The quarter looks like any other quarter in Warsaw that was built after WWII. Monotonous, straight streets and ugly concrete buildings. If you didn’t know, you would never have guessed that there is hardly any other place on the entire globe where so many people have suffered and so much injustice has been done. The Warsaw ghetto, three square miles that served as the last stop before the gas chambers of Treblinka to 400.000 Polish Jews.

When I lived in Warsaw about 13 years ago, I would walk through the quarter and try to think of what had happened there. It was actually impossible to grasp. Never could I leave the place without goosebumps and tears in my eyes.

I guess it’s about the same kind of experience people have when they pass Ground Zero in New York. Even if you haven’t lost a loved one on that horrible day, being at the place is a reminder of how cruel mankind can be and that it’s the innocent that suffer from absurd radical thoughts.

Remembering can make you sad and scared, but also thankful for the freedom that we enjoy in the here and now. The fact that we can be who we are, believe what we want and live without fear in a society that values each individual equally.

This is what I thought of while wondering about all the upheaval around the intended construction of Islam cultural centre near Ground Zero. Could you compare that with for example, establishing a German Cultural Center in the middle of the Warsaw Ghetto? And would that be wrong?

My first reaction would be yes. Simply because of the trauma. For a long time after my son had almost drowned and I had seen him floating face down in a pool, I would already get a panic attack if I saw a doll floating face down, or a child swimming under water. If you’ve ever gone through a traumatic experience, you’ll know that any link to the terrible event will bring forth some of the same horror that you lived through before. So perhaps because muslim extremists were responsible for the attack, an Islamic cultural center around the corner might trigger all the hurt and fears that a lot of Americans still suffer from.

Since it were the Germans who carried out their mass destruction plan, any reminder of them would only add to the immense silent pain that is still going around the Warsaw Ghetto.

But when I chew a bit more on the matter, I come to a different conclusion. First of all, it is important to realize that reactions to trauma are often not rational and even very dysfunctional. Coming back to my child’s drowning: If I had let my fear of water rule, my kids would never have even tiptoed in a paddling pool again, let alone swim and therefor run a great risk of drowning later on in life. I had to set my fear aside, I couldn’t blame the water for almost killing my son. It was my negligence that did it.

The Nazis weren’t only guilty of almost eliminating Europe’s entire Jewish population. What is often forgotten is that they also stole their nationalities. Ever since the Nazis started their anti-semitism campaigns, the Jews were not regarded as Dutch, German, French or Polish anymore, they were simply Jews. Not allowed to live in their own countries and be part of their own culture. Even after the war this continued. Most of the the Jews who returned from concentration camps were not welcome in their own country anymore.

So it is important to realize that the Jews who lived in Germany before Hitler were just as much part of the German culture as the Nazis were. With that in mind, pure rationally seen, a German Centre should not have to be a stumble block in the Warsaw Ghetto. Not the German culture, but the Nazis, abusing their culture, killed the Jews.

And you could say the same about the Islamic Cultural centre. This centre is built and run by American people. They are part of the rich American culture that has the freedom of religion, the freedom to express beliefs and opinions and the freedom to get together and exercise faith. It is wrong to isolate these Americans and exclude them from the rights they have, simply because they are Muslims. Not the Muslims, but extremists, abusing their faith are responsible for 9/11.

I’m not drawing any conclusions about whether the center should be built or not. Nor do I want propose the building of a German Centre in Warsaw! Neither do I want to compare the attack on the World Trade Center with the Holocaust. It’s all very complicated and there are no straight forward answers to all these issues. I just think that we have to be very careful with our responses. Because before we know it, we’re thinking and acting exactly the same as the ones who inflicted all the pain to start with.