Holocaust Memorial Museum today. I went once in high school and again when I was here for my Einstein interviews, but I felt compelled to go back because I didn't feel like I had given it the time it deserved (truthfully, I don't remember much about my high school experience, and I went to Natural History, Air & Space, and Holocaust Museums in less than one day during interviews). It truly is an astonishing place to visit; nothing I've ever read (Elie Weisel's "Night/Dawn/Day", "The Diary of Anne Frank"), learned, or seen ("Schindler's List') prepared me for what you see and hear at the memorial. One of the first things you do is get in a VERY cramped elevator with the other people who have exhibit tickets for the same time as you (they only allow a certain number of people in at once, so you are assigned a time) and, as you ride toward the top floor of the museum (where the exhibit starts) there is a video about the liberation of one of the concentration camps. The ride also gives you time to read your Identification Card (you pick one up as you board the elevator - either male or female); the little book tells you about a person who lived during the Holocaust, and you find out at the end of the book if your person lived or died. The first two times I went to the museum, my person died; this one - a 16-year old who pretended to be a boy so she could go with her father to the camp (her mother disappeared) - survived.
The exhibition is divided into three sections: "Nazi Assault - 1933 to 1939", The "Final Solution" - 1940-1945, and "Last Chapter". "Nazi Assault" chronicles what happened in Germany from the rise of the Nazi party to the outbreak of WWII. One exhibit is particularly compelling; called "The Science of Race", it talks about how the Nazis wanted to create a "master race" and shows how scientists and physicians determined how "pure" a person was by examining various physical traits (eye color, hair color, nose width, etc.). I would have been considered "superior", with my blue eyes, (naturally blonde) hair, and pale skin. Many of my friends - be they African-American, homosexual, or simply darker-haired or eyed than I - would have been classified differently...
The "Final Solution" exhibit examines the evolution of the Nazi party's persecution of the Jews, from ghetto internment (a relatively mild condition compared to what they would later suffer) to mass murder. You literally walk through history from the ghettos into a train car (for transport to a concentration camp or killing center) to the camps. There is a bunk from one of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp - where prisoners would sleep 5-6 across on a single bunk, and a model of one of the gas chambers/crematoria (the story is astonishingly sad: prisoners who were deemed to old, young, sick, or pregnant were told that they were going into a large room to shower/delouse; they stripped and were led to the gas chamber, where they died within minutes. Other Jews -who were spared instant death- were responsible for clearing out the bodies and loading them into the crematorium.) It is an incredibly heart-wrenching exhibit; there is a video on some of the atrocities committed in the name of medicine (Dr. Mengele, etc.) that is so graphic that it is mounted in a special place you have to look over a high rail into to prevent young children - and those who do not wish to see it - from viewing it.
"Last Chapter" talks about the liberation of the Nazi camps and the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, as well as rescue and resistance efforts and the aftermath of the Holocaust. There are a number of stories about people who fought to rescue the persecuted, only to be executed for their efforts; there is also a little theatre where eyewitnesses talk about survival, rescue, and resistance efforts. When you leave this section of the museum, you are near the Hall of Remembrance, where there is an eternal flame in honor of the 6 million+ who died during the Holocaust (there is a little box of ash and soil from some of the camps interred directly beneath it) and everyone - regardless of religious affiliation - is invited to light a candle. It is an incredibly moving experience.
A couple of things always steal my breath - and bring tears to my eyes - every time I visit to museum. As you move between floors/exhibits, you go across glass-walled walkways; on the walls on one floor are the names of cities/towns that were decimated during the Holocaust, on another floor, the names of some of those who perished. The one exhibit that REALLY gets me, though, is one that talks about how the Jews (and others interred in the camps) were stripped of all their material possessions, either immediately upon entry into the camp or just before they were executed. On both sides of a LONG walkway (probably 30+ feet in length) are shoes of every size and shape, each of which belonged to someone in a camp. There are thousands upon thousands of shoes, some of them so small I can imagine them on my infant nephew. I don't know exactly what it is about this particular exhibit - it's just shoes - that is so sobering to me, but I tear up every time.
An incredibly moving day. I'm glad I went back. The rest of my day shall be spent resting, relaxing, writing postcards, and reading a book I picked up in the museum's bargain bin ("I Survived Rumbuli", written by one of only two women (out of 30,000 Jews living in Riga, Latvia) who survived the Holocaust. One of the things that drew me to this particular book was part of the description on the back: "For years she hid in the forests and among Latvian peasants and city-dwellers - members of the Seven Day Adventists sect. Out of their devotion to God, they were willing to risk their lives to save her, rather than betray their faith." What an incredible testimony to their faith...
