There is no such thing as a honorable hypocrite

When you think of important memorials a couple come to mind.

The Vietnam memorial, the 9/11 memorial etc.

But it's not the actual statue or structure of the memorial that provokes a reaction, rather it's a culmination of factors that are just as important as the memorial itself. When creating a memorial, it's important to take in numerous factors like location, size and political context. We learned about this in class when analyzing the 2013 FRQs, in Source E Christine Musser writes about how putting a holocaust memorial in the mall in Washington DC was inappropriate for a number of reasons. First, she talks about how it was strange to create a Holocaust memorial in a country that had done little to prevent the Holocaust. This is something I agreed with as well, specifically because the U.S. was one of the last countries to enter WW2 despite knowing about the horrors Jewish people were enduring at the hands of the Nazis. Also, the reason it entered the war had nothing to do with the Jewish people and rather the result of the attack on Pearl Harbor from Japan. It can be surmised then that the U.S. was perfectly fine with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people until they were attacked by the Axis powers and were forced to take a strong political stance against them. While some may argue that it serves as a memorial to the Jewish people that live in America today that came here as refugees and to honor the American contribution to the war, that's not entirely representative of the actual situation Jewish refugees faced. While that claim is partially true, America did not actually welcome many Jewish refugees after WW2. Rather America turned away thousands of Jewish Refugees fearing that they were Nazi spies. This persecution of refugees and victims allowed the U.S. to portray itself as a benevolent world power that helped the allies win WW2 but in actuality did nothing to help the people that were actually suffering. The political context of this very controversial history made many people protest the Holocaust memorial being put in the Mall in Washington D.C. because it felt like a slap to the face of the actual refugees and Jewish people who were blatantly ignored and had their Visa's denied as well as the many that ultimately died at the hands of the Nazi Regime while the U.S. did nothing. It being in the capital of the U.S. as well just goes to show how this memorial being placed in a city so ingrained within a government that actively tried to limit and persecute Jewish refugees. The response to the location and political context of this memorial shows just how important factors like size, political context and location matter when trying to honor people who died in such horrific ways.

Citations: 

The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies