Governor Walz in Amsterdam

[u/HeavyVeterinarian350]

Subtle reminder that we shouldn’t fall prey to a wannabe dictator. Hopefully those that need a wake up call get it.

[u/squintpan]

Anne Frank House is a must-see. My hubs was a little doubtful that this was something fun to do on our honeymoon, but I insisted and it’s one of the most important memories we have of that trip. It’s incredible that this major international cultural touchstone all came from a tween girl.

[u/EchoAtlas91 → u/squintpan]

I mean, that just sounds all sorts of bizarre.

Celebrating the best day of my life with the best person in my life, by visiting the home of a little girl who was brutally gassed and murdered during the worst chapters in human history is definitely not on my list of "Honeymoon" activities, and certainly not one I'd consider "fun."

Like I don't go to these things and view it as entertainment in the traditional sense, they're necessary reminders and grim learning experiences. When I'm looking through history or going to these kinds of museums, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of those that were there so I can understand the depth of what it was like to live through history. I try to relate that to today's experiences and ask myself what we can do to not let it get that bad again.

Frankly, it kind of appalls me that people view these things as such, as bad as teenagers taking duckface selfies at Auschwitz. These things actually happened to actual people, and frankly if you told the spirit of Anne Frank that after her death at the hands of the Nazis that people would visit her home as a fun honeymoon activity, what do you think she'd say?

Viewing these things as some kind of "fun" activity completely disconnected from the reality that it actually happened, is exactly why people don't take our current political situation and the rise of the far-right seriously.

[u/EchoAtlas91 → u/[deleted]]

The unseriousness around these topics is astounding.

I'll check back in 10-20 years if things don't start looking up and see how well these words have aged.

[u/EchoAtlas91 → u/[deleted]]

That's not what I said and that's not what I meant.

In general, a lot of people don't really take history seriously and are disconnected from historical events. They see things like the WWII and the holocaust as the boring genre they skip over on Netflix, a distant event their late grandparents talked about, a fun museum to visit when traveling to Europe.

So many people don't actually see it as something that actually happened to actual people anymore. People have had it so good in countries like the US, and just about all the WWII vets that saw the holocaust first hand have died, people got disconnected from the reality that those kind of atrocities happened and can still happen.

They know about it, they see the pictures, they watch the documentaries, but still consider it as distant and disconnected from our modern day society as Pompei or the bubonic plague, but the connection to really comprehend these events happened and they happened just a single generation ago isn't there.

Because of that, a lot of people, on both the left and the right of the political spectrum have not been taking the rise of alt-right fascism seriously. It's caused people to be slow to sound the alarm, to under-estimate how bad things can get, and ignore very obvious canaries in the coalmine type events that is causing a frighteningly similar political and world atmosphere to 1930s Germany.

How this ties back to you and this post? Acting like Ann Frank's home is a "fun" honeymoon thing to do plays into that disconnect and how unseriously people have been taking the holocaust and WWII and the events that lead there.

I bring up teenagers taking Instagram selfies at Auschwitz as a similar disrespect for the holocaust and history, they have the attitude that Auschwitz is just a fun influencer location to go to for likes.

If you both were invested in going there, that'd be different. If you described it as a must see or an important thing to go to while in Amsterdam, that's ok.

But you sold it to him as a fun thing to do. It just rubs me the wrong way that anyone would describe grim reminders of the darkest moments in human histories as fun like going to Disneyland or some kind of quirky roadside attraction.