(Commentary by UVA history lecturer Waitman Wade Beorn) As a historian of the Nazi era, I am drawn to a stark contrast between how post-World War II Germany and the post-Civil War United States acknowledge their roles in institutions built upon human suffering. Put simply, in coming to terms with its past, Germany eventually elected to memorialize its victims, while the United States, particularly the South, chose to commemorate not the victims but the institution itself and the society that created it.