Discussion

As I read “Hatred in Plain Sight,” about the anti-Semitic sculpture in Germany, I was reminded of the removal of Confederate flags from certain public places in America. Seeing that flag reminds black people of the horrors their ancestors endured as slaves, and it insults them. When I think of Sophie Scholl, Anne Frank and the millions of people the Nazis slaughtered during World War II, I empathize with the Jewish people in the German city where the sculpture is attached to a Protestant church. Surely this piece of filth should be destroyed immediately.

As a Jew, a Holocaust survivor and a German citizen, my vote goes to save the Judensau sculptures along with signage that cries out, “Never forget.” Just as we save “Arbeit Macht Frei” memorials at Dachau and Auschwitz, we should save reminders of atrocities all the way back to the Crusades. Yes, within reason, we must even save swastika memorials. The scholars who argue that monuments reflect the values of the time are correct. Let us expose the values of the past to ensure they do not become the values of the future. “Never again” relies on us to never forget.