly comprehend the extent of the crimes committed on
the site, and so they will have never understood the Holocaust. Personally,
I don't know how I feel about their proposed 3-day - 1-week-long workshops
which they offer on the camp and activities concerning memory and history all
day, but I think it is a good sign that they do not wish to limit the
experience of a visit to a concentration camp to a few hours.
I think that the individuality of the Holocaust was reinfused in an
unexpected way for me through this conversation. Barbara also outlined the
current debate between the political left and right concerning proposed
memorials and their use in the camp. After WWII, Buchenwald was used as a
de-Nazification camp by the East German government and thousands lost their
lives through starvation, forced labor, and outright murder. The debate
today surrounds the identities of those people who died after the war; the
political right feels there should be a plaque or memorial inside the camp
walls to commemorate both the victims of the Nazi concentration camp and
the victims of the communist camp together--both were the victims of
oppressive regimes and their memories are united in this site of
destruction.
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