Amidst the uproar of recent weeks, I have revisited much of what I learned about the American Civil War, and explored new sources and voices, with particular attention to the popular movement to remove and/or relocate various monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders.
I've also seen numerous posts and memes comparing statues of Confederate leaders with the Holocaust memorials at such places as Dachau, Treblinka, Birkenau, imploring people not to remove statues of Lee, Stonewall, et al., lest we "forget"...it's a patently false and intellectually lazy analogy, as Germany doesn't have any statues of Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, and no one in America has been trying to remove the actual memorials at Civil War battlefields, which are plentiful, somber, and effective in helping us never forget about the horrible conflict our country waged over whether it was okay to own another human being.
I've also seen numerous posts and memes comparing statues of Confederate leaders with the Holocaust memorials at such places as Dachau, Treblinka, Birkenau, imploring people not to remove statues of Lee, Stonewall, et al., lest we "forget"...it's a patently false and intellectually lazy analogy, as Germany doesn't have any statues of Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, and no one in America has been trying to remove the actual memorials at Civil War battlefields, which are plentiful, somber, and effective in helping us never forget about the horrible conflict our country waged over whether it was okay to own another human being.