Holland 2009
June 26, 2009
(Matthew Zing) I think that this is the most interesting, or at least the most difficult aspect of Europe to understand and relate to: the fact that not but sixty years ago, World War Two was raging on here in Holland. How could we possibly know what that must feel like, us being from such a inexperienced country, relatively speaking? How could we know what it is like to have grandparents, or mothers and fathers, that realized and survived the Nazi occupation of their country, the carpet bombing of their city? I think that I never thought about the proximity of the war to our own generation for precisely the fact that the United States, save Hawaii, were unaffected by it, never touched by a holocaust or an invasion by a foreign army. But here, there is the very house Anne Frank hid for her life (I almost cried), German bunkers, scorched clock towers and completely rebuilt cities. What do we have at home that could remind us of such a past besides vague stories from veterans, stories that seem to come from an alien world, a time detached? In the states, the war comes off as legendary, almost mythological, and I certainly don’t mean in a entirely positive sense. But there is a deafening truth behind these stories that we might never be able to understand. They are not stories but actualities that define the lives of millions. I feel lucky, as if I’ve grown up among various advantages. Yet guilty as well, as if my life might be incomplete, and it scares me to think, that to be whole, I need horror, trauma and death. But these are the things, that without, our lives would lack in beauty.
It worries me too that I never thought about this when I was in Slovenia. Let me be clear. It does not bother me that I never thought of the second world war while I was visiting Slovenia, seeing as it wasn’t as affected to the same degree. Rather, being fully aware that Slovenia and the rest of Yugoslavia was very recently embroiled in civil war and genocide, I failed to grasp the scope of what that meant to the country and its people, how that must have altered their culture and overall idea of life and humanity. And now I feel like I missed out on a large part of that trip. However, I believe I’ve made up for it, taking careful precautions to be perceptive to Holland‘s history, and it is not easy. You must be open to it; your heart must be as wide as possible. Sometimes it is hard to imagine, and when I look around me and try to piece together a suitable interpretation of the past, I get dizzy. It is like being in the presence of an impossibility, an intangible force, and coupled with the fact the this past was indeed a reality, that there are living and breathing people, buildings, non-buildings, museums and bunkers that can testify to it, my emotions, and my conceptions, have become unbelievably acute.
My advice: learn some of the language, not out of necessity or convenience, but out of kindness, respect and love. This is the true value of travel, to communicate and in doing so, you discover that there are all kinds; all kinds of people, good and evil, foods, cultures, music that, while varied, share a quality that is beyond any translation and is sufficient without words.
—Matthew Zingg
