Humans are inconsistent--we do not shed tears when we see a photo of piles of dead, emaciated bodies of Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust, but we cry over fictitious stories like Old Yeller.  As Dr. Nicoletti pointed out in the convocation Thursday, commercialization and the media have desensitized society to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
        Nearly every major city has a Holocaust memorial, but many of them fail to depict the suffering of the six million Jews and the void created by their deaths.  How can an aesthetically pleasing work of art adequately memorialize such a horrific time?  Dr. Nicoletti explored this question by showing examples of various memorials, which do or do not work.  She explained that a good memorial should focus not on the details of suffering but on the tremendous loss created by the annihilation.
        Something I had never considered was that most of what we know about the details of the Holocaust comes from the murderers themselves.  We have few or no accounts of those who experienced the death camps, and soon no one will be left to give a first-hand explanation of the horror of the Holocaust.
       However painful it might be, the Holocaust must be remembered.  We have to remember the suffering, the tragedy, and the magnitude of this mistake so that humanity never repeats it.  Even so, it is impossible to represent the void created by the Holocaust with art.