“The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.”
– Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio
Growing up as a German-American in St. Paul, Minnesota, my relationship with the Third Reich, the Holocaust, the rebuilding of Germany and Europe, and the Cold War and complex history of a divided Germany was a tangential one. It was discussed in abstraction, framed by black-and-white photographs and historical markers that pointed to long-ago events that I was told no longer had relevance to the world I lived in.
My family’s connection to it – through my grandparents, who lived through both the war and the subsequent division of the country – was my only tangible link to this turbulent time. Even then, the connection felt distant, more like a historical curiosity than reality in the present. They shared their stories, but I felt little of the weight that the people who lived through it had to bear.
Germany has grappled with its past, acknowledging the darkness of its actions in ways that America still struggles to do. In contrast, here in the U.S., we celebrate our victories and build monuments to our “glorious” past, often without reflecting deeply on the darker, more complicated chapters.
America often sets up museums and memorials, but these are, too often, about remembering the past from a comfortable distance. We have grand parades, monuments, and national holidays designed to honor the triumphs. But our history is a mosaic of triumphs and tragedies, and in many cases, the tragedies—the deep, painful legacies—are minimized, sanitized, or erased altogether.
Take, for example, the History Center in Minnesota, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., or the countless monuments that dot the landscape. These are spaces to honor, to reflect, and perhaps to learn. But they are not always places where our society faces its darkest moments head-on. In these spaces, we learn about the past, but there is often a desire to remain disconnected from the uncomfortable reality of it. It is much easier for us to remember Pearl Harbor or 9/11 than to reckon with slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans, or the genocidal history of Native American displacement.
A Historical Distance from Truth
The coffee I drink in the morning is bitter, dark, and strong. The table before me, made of hand-hewn wood from an American craftsman, is set with the stories of our shared history – books by Elie Wiesel, Earnest J. Gaines, and others that speak to the human experience of suffering, survival, and memory. These books sit alongside my own cultural inheritance – my family’s German muesli, Abendbrot, and cakes from my grandmother’s kitchen. We, too, have been shaped by history, by the echoes of wars past, of regimes long gone, and yet the past feels too often like a foreign country, one whose customs we respect from a distance but do not always let shape our present.
Growing up with two cultural heritages, American and German, was a source of pride. We embraced the food, the language, the histories of both sides. But these histories were not always easy to navigate. My German heritage, particularly, reminded me that history is not something to be forgotten or ignored. In Germany, history is always present, etched into the national consciousness in a way that no parade or monument could fully capture. The weight of the past, particularly the Holocaust and the legacy of Nazism, is something that continues to reverberate through generations. It is not something that can be joked about or distanced from; it is a legacy of deep shame and solemn responsibility.
Yet in the United States, there remains a deep reluctance to confront our own historical wrongs. We love to see ourselves as the “good guys” on the world stage, rescuing others, never the ones in the wrong. This national mythos—built on a sense of moral superiority—makes it difficult to face the ugly chapters of our history. We shy away from acknowledging the stain of slavery, the brutal internment of Japanese Americans, the decimation of Indigenous populations, or the persistence of systemic racism. It is as if, in confronting these crimes, we would have to confront an uncomfortable truth about ourselves—a truth we have spent centuries avoiding.
Guilt Through Indifference
But acknowledging the past is not the same as exalting it. In Germany, there are no statues of Adolf Hitler, no monuments dedicated to his regime or the horrific ideology it propagated. The public discourse is not about preserving memories of hate and violence, but about learning from them, ensuring they are never repeated.
Here, in America, we find ourselves still grappling with the legacies of past crimes. We have monuments dedicated to figures who perpetuated hate and division—statues of Confederate leaders, for example—that some are now rallying to protect. It is a stark contrast to the German approach, where the public repudiation of Nazi ideology is seen as a fundamental part of national identity. In the U.S., however, there are still those who refuse to acknowledge the harm caused by these monuments, who resist calls to remove statues that celebrate oppression and division.
This difference speaks to a larger cultural divide: In Germany, there is a collective commitment to never forget the crimes of the past, to ensure that they are not repeated. In America, there remains a struggle to come to terms with our own history, to understand the true cost of our “victories,” and to reckon with the reality of our role in the oppression of others. This failure to acknowledge and understand our past keeps us stuck in it, unable to move forward as a society.
As we continue to navigate the complexities of our history, we must ask ourselves: What does it mean to truly understand our past? And how do we reconcile with the injustices that have shaped our nation? This is not just about guilt—it’s about the responsibility to confront uncomfortable truths, to learn from them, and to ensure they do not define our future.
We Are Spectacular!
Granmom always said she grew up during the best time in history. Things were peaceful in her time, she said, and they were nice. “We could walk to the store day or night,” she told me, “and not worry about a thing.” She said this with her hands. She smiled at me and her eyes would wrinkle at the corners. “We knew each other, we helped each other, we loved each other.”
I was inclined to agree.
She lived through America’s Great Depression, on a small family farm in rural Iowa between rabbits and hay fields and trees. Robots weren’t real yet. This world wasn’t real yet and couldn’t be imagined. Progress was not yet a dirty word. Things were dusty. They grew their own food.
It wasn’t until I was older that I learned that in her time the Nazis were killing people by the million across the ocean, and so many people in America were oppressed for being something other. It was peaceful for some. Only for some. But this is not something you tell an old woman…
Granpop, as a boy in Germany, watched a train black as night pass one day on the tracks near his home. He was out walking with his father (my great-grandfather) as the train passed and a thousand ghostly, pale, and pleading faces looked back at him through barred windows. Heading to Sachsenhausen, and the end. He asked his father what it was, who they were, where they were going, but my great-grandfather only squeezed his hand, told him to be quiet, said, “My son, don’t ask so many questions.”
With dead eyes. Many people are remembered that way.
His whole life they never stopped visiting him at night. Even after he moved to Stuttgart, where he met and married granmom (who still believed in the goodness of people), he would still see sunken cheeks and the eyes of his father.
It seems far away now. A world of history books and documentary films. What we learn about in school. Something that we can feel but not real enough to touch. I wondered, while sitting in my high school history class, how much pain one world can swallow before she becomes sick and just spits us back out.
I stand now at the window of my apartment at the Armburg Flats as the daylight dims and turns to dusk. A woman runs her hand through her long hair dark on the wall across the street, an advertisement for youth and beauty watching me from the side of an office building. She is beautiful and dark, the way Millie was.
Granpop didn’t say much to me, especially later in life, but what he wanted to say he said with his eyes. The woman in the advertisement looks back at me with eyes that are darker than his and her face is clean. His face was like the clock on City Hall telling me how quickly time passes. I try to pay attention to these moments, register each one so that they don’t slip past me unnoticed. Moments feel and sound and smell different each day, but they all taste the same.
I met Millie in school, in history class where the teacher stood in front teaching the things he thought were important, while the girls sat in the back reading great novels by dead authors, and the boys gathered around, learning just enough to impress the girls…
I always thought there was so much time. Time for everyone, and time to waste. I could sleep all day and it wouldn’t matter. I could get drunk and nothing would change. Tomorrow was always there, and so far away. There was no need to worry about it today. And then both were gone.
We dream. We don’t look at the spaces between us.
Pop died today, at his home in the old neighborhood. I’m at the Armburg Flats, staring out of the window. I am alone here, and I will stay that way until the end. The woman watches me from the advertisement on the wall and I look at her face and her lips and her mouth, opened partway.
The street shimmers in the sunset haze. People are out on the street looking for a good time, dressed in ways that beg to reflect any bit of light they can find. They have none themselves.
Painting in the header photo: The Last Judgment, by Hieronymus Bosch