Stop using memorials to get a few likes on Instagram

As usual when I’m bored, I scroll through the photos of my Instagram feed – I’m sure most people my age do. As I was doing so, one photo made me pause. It was a selfie just like any other – a guy on holiday with a male friend or partner smiling. The caption was simply titled “Berlin Adventure”. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary and harmless photo until I noticed the background. It was taken in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The only mention of the site in the entire photo was a couple of hashtags in.

Now this is hardly the first photo and certainly isn’t going to be the last. People post photos doing yoga, jumping on the stones and posing on them like they’re some cool rock band that appropriates the murder of innocent people all the time.

The caption often doesn’t even mention where they are, instead they just say they’ve “found themselves” among the stones. Even the current U.S. President couldn’t help making an entry into the visitor’s book at Israel’s national Holocaust memorial sound like he was writing in a yearbook: “IT IS A GREAT HONOR TO BE HERE WITH ALL OF MY FRIENDS – SO AMAZING & WILL NEVER FORGET!” At least he managed to use correct grammar. Oh, wait.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW5b8j9lmSh/?taken-at=213676284

However that never makes it right. While this may seem melodramatic but if we as a people don’t remember those who have died and why they have died, then how are we supposed to learn from the mistakes of the past?

The Oxford definition of a memorial is “a statue or structure established to remind people of a person or event”. A memorial is supposed to be a place where one thinks about the reason why the memorial exists rather than them. A memorial is a place to be humbled, to appreciate how lucky we all are to be alive and to be educated. You don’t have to go to a memorial. But don’t go just so you can add one photo to your collection on Facebook. Find somewhere else in the city to do that. It’s not why the memorial was built in the first place.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW5jd0EBZ_s/?taken-at=213676284

This is a point that has been made several times, most effectively by the artist Shahak Shapira who has photo-shopped people’s selfies and posed photos on horrific Holocaust scenes. The fact that people don’t seem to listen or want to emphasise that the need for respecting the dead continuously needs to be said. And this is not just an issue with the memorial in Berlin. It happens too at Auschwitz, World War One and Two memorials across Europe including the Thiepval memorial in Belgium and the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial or the Hiroshima memorial in Japan.

While I understand that pacifists may have issues with Remembrance Day or memorials of soldiers because of their opposition to the wars they fought in, by not remembering them we are not showing our appreciation for their immense sacrifice that contributed to the freedoms we now have.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWaSks_FXvB/?taken-at=230814760

By taking a selfie in Auschwitz, a camp where roughly 1.1 million men, women and children were sent to their deaths, you are essentially urinating on their graves in your quest for that perfect photo to show your friends what a wonderful time you’re having.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW5dhJXg3wh/?taken-at=917984

If you have to sit on the names of the people who died in a terrorist attack, is it really worth it?

A little bit of narcissism is fine, I mean who doesn’t take a few selfies every now and then but really? To anyone who does this, I ask, how can you smile in a place where such horrors have happened?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW50mYOl8qL/?taken-at=34648

While I’m sure this type of behaviour occurs across all ages and certainly all cultures, we millennials need to get our heads out of our phones every once in a while. I disagree with many of the critiques of our generation but this is not one of them. The lessons of the past, which we carry into the future, are far more important than the numbers of likes, follows and comments that you get. The last genocide in Europe only occurred 22 years ago and every day we see on the news the victims of war. It might be more fun to stay safe behind our hashtags and Instagram filters but if we do not come to grips with the harshness of reality, then we may have to explain to our grandchildren why genocide and war continue to happen again and again.

So if you do decide to look around a memorial, put away your mobile and look at what’s actually around you, you never know what you may learn.