"A LITTLE YIDDLE—DIDDLE,
A LITTLE JIMMY PAGE.:
Holocaust Museum Not
Content To Live In Past
JAMES D. BESSER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
T
he U.S. Holocaust Memo-
rial Museum in Washing-
ton hit the news this week
but not in the way its cre-
ators ever hoped.
Serbian-American groups are
complaining about a new exhibit
documenting the ethnic cleansing
in Bosnia — a stark reminder that
the mind-set that led to the mur-
der of Europe's Jews is alive and
well more than 50 years later.
The museum shouldn't take
sides in current disputes, Serb
leaders argue. By bringing Bosn-
ian Prime Minister Haris Sila-
jdzic to the museum for last
week's official opening of the ex-
hibit, the museum is making a
political judgment about a polit-
ically ambiguous situation.
Better stick to the dusty past,
the Serbs seem to be saying— to
static exhibits about a long-ago
time that we can safely tuck into
the recesses of our consciousness.
While this is not a simple ar-
gument, the essence of the Serb
claim is a lot of hooey.
In fact, the museum's real im-
portance is its ability to use the
Holocaust as a powerful tool in
preventing new genocide. And to
do that effectively, museum offi-
cials must be ready to generate
political controversy and take
chances.
But the Holocaust Museum
has been surprisingly successful
in making people think about the
connections between a long-ago
Holocaust and the ethnic and
tribal hatreds in today's world.
Several times in the past year, I
have interviewed groups of visi-
tors after their tours. Invariably,
they express a kind of shocked
new awareness about today's con-
flicts, a feeling that the things we
are seeing in Bosnia, Rwanda, So-
malia and countless other places
are expressions of the same im-
pulses that created the Holocaust.
And, usually, they come away
with a powerful realization that
such horrors can happen only
when the rest of the world
shrinks from confronting the
killers and the haters until it is
too late.
Few seem to draw exact par-
allels. Most visitors understand
that the Holocaust wason a scale
that set it apart from the horrors
that are becoming all too famil-
iar in our world.
But they also understand the
one parallel that counts: that, un-
challenged, the forces of hatred
can take on a catastrophic life of
their own.
This brings us to the issue of
Bosnia and the "Faces of Sorrow"
exhibit that uses powerful pho-
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The U.S. Holocaust Museum is one of the most popular attractions
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Since its opening in April 1993, tos to make the point that geno-
the museum has become one of cide is not just an historic relic.
Washington's most popular at-
One could make the case that
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the museum already is doing its
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have the out-on-a-lark demeanor possible example of genocide and
of most Washington tourists. allowing visitors to draw their
Whirling around town in the own conclusions — which many,
Tour Mobile is not exactly con- clearly, are doing.
ducive to a meaningful explo-
But museum officials seem de-
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depicted in the various museums — to prod our consciences, to nag
and monuments on the Mall.
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM page 58
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