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Should We Preserve Our History?

Posted on 10th April 2015

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I see from this BBC story that some people are getting worked up into a state by the offer for sale of a uniform which may have belonged to Hermann Goering, a famous Nazi. It is being suggested that the uniform should be burnt rather than sold.

Whilst I understand the arguments about glorifying Nazi people and their crimes, and have serious questions in my mind about what kind of person would want to buy such an item, it is nevertheless a piece of our history: a reminder of past evils that we should be actively avoiding repeating, not suppressing.

How would the burning of this uniform be any different from the destruction by IS of Assyrian antiquities in Iraq (described in this BBC report), the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes in the University of Cape Town (described in this BBC report), or the destruction by the Taliban of the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan, in Afghanistan (described in this Wikipedia article)?

Our history is littered with crimes and atrocities; the only reason we think our history is less evil than it actually is, is due to propaganda. The human race are shockingly bad at learning from the mistakes of history. We will have even less chance of learning from our shameful past if we destroy the evidence and reminders of our past failures and embarrassments.