Sender: |
|
Subject: |
|
From: |
|
Date: |
Tue, 7 Feb 1995 14:43:53 PST |
Reply-To: |
|
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
Interesting question. There was one similar a few weeks ago, but little
discussion ensued on the net. How about a few thoughts...?
The *way* you display and interpret war booty or in this case things
from a dead soldier may be more important than whether you do or don't
....I think that the items could be used to show what soldiers used,
what personal things they carried with them, interpreting this in a
human way. I would *not* exhibit them with the main message being that
they were taken from a dead soldier. If they can help us understand
the life, circumstances and human feelings of "any soldier" across the
boundaries of whose 'side' he was on, then we may help those visitors
who have no personal experience of war understand better what it means
to send men to war.
Some may feel that to use these things at all is inappropriate,
but I believe that to the extent those things can be used to help us
better understand a reality that we need to understand, even though it
is not a pleasant one, then perhaps the dead soldier's life will have
had a little more meaning, and be just a little less in vain. And maybe
those who see the exhibit will realize just a bit more that "the enemy"
was someone a lot like us.
Lucy Skjelstad
[log in to unmask]
|
|
|