K98632 said:
Machiavellian said:
Not really clear what you are saying. Are you saying the statues stand as a symbol of a time and its wrongs. The problem with this view is that at no time in no country and definitely not in the US have we ever erect statues and monuments of people that reflect a bad time. We erect statues and monuments to glorify people we respect and honor for what they stand for. If you go to another country, with no knowledge of its history and you see statues and monuments of people, would the first thing come to your mind that this is a display showing what was wrong. I highly doubt it. Instead, if you were interested you would wonder, what did this person do that people wanted to honor that person.
I can agree that they do not all need to be destroyed but they all definitely need to be removed from public places paid for by the taxes of the citizens who live in those states. Since they do have some historical significance as you suggested a historical site would be good for some and for the those mass produced statues they can be auctioned off since they were only erected for a totally different purpose.
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No, I'm not saying that they were erected to reflect a bad time. I'm saying thats what they stand for in the here and now. Should Auscwitz been bulldozed? Today it stands as a symbol of horrible things to learn from. I think people get too hung up on why these statues were raised rather than what they are today.
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The walls of Auschwitz still stand as a reminder, along with memorials to the victims. What you won't find at the Auschwitz memorial are statues of Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Rudolf Hoss, or any other Nazi figure. Any such statuary would have been destroyed by the Allies during the occupation as a warning to the Germans not to continue to glorify the Nazi regime, and erecting statues of those figures as part of the memorial would be considered to be disrespectful to the people who were murdered at Auschwitz and their surviving family members.
