One
thing that impressed us was that the difficult side of history was not as
hidden as it usually seems to be in the US.
We went to memorials for the Irish Famine (really a genocide, since
Ireland exported food during the late 1840’s), the deportations under the Vichy
government during WWII, Anne Frank’s house.
All very moving, and alongside beautiful buildings.
I’m
thinking of the city where I live, Minneapolis, which obviously has a shorter
history than Paris or Dublin. There are historical markers and historical
buildings here, but, at least in my experience, you really have to seek out any
memorials to the taking of Native lands, or the cruel treatment of immigrants
or workers. I wonder what a “Deportation
Memorial” would look like here.
We
have a reputation for being a-historical in this country, and that’s a
loss. It wasn’t always easy to hold in
my mind that the great buildings in the square in Brussels—so beautiful in the
day and unbelievable at night—were financed by the African slave trade, which
was being remembered in an exhibit in the cathedral a few blocks away. But it
was possible to see the beauty, to lament the great injustice, and to just be
in there in the presence of both.
I
want to live that tension wherever I am.
Be
justice. Be beauty.
Patrick
