With the youngest of people that were conscious of the horrors of World War 2 now in their late 70s, it's clear in the 20 years to come, we'll live in a time with no living survivors or witnesses from that era. With all literature of the Holocaust being relatively close to the actual event timewise, there's been a fresh immediacy to the work that makes it even more horrifying. I wonder if as time goes on, our approach will change? Will facts and narratives change to promote the dramatic? One only needs to look back at America's own revisionist history of events from 1620-1920 and wonder how things might change with how The Holocaust was depicted. How different would a film like Schindler's List be if it were made in the year 2050? How much will something like Anne Frank's diary hold up? Will there be some new unspeakable horror that will have occurred that will make The Holocaust some distant memory?
It's heavy to look back and think about how a tragedy like The Holocaust produced so much poignant writing, art, and film. I think for most of us, exposure to art representing The Holocaust was limited to reading Anne Frank's diary and watching Schindler's List. Consider how many millions of lives were erased, and how much music, paintings, stories, and more potential artwork were lost with them. Persecution of Jews is nothing new, nor has it stopped after World War 2. And we've learned that genocide is something that is still executed by many throughout the world. It's sad that in the grand scheme of things, so little lessons have been learned in the last 80 years. Greed and self-interest make it very easy to look the other way. At what point will we be on the side of the persecuted and culled, hoping someone else will help us? The sad thing is that Hitler alone could not have made The Holocaust happen. The entirety of Germany could have kept it from happening. Th...
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