The Jew in the Glass Booth
This one gave me the willies (or in this case, the Wilhelms):
BERLIN — “Are there still Jews in Germany?” ‘’Are the Jews a chosen people?”
Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, there is no more sensitive an issue in German life as the role of Jews. With fewer than 200,000 Jews among Germany’s 82 million people, few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them.
To help educate postwar generations, an exhibit at the Jewish Museum features a Jewish man or woman seated inside a glass box for two hours a day through August to answer visitors’ questions about Jews and Jewish life. The base of the box asks: “Are there still Jews in Germany?”
“A lot of our visitors don’t know any Jews and have questions they want to ask,” museum official Tina Luedecke said. “With this exhibition we offer an opportunity for those people to know more about Jews and Jewish life.”
But not everybody thinks putting a Jew on display is the best way to build understanding and mutual respect.
Since the exhibit — “The Whole Truth, everything you wanted to know about Jews” — opened this month, the “Jew in the Box,” as it is popularly known, has drawn sharp criticism within the Jewish community — especially in the city where the Nazis orchestrated the slaughter of 6 million Jews until Adolf Hitler’s defeat in 1945.
“Why don’t they give him a banana and a glass of water, turn up the heat and make the Jew feel really cozy in his glass box,” prominent Berlin Jewish community figure Stephan Kramer told The Associated Press. “They actually asked me if I wanted to participate. But I told them I’m not available.”
The exhibit is reminiscent of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann sitting in a glass booth at the 1961 trial in Israel which led to his execution...
That's part of what creeps me out.
2 comments:
This is only tangential to Scaramouche's post, but, quite some time ago, she was kind enough to suggest some alternative--to Arendt's famous _Eichmann in Jerusalem_--histories of the famous trial; I wrote them down at the time, but then, showing my age, I proceeded to misplace the note pad where I had done so. Would Scaramouche be kind enough to provide me with those titles again?
Thank you.
Sure thing, CP. They were "Adolf Eichmann, His Life and Crimes," by David Caeserini, and "The Eichmann Trial, by Deborah Lipstadt.
Post a Comment