Holocaust Memorial Museum

I'm in D.C. this week and went to The National Holocaust Memorial Museum today (of all days.) I just wanted to express how impressed I was by the museum. I spend a great deal of time going to museums, and I have never felt like I felt going through this one. I could not find any words to respond to my collegue when she asked what I thought. I just stared and tried to take in every bit of information it had to offer. We budgeted to spend 2 hours. I was there for 5 (I told her to go on and get lunch, if she wanted.) I felt like if I walked by anything, any photo, video, or artifact, that it would be an immense disservice to the memory of those 6 million people, i was learning about. I have read a great deal of things about the Holocaust, and watched many videos, but nothing prepares you to see all those shoes, all those personal artifacts, and think that all those people were no more then a number (if even) or a body to OTHER HUMANS! And to think this still goes on today, in Darfur, in Iraq/Iran. Have we learned nothing!?

As I was walking down that long marble staircase, I observed a young girl, maybe 6 or 7, descending the same staircase and crying. She asked her mother " Why do people do those things to each other, Mommy? Why?" and her mother said quite defiantly, "You'll understand when your older." And I wanted to turn to them and say, "No you won't."

---

Updated On: 4/17/07 at 12:12 AM

It is a SUPERB museum. Designed with such intelligence and sensitivity, it works for so many different types of people. I think the kids portion is brilliant, and my favourite part of the museum.

Yad Va'shem, which is the major Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem, Israel is an even more powerful and emotional experience, and a bit less of an intellectual one (which makes sense since it is more of a memorial than a museum). One of the most amazing experiences of my life is the room where they have one tiny candle reflected ALLLLLLL over, everywhere around you so that you feel like you are floating in a galaxy of flickering stars. It symbolizes (at least to me) the fact that for every person killed in the Holocaust, their entire bloodline and future children and descendants are taken away from us too.

Akiva

I have not been there since it opened...actually, I am saving our pennies for a trip East soon and this is high on my agenda.

My poor kids have been shown Sometimes in April and Hotel Rwanda every April since they were made....forced to digest Maus I and II & Night as soon as they could handle it. They have cried for days and had nightmares for weeks following the first viewing, sometimes it breaks my heart to show this bleak tragedy to them...but then I reconsider because knowledge is the only real power any of us have. The ability to think critically, evaluate the information we are given...to question the reason why...and ultimately-- to challenge.

---

Updated On: 4/17/07 at 03:07 AM

DG --
Perhaps but, my kids are rich.
Very, very rich.
Trust fund rich.
Life comes kinda easy too them.
They do not have any real grasp on what most people face -- including me...

The one thing I can give them is my sense of humanity and duty. Compassion and understanding and the ability to think and know how to find valid information and form an independent idea.

They are too young to tromp around the desert with me. They have no idea what goes on during the nights and days I spend out there. I risk arrest, and I would not bring them out there while they are under 18 under any circumstances.

But we can share these movies and documentaries so that when the time comes than they venture out into the world-- they at least have some idea of what most of the world faces on a daily basis.

---

Updated On: 4/17/07 at 03:16 AM

Sorry I added to the post...but no I can't take them out...it is a moral dilemma of course... but not right now...
consider if I were to run into a migrant in need of help and got caught and arrested and they landed in social services.. which would do the greater harm.... not being able to assist someone in need over my children's welfare..either way it is lose-lose.

Actually, now that they have been through it a couple times they find it interesting. They ask a lot questions, raise money...my oldest has been doing some Darfur awareness at school lately... my youngest loves having lemonade stands for different organizations... the IRC is her current favorite.

---

Oh that sort of desert we do all the time, indeed, I am a desert rat...

But my work on border regions, which has played the central role in the definition of 'who I am' since I was, hmm, about 6th grade...so what 11, 12 I suppose? Every year since 1996 the death toll rises every spring/sumer traveling season and every year I find myself out on the trails and I quite often run into people lost, desperate, dying even I dread the day I run into a Minuteman instead of the Border Patrol.

Not to worry I pull my son out of school for the big migrants rights march/rallies in Phoenix last year...it was absolutely an incredible experience, there must have been 250K people there, a year later and he still talks about it often.

If you're wondering...no, I still have not forgiven Clinton for NAFTA.

---

DG...I hear you...I have a laundry list of things I haven't forgiven Clinton for, including Don't Ask Don't Tell, alas, I still have this sick twisted lust for the man.

I have empathy for battered women because of William Jefferson Clinton, no matter how much he kicked me, beat me, or broke me -- he could still bring me to tears with his orations, inspire me in a way that no other politician ever has (with a speech, not his record..if only Bill Bradley had a fraction of his charsima...he would be President now.)... it's depraved I know. My ex-husband was said he was often jealous of passions -- both good and bad -- that Clinton inspired in me.

---

Updated On: 4/17/07 at 04:13 AM

blueroses, it's a painful sort of abusive love. As a far-left leaning reasonably rabid liberal cosmopolitan -- Clinton managed to infuriate me far more than Bush ever could....

I know what to expect from Bush but justifying far more than I ever expect to from Clinton, well, let's just say; not-so-much.

---

I visited the Holacaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC when it first opened. One of the exhibits haunts me to this day. Three photographs of a dwarf with malformed spine: l. jauntily dressed with suit and hat 2. standing nude in exact same position 3. his skeleton in the very same position. Grotesque to imagine this ever happening.

My family's going on vacation to DC for a week this summer, and is the thing I don't want to miss. I've been to DC before and have always wanted to see this but never had the chance. I've always been fascinated with the Holocaust.

Third Row Center...that was the thing that really haunted me too.

I went in the 8th grade on a field trip to DC with my class, and I'll never forget the feeling in my spine when I walked through the train car, and past the shoes. Unfortunately while I was there, there was a bomb threat and we were forced to leave. I never made it through the museum, but even if we weren't forced to leave, I dont know that I could have made it through. My experience there has got to be one of the most emotional experiences of my life.

---

I've been to the one in Dallas and it tears me up.

---