Prof. Greg Jackson

So in this instance, there are the Nazis, the clear perpetrators.

the Jews, the clear victims.

And then as you're just saying, all those who silently let things happen or silently pushed back.

And yet there's nothing more powerful than storytelling.

Storytelling is what really brings someone in to a history and helps them to see themselves or to relate and connect to the past and realize these aren't just stuffy names on paper, but these were people who lived and felt the same fears and trepidations and hopes and dreams that we all do today.

What myriad of challenges are you constantly facing thinking through all of that?

There's no better answer than that.

Who is it that said that originally?

Richard Powers.

Amen.

Look, the story of the United States is rich and complex and it has its warts and all, but it truly is a special place.

I assume you end up working with a lot of second generation, the children of Holocaust survivors as well.

Do you feel that there's a sense of that same gravity that's passed on in a unique way or?

Well, to me, Sarah, that is the common ground that makes all of us in our various forms and backgrounds American.

I think the most brilliant sentence ever penned in the English language is that it is a self-evident truth.

To make that assertion, all men are created equal, call that self-evident.

And to not define the nation by a religion, by an ethnicity.

to define it by liberty and that of course poses inherent challenges but those are challenges worth facing as a collective group

and spitballing as a non-Jewish man here.

But as I think about my experience in these museums, I feel like there is common ground that every American does feel when they walk in as they wrestle with whatever, obviously, I mean, the Holocaust is such a singular event.