This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Since Jennifer is blogging about our day, I decided to take a page from her book and write only about my personal experience at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

The first thing that struck me as we walked through this amazing museum was how respectfully quiet everyone was - adults, teenagers, and children alike.  It's so rare to enter a place where literally thousands of people are and be able to hear a pin drop throughout the entire building.  But then again, I'm not sure how anyone wouldn't be stunned into silence upon seeing the pictures and videos of what happened to countless people during the Holocaust. 

There were a few exhibits that really have stuck out in my mind.  One happened when we stepped off the elevator at the first exhibit.  There was an enormous black and white photograph of soldiers standing over a mass grave with charred bodies piled deep in it.  That image set the tone for the remainder of the tour.  Another display that has stayed with me are photographs and paintings from a village of Jews that had been around for 900 years that was completely evacuated when the Jews were sent to concentration camps.  All those people gone because of who they were.  The photographs and paintings covered all four walls going from the 1st floor all the way up to the 3rd floor of the museum.  The exhibit that I personally had difficulty viewing was about the death camps.  I actually hurried through that exhibit because of the memories it brought back to me when I visited Dachau, a concentration camp in Germany.  I remember touring the barracks, the mass graves, and actually walking through the gas chambers there.  Even though I was only 16 when I went to Dachau, it is an experience I will never forget.  The aura of horror that surrounded that place has stuck with me all these years and returned with a vengeance today as I looked at videos, photographs, and dioramas of Auchwitz, the death camp in Poland. 

All of this is a reminder to me that just because a man (or woman) has the ability to speak boldly and move people to action, doesn't mean he/she should be followed.  Hitler was phenomenal at moving crowds toward action, but those actions killed millions and wiped out around 1/3 of the world's Jewish population.  And for me, that can never be acceptable.