Relatives of mine died in death camps. Other relatives of mine died fighting to end the death camps. One of my relatives who fought but did not die was in the first wave of soldiers at Auschwitz. I’ve heard his story about it. One of my relatives survived the death camps. I’ve read the diary she kept during part of her time there. (She refused to talk about it, so the diary is the only information we’ve ever had.) This is an emotional and personal topic for me. But this is GD, not the pit, and I’m assuming your question comes from ignorance, not from spite. I’m going to try to answer it as you posed it.
As far as I can tell, you’re wondering if:
a) There’s any point to building Shoah memorials.
b) Such memorials really do help prevent new atrocities.
c) The money spent on the memorials could be better spent elsewhere.
d) A 12-year-old Congolese girl gains any benefit from these memorials.
My answers:
a) Yes, there are good reasons to continue to build memorials. People died in the Shoah and in WWII in particularly gruesome ways. We need to remember those people. We also need to remember the chain of events that led up to their deaths, because - to borrow a phrase - those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. I, for one, would rather we never repeat this.
b) I hope the memorials do help prevent such atrocities. They are certainly intended to. When people visit these sites, they learn about or remember the kinds of attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors that can lead to the marginalization and demonization of a group of people. They see what happens when evil runs rampant. They also see what perfectly normal human beings are capable of doing - shooting innocents, torturing them, starving them to death. The point is to make people think.
I know I think when I visit memorials and museums. And I am reminded about why it is important to be involved, to fight injustice, to try to change things today. I also remember why it’s so important to question your actions, and why blind obedience can be so dangerous. I hope other people do the same. Nothing can force people to learn or think or remember, but the images and stories told by memorials and museums come as close to that as anything could.
The strategy may even have worked in your case. Apparently something has made you think about the atrocities commited around the globe, at least to the extent of drawing an analogy between the Shoah and these other events; perhaps the museums and memorials you’ve visited helped.
c) Do you know how most of these memorials are funded and how much they cost? Do you have any statistics about the effect memorials have on donations of time and money to other causes, donations that might not be made if people weren’t confronted with terrible truths? And do you have any suggestions - concrete suggestions - about places those amounts of money could be spent to prevent the suffering the occurs all the time, the world over, while simultaneously raising public awareness and concern? Please, show me some numbers and some statistics. I can’t debate thin air, and although I could do the research for you, I would prefer you did it yourself; it’s your hypothesis, so it’s your responsibility to support it.
d) The 12-year-old Congolese girl gains no direct benefits from the memorials. However, she may benefit from UN or US involvement in her country. She may benefit from the Red Cross or other international aid efforts at work in her country. She may benefit, in other words, from donations of time and money (directly and through taxes) from people who don’t know her and have no direct interest in her. Part of the reason we, as first world residents, make these donations is that we know what can happen when we ignore evil and atrocities, knowledge we gained the hard way. If we forget, it will be all too easy to categorize the suffering of that 12-year-old girl as unavoidable, unimportant, and too far away to do anything about. That’s part of what the memorials are about: remembering our responsibilities as human beings.
If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it. In the meantime, I will continue to remember the painful past and work towards a better future in the ways I know. I hope you will do the same.