the statues remain when the arguments have faded

I was reminded today of this thing I wrote in 2017, early in the first Trump administration, shortly after the violent pro-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There's an image macro floating around that says we should "never remove memorials," and gives the example of the death camp at Auschwitz, which still stands thanks in part to the efforts of the few who survived there, who wanted the world to remember that such a disaster should never be repeated.

I'm all for keeping Auschwitz up as a reminder of the things that happened there. But now imagine that when you leave Auschwitz (which is kind of out in the country) and go into Myslowice or Katowice or Kraków, you find at the center of town a stone Nazi soldier, saluting from a plinth, over this inscription:

"Erected to [Nazi] Soldiers by [city] Chapter #14, Daughters of the [Reich], 1979

"We who saw and knew them well are witnesses to coming ages of their valor and fidelity. Tried and true. Glory crowned. 1939–1945

"In honor and memory of our heroes both private and chief of the [Third Reich]. No country ever had truer sons, no cause nobler champions, no people bolder defenders, than the brave soldiers to whose memory this stone is erected.

"Would it not be a blame for us if their memory part from our land and hearts, and a wrong to them and a shame to us? The glories they won shall not wane from us. In legend and lay, our heroes in [brown] shall ever live over again for us."

That's the inscription on the monument in the square outside of my city courthouse, where people go to seek justice and where the city has its parades and festivals, except that mine says "Confederacy" instead of "Reich" and the dates are shifted.

I have to admit that "never again" is not the obvious takeaway from that inscription — in fact only a single past-tense verb ("no country ever had") acknowledges that the cause the memorialized solider fought for was unsuccessful. The experience of making the trip out to the remnants of Auschwitz is somewhat different.

(Originally a Facebook post.)

In the near-decade since then, my city has attempted to smooth over any war-memorial-related conflict by installing a statue of a Black man in a Union uniform in the square. But not on the square, because apparently a Confederate heritage group owns that property. Nor at the top of an obelisk. The statue of a Black person who supported the United States during the Bigots' Rebellion is across the street, on one knee, facing the taller statue of the war's loser. The contempt in his eyes is not obvious, which is fortunate, because obvious contempt would make some rich people uncomfortable.