The Holy Bible, Manic Street Preachers’ magnum opus, problematises museums and memorialisations of atrocity. Two tracks – Mausoleum and The Intense Humming of Evil – depict the horrors of the Holocaust and the dangers of passivity and moral complacency. However, while museums and memorials constitute one route to acknowledging and comprehending humanity’s darkest chapters, the course is an incomplete one. They are, thus, a reminder of the need for moral reflection, vigilance, and a deeper understanding of the drivers of mass atrocity, extermination, and genocide – to attain this, we need more than mausoleums.

---

Introduction

When it comes to peering deep into our souls and confronting the challenging legacy of the Holocaust – as well as other genocides and mass atrocities – museums and memorials alone are not enough. Richey Edwards, Manic Street Preachers’ chief lyricist for the band’s masterwork, The Holy Bible, came to recognise this after visiting sites of atrocity since converted to museums and/or memorials. Clearly, it troubled him. This is particularly evident when we consider the album as a whole and Edwards’ views on the human condition. Indeed, The Holy Bible can be read as a meditation on human nature – Edwards found little solace in this period of reflection.

The themes of memory and memorialisation of atrocity are tackled via two “sister songs” from The Holy Bible – Mausoleum and The Intense Humming of Evil. Both provide stark warnings about the pitfalls of memory work and the related dangers of passivity in the face of atrocity, as well as the necessity for constant vigilance. At the same time, the songs invite the listener/reader to consider what moral reckoning might look like and the role for atrocity education. This piece, the first of two parts, contemplates and expands on some of these issues.

‘The Centre of Humanity is Cruelty’

The Holy Bible is an original cultural artefact. Released in 1994 during the Britpop era, but diametrically opposed to it, its brand of musicality and lyrical themes jarred with the general optimism of the time. Rather than shy away from challenging and uncomfortable topics, the album confronts them head on: prostitution, US gun laws, capital punishment, eating disorders and the Holocaust, the list goes on. The album has been interpretedin the following terms as: ‘a series of searing meditations on the nature of suffering, despair, political tomfoolery and the dangers of power without a conscience to guide it’ [1]. In short, it is relentlessly heavy-going – the track This Is Yesterday provides the closest thing to light relief.

Edwards was fascinated and disgusted in equal measure by the human condition. Our capacity for evil and the numbness of our response to atrocity permeates several tracks to varying degrees: Of Walking Abortion, Mausoleum, and The Intense Humming of Evil. Incidentally, the line about the centre of humanity being cruelty actually has its provenance in another track (Archives of Pain), a further illustration of how the question of our essential nature gnawed away at Edwards [2].

Prior to the more specific attacks launched in Mausoleum and The Intense Humming of Evil, Of Walking Abortion sets the scene in its condemnation of humanity writ large [3]. In answer to the question, “who is responsible (for atrocity)?” Edwards replies with a resounding, “all of us” – each and every one of us has the capacity to collude, commit, and be complicit in the worst acts of inhumanity. Thus, we find ourselves locked in a perpetual struggle with our internal and inherent demons.

After this excoriating attack striking at the core of our essence as a species come two targeted critiques that carry Of Walking Abortion’s core message,applying it to the memory and memorialisation of atrocity, raising important questions concerning, history, passivity, morality, and vigilance.

Memorialisation and Passivity

To begin with, Mausoleum offers a critique of the commercialisation and sanitisation of sites of atrocity as well as the comfort-trap of temporally-distant spectatorship – perhaps, even, the futility of remembrance. Belsen and Dachau were prominent in Edward’s mind when he penned the lyrics, though Auschwitz-Birkenau or Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison could just have easily nurtured the same ideation. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the geographies of atrocity to be memorialised, transformed into museums or memorials – both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Tuol Sleng (now Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) have undergone such a reimagining, with the laudable aim of preserving the memory of lost souls, raising awareness, and educating current and future generations. With this change, such sites enter tourist itineraries – so-called “dark tourism” – while school children can participate in educational visits.

Some commentators have argued that the reduction of a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau to an item on a bucket list, or stag tour operators including a trip to the concentration/extermination camp as part of their package, is (morally) objectionable, in some way diminishing the gravity of a place that deserves sombreness and serious moral reflection. This may be so, but it is not necessarily the case. True, some visitors may be content to passively consume the exhibitions and objects. For others, it could mark the commencement of an earnest engagement, introspection, and conscientious contemplation.

One line from Mausoleum speaks to the experiential disconnect between survivors who witnessed the dreadfulness of places like Auschwitz-Birkenau and S-21 first-hand and post-atrocity visitors who are presented with a representation. Thus, in morphing from atrocity to tourist site, the depiction of events may undergo a sanitisation. ‘Come and walk down memory lane // No one sees a thing, but they can pretend.’ There is nothing to see here.

Along these lines, one authority on Auschwitz went as far as proposing that Birkenau be left to ruin, echoing Edwards’ perspective when he said: ‘Seal it [Birkenau] up. Don’t give people a sense that they can imitate the experience and walk in the steps of the people who were there.’ Indeed, there is the real risk that this ‘moralistic voyeurism’ functions as a performative signal of virtue – that others see and/or we see ourselves as doing the “right” thing without actively engaging with the enormity of the abominations committed or analysing the depths of human deviousness [4].

The aestheticisation of atrocity is an especially unsettling trend.  The idea of atrocity as something for the visiting masses to consume disturbed Edwards. While he did not touch upon fiction that utilises the Holocaust as a commercial hook, Mausoleum suggests he would likely have viewed such outputs as cynical, exploitative and even dangerous – atrocity aestheticised, faux memorialisation without learning.

I concur with notion that it is impossible to imagine or feel what those who were murdered at Birkenau, at the “killing fields” of Choeung Ek, or in the proximity of the town of Srebrenica thought or felt. That said, rather than call for a permanent halt to visitors, it would be beneficial to ask, “what else?” in addition to visiting the site would help humanity to fully acknowledge the warning that Auschwitz-Birkenau and other sites of genocide and atrocity represent. A visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau could be someone’s first encounter with the Holocaust. What does an extermination site look like to a fresh pair of eyes, someone who’s never heard survivor testimony or read any of vast literature on the subject? We come back to the question “what else?” How do we move from the comfort of the passive, the safety of the present, surface engagement and understanding, and distance, to moral reckoning? Whatever we do will always fall short, but it is important we do something.

History, Moral Reckoning and Vigilance

‘Humanity recovered glittering etiquette // Answers her crime with mausoleum rent.’ By way of atoning for the crimes committed, we open sites of atrocity to visitors and charge them for the privilege. This is one of Mausoleum’s most thought-provoking lines, with Edwards at his sarcastic and cynical best. Museumification has another effect – museums, memorials, and mausoleums (figuratively and literally) entomb atrocity. In doing so they repackage and limit the degree to which we are faced with it, always keeping it at a safe epistemic and temporal distance which, in a sense, has to be the case. Then there are the silences – museums and memorials by their nature cannot convey the sheer complexity of events and processes, including atrocity. Nevertheless, Mausoleum invites the listener towards moral reckoning but does so without clearly depicting what that might look like.

A crucial dimension of this is an understanding of the historical record as it regards atrocity. Neither song refers explicitly to education, but the list of Nazi horrors given in The Intense Humming of Evil imply an acknowledgement of the importance of a grasp of the facts. As the Holocaust-survivor, author and activist Elie Wiesel has argued in Night [5], it is impossible for post-witness visitors to fully understand Auschwitz and the Holocaust; however, we can comprehend events [6]. Exuding the moral opprobrium that atrocity is rightly due is important, but it needs to be anchored in an understanding of the events and processes that led to human beings being butchered at Choeung Ek or murdered in the fixed/mobile gas chambers of Birkenau, Majdanek, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and Chelmno, or any number of other locations touched by atrocity.

The Holy Bible may also be read as a ‘plea for vigilance’. This is certainly how Power interprets Edwards’ (and Nicky Wire’s) writing: ‘his [Edwards’] plea for a society to remain vigilant in avoiding their ideas: “Mussolini hangs from a butchers hook, Hitler reprised in the worm of your soul”’ [7]. That said, I think there is also a plea for humankind to be vigilant about personal demons. The line shrinks the distance between Hitler and the listener – while certainly an abhorrent human he is nevertheless one of us. Breaking the barrier that puts him and other genocidalists and war criminals at a comfortable distance is an important aspect of both vigilance and reckoning. Jones appreciates this more than Power: ‘fascist figureheads merely write large the things of which every individual may be capable and in whose crimes every individual may be implicated’ [8].

Earlier, the idea was raised that the “sister songs” – and The Holy Bible more generally – are a warning of the capacity for evil that resides within us all and which can assume the most banal forms [9]. Mid way through Mausoleum, we hear audio from an interview with the author J.G. Ballard, author of Crash (1973) and The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), among others: ‘I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror.’ Like Ballard, Edwards wants us to attend with all our senses to the stark reality of what our species is capable of – the Holocaust epitomises that dark capacity [10, 11]. Thus, Mausoleum and The Intense Humming of Evil sit opposed to the redemptive narrative of a flawed individual that characterises Schindler’s List [12] – Richey’s lyrics compel us to question and confront in a way that the depiction of Oskar Schindler on screen does not [13].

Furthermore, the soundscape of The Intense Humming of Evil is unnerving, with its visceral thuds and hydraulic releases creating a foreboding atmosphere. Having set the tone, the lyrics proceed to describe the deception and dehumanisation of Jewish victims: ‘You were what you were // Clean cut and unbecoming // Recreation for the masses // You always mistook fists for flowers’. Verse two is more specific in its identification of Nazi crimes: ‘Arbeit macht frei // Transport of invalids // Hartheim Castle breathes us in // In block 5 we worship malaria // Lagerstrasse, poplar trees // Beauty lost, dignity gone // Rascher surveys us butcher bacteria’.

To pick up on a few references, Hartheim Castle was used during the Nazis’ Aktion T-4, the regime’s murderous euthanasia programme of people with disabilities. At Dachau, Jews were involuntarily injected with malaria. Sigmund Rascher was an SS (Schutzstaffel) doctor who conducted deadly experiments on inmates. Edwards’ words put Nazi atrocities in plain sight – they are rubbed in your face and impossible to ignore. Such examples demonstrate the cold reality of Nazism and the depths to which prejudice can plummet.

Controversially, Edwards then appears to draw an equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust and what he saw as the brutalisation of the working class. In The Intense Humming of Evil he writes: ‘Drink it away, every tear is false // Churchill no different // Wish the workers bled to a machine’ [14]. While he overstates his case, the lines do match the tone of the rest of the album, one that indicts humanity for its collective complicity and guilt. Nevertheless, what Mausoleum and The Intense Humming of Evil achieve is that they tear away a veil and force an unsettling reflection concerning the Holocaust and our understanding of ourselves. Indeed, The Holy Bible as a whole recognises the need to grasp not only the lessons but the warnings from the Holocaust as the twenty-first century plays witness to the rise of neofascism and the rehabilitation of twentieth century fascism [15].

In this sense, moral responsibility is a continuous process, not a historical one. This has implications for the present. Mausoleum, The Intense Humming of Evil and Of Walking Abortion are reminders to be constantly vigilant, to recognise, question, and challenge when we see crimes against humanity and genocide occurring or emerging. Sadly, such acts are not behind us as atrocities unfold in Gaza, Sudan, and Myanmar.

Conclusion

While Edwards’ visceral negativity towards humankind may be hard to stomach for some – they could surely point to everyday and larger scale acts of kindness – The Holy Bible does its job in reminding us (or pleading for us) to be on guard rather than passively accept that while the Nazis’ crimes are awful that they are a thing of the past. We have not changed that much since 1945. The album’s confrontational approach is its major strength, raising questions about memory and morality.

Personally, while I would not advocate the closure or removal of memorials or museums to atrocity, I would say that those who create and curate such sites think critically about how and what we remember, as well as the silences that such work establishes as an (un)intentional by-product. Additionally, there is a duty on us as visitors to places like S-21 and Auschwitz-Birkenau to ask what we should do with the information we have gained from our visit. Like Mausoleum, The Intense Humming of Evil, and this essay, museums and memorials silence as much as they enlighten – it is up to us to shed more light on dark places. Atrocity education, the subject of part two, forms an important part of this.

References

[1] Martin Power, The Story of the Manic Street Preachers Nailed to History (London: Omnibus Press, 2010), 149.

[2] Rhian E. Jones, Daniel Lukes and Larissa Wodtke, Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible (London: Repeater Books, 2017), 84.

[3] Ibid., 87.

[4] Ibid., 95.

[5] Elie Wiesel, Night (Hill and Wang, 2006).

[6] Donald Bloxham and Tony Kushner, The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

[7] Power, The Story of the Manic Street Preachers, 152.

[8] Rhian E. Jones, Daniel Lukes and Larissa Wodtke, Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible (London: Repeater Books, 2017), 86-7.

[9] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Viking Press, 1963).

[10] David Evans, The Holy Bible (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 54

[11] Laurence Rees, The Holocaust: A New History (Penguin, 2017).

[12] Jones, Lukes and Wodtke, Triptych, 93-95. For more on this area, see Matthew Boswell, Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film (Macmillan, 2012).

[13] Evans, The Holy Bible, 55.

[14] Ibid., 56.

[15] Jones, Lukes and Wodtke, Triptych, 101.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Viking Press, 1963).

Bloxham, Donald and Tony Kushner, The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

Boswell, Matthew, Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film (Macmillan, 2012).

Evans, David, The Holy Bible (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

Jones, Rhian E., Daniel Lukes and Larissa Wodtke, Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible (London: Repeater Books, 2017).

Power, Martin, The Story of Manic Street Preachers: Nailed to History (London: Omnibus Press, 2010).

Rees, Laurence, The Holocaust: A New History (Penguin, 2017).

Wiesel, Elie, Night (Hill and Wang, 2006).