Holocaust Museum
I don't post often, but after visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC last Sunday, I thought I'd put some thoughts to the page.
Recently, the comment has again arisen from a world leader that the Holocaust never happened...or at least that there is no PROOF that it happened. If ANYONE has any doubts, come to Washington, DC, and walk through the Holocaust museum. The designers have done a magnificent job at documenting Hitler's rise to power and his focus on the Jews as the primary reason the Germany's economic problems following WWI and the world-wide depression that followed. He was absolutely brilliant in how he crafted his message and played on the fear of "other." It was xenophobia at its best.
You start at the top of the building and work your way down traveling from the early 1930s through the Nuremberg Trials. Words cannot express the terrible things you see. There are places where video screens are shielded...and you know that something horrendous is showing there. One dealt with the "scientific" medical studies the Germans did on children. One with what the Allied troops found when they liberated the concentrations camps - Dachau, Treblinka, Auschwitz. There was a room where you could sit and listen to the survivors talking about what happened to them and to their families. There was a video of survivors alive today recounting how a grandmother took her grandchild into her arms, knowing if her daughter held the child, all three of them would be killed, but if she took the child, her daughter had a chance to survive - at least that day. Hearing that woman tell of her Mother's sacrifice now that she is in her 70s was heartbreaking...even all these years later.
I was managing to maintain my composure through most of this until we reached the part of the tour where they address how all of those arriving at the camps were stripped of their possessions...one of the illustrations was a room, probably 50'long x30'wide. We walked down the middle of it and it held nothing but shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of pairs of the actual shoes worn by those murdered in the camps. For some reason, this image just tore me up.
Millions died - The vast majority were Jews, but also Romas (gypsies), homosexuals, the disabled & handicapped...We know all of this because the Germans were meticulous at keeping records. How many in the ghettos, how many on each train leaving the ghettos, how many arriving at the concentration camps, how many murdered each day at each location, how many buried or cremated...and the problem they were having because the ovens couldn't keep up with the number of bodies. Hitler's Final Solution. All those people - more that 6,000,000 - and STILL there are those who claim that it is all a fabrication.
You should see this, experience it...it is why we must stand up to hate when we see it. One of the last things you see as you leave is the following:
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
If we do not remember our history...we are bound to repeat it.
Preston
Recently, the comment has again arisen from a world leader that the Holocaust never happened...or at least that there is no PROOF that it happened. If ANYONE has any doubts, come to Washington, DC, and walk through the Holocaust museum. The designers have done a magnificent job at documenting Hitler's rise to power and his focus on the Jews as the primary reason the Germany's economic problems following WWI and the world-wide depression that followed. He was absolutely brilliant in how he crafted his message and played on the fear of "other." It was xenophobia at its best.
You start at the top of the building and work your way down traveling from the early 1930s through the Nuremberg Trials. Words cannot express the terrible things you see. There are places where video screens are shielded...and you know that something horrendous is showing there. One dealt with the "scientific" medical studies the Germans did on children. One with what the Allied troops found when they liberated the concentrations camps - Dachau, Treblinka, Auschwitz. There was a room where you could sit and listen to the survivors talking about what happened to them and to their families. There was a video of survivors alive today recounting how a grandmother took her grandchild into her arms, knowing if her daughter held the child, all three of them would be killed, but if she took the child, her daughter had a chance to survive - at least that day. Hearing that woman tell of her Mother's sacrifice now that she is in her 70s was heartbreaking...even all these years later.
I was managing to maintain my composure through most of this until we reached the part of the tour where they address how all of those arriving at the camps were stripped of their possessions...one of the illustrations was a room, probably 50'long x30'wide. We walked down the middle of it and it held nothing but shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of pairs of the actual shoes worn by those murdered in the camps. For some reason, this image just tore me up.
Millions died - The vast majority were Jews, but also Romas (gypsies), homosexuals, the disabled & handicapped...We know all of this because the Germans were meticulous at keeping records. How many in the ghettos, how many on each train leaving the ghettos, how many arriving at the concentration camps, how many murdered each day at each location, how many buried or cremated...and the problem they were having because the ovens couldn't keep up with the number of bodies. Hitler's Final Solution. All those people - more that 6,000,000 - and STILL there are those who claim that it is all a fabrication.
You should see this, experience it...it is why we must stand up to hate when we see it. One of the last things you see as you leave is the following:
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
If we do not remember our history...we are bound to repeat it.
Preston