By Esther Boyd
With each passing year, technology becomes faster, more intuitive, and more social. With ever-evolving technology, we like to think that large-scale atrocities simply cannot happen - we would be too quick to film and post and share, galvanizing the forces of justice. Petitions and hashtags spread like wildfire, movements go viral within hours, and the grassroots power of those protecting our basic human rights would flood the cities. Haven't we seen the power of social media for revolution and change over the past few years worldwide? It becomes more and more difficult to censor individuals when we so connected, and there's no going back now.
The immediacy of information and response has not yet saved us from ourselves. There are horrific injustices occurring every day around the world that are not being documented and shared. We don't always use the speed and ease of technology to do something about it. Millions die from hunger, millions are systematically killed, and millions are denied basic human rights because of their race, sexuality, religious or political beliefs, gender, and economic class. We might not have all the information, but we can no longer claim that we don't know what is happening. Even if we narrow the scope from the entire world to just one city, I must admit that I witness social injustice every day and often do nothing about it.
Recently, I attended a workshop at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC with other State of Formation Contributing Scholars. This visit brought up many lingering questions from a spring break trip I took with my undergraduate students in March focusing on hunger and homelessness in Philadelphia, PA. I was particularly struck by the stories of people in Europe and the United States turning a blind eye to what was happening around them during WWII. Hearing the stories of how the Nazi regime started, picking off small parts of the population, relocating Jews and others into ghettos, criminalizing their businesses and livelihood, I couldn’t help but think of the sheer numbers of social injustices that we witness every day on the streets of our own cities here in the United States.
Walking through the USHMM, I was struck by the sheer amount of documentation that has been collected by archivists and historians, much of it donated from personal and family collections. Everything from photographs, letters, maps, accounts, personal items, children’s drawings, and even shoes have been collected and cataloged to help us better understand the lives of those who survived the Shoah and those who did not. I was shocked to learn that many of the photographs taken of individuals as they entered the camps were taken by soldiers and guards, often immediately before sending those same individuals to their immediate death. Documentation was important to the Nazi regime. It was used for propaganda and for records, meticulously detailing the experiences and the individuals affected by their reign of terror.
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