Germany Confronts Its Past but America Still Hides the Scars of Slavery and Native Suffering

One nation teaches every child about Kristallnacht while many states still block lessons on Jim Crow and Native American removal.

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On Washington DC’s National Mall stands the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. It honors a catastrophe that happened in Europe, not here. Why is this event placed so firmly in America’s national story when the United States waited years before fighting Hitler?

The contrast is clear. , yet there is no equally large memorial for the 12.5 million Africans enslaved in the US or for the millions of Native Americans killed or forced from their land during westward expansion.

Germany, on the other hand, has uniquely embraced their dark past. They’ve never shied away from admitting what happened in the Holocaust and the way they’ve taken ownership of it and refused to brush it under the carpet is something that has gained international respect.

the then German chancellor said the horrors of the Holocaust cannot be explained by merely blaming ‘the demon Hitler’ but rather taking ownership of the fact that the Nazi…