I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that Carissa and me had the opportunity to visit the National Holocaust Museum in D.C. last week when some friends offered to watch our daughter for us. Carissa has made it a point that once a month we spend a Saturday going and visiting the sites here in northern Virginia. With so much to see and do we have more to see than Saturdays in a year.
The museum is amazing and anyone who comes to D.C. for a visit needs to make time to go. A lot of time. There are three floors to the permanent exhibit and we spent 4 and 1/2 hours touring it all and we could have spent many more. It's a self guided tour so you can go at your own pace. However, with the nature of the things you see, you are often pausing to reflect or wipe away tears. It is amazing to me in this day and age that someone can be capable of so much hate and inspiring others to do the same. The holocaust was but 65 years ago. And even today there is genocide occurring. The destruction that man is capable of is staggering and sobering.
There were some very difficult images to view. Seeing helpless children being killed because of a deformity, a handicap of some sort, or because of their religion was almost too much to bear. There was a corridor lined with piles of shoes, thousands of them that really affected Carissa. She asked me with tears in her eyes if they were all real. Solemnly, I nodded. She quickly passed through to the next exhibit. In another display they had a small cloth brooch that a father and his two daughters had purchased from another person by trading their meager meal rations for a few days so that they could give their mother and his wife a small birthday gift. The sacrifice when they themselves were starving to death made my eyes well up.
The atrocities of the holocaust should never be forgotten. Let us never extinguish the flame that still burns in memory of those countless dead. Let us never stand idle and let this same thing happen again.
The museum is amazing and anyone who comes to D.C. for a visit needs to make time to go. A lot of time. There are three floors to the permanent exhibit and we spent 4 and 1/2 hours touring it all and we could have spent many more. It's a self guided tour so you can go at your own pace. However, with the nature of the things you see, you are often pausing to reflect or wipe away tears. It is amazing to me in this day and age that someone can be capable of so much hate and inspiring others to do the same. The holocaust was but 65 years ago. And even today there is genocide occurring. The destruction that man is capable of is staggering and sobering.
There were some very difficult images to view. Seeing helpless children being killed because of a deformity, a handicap of some sort, or because of their religion was almost too much to bear. There was a corridor lined with piles of shoes, thousands of them that really affected Carissa. She asked me with tears in her eyes if they were all real. Solemnly, I nodded. She quickly passed through to the next exhibit. In another display they had a small cloth brooch that a father and his two daughters had purchased from another person by trading their meager meal rations for a few days so that they could give their mother and his wife a small birthday gift. The sacrifice when they themselves were starving to death made my eyes well up.
The atrocities of the holocaust should never be forgotten. Let us never extinguish the flame that still burns in memory of those countless dead. Let us never stand idle and let this same thing happen again.
2 comments:
What a great experience! I can't tell you're an English Major either... at all. :o) Seriouslly, what a great goal to set for the new year and a great museum to start it off. Needless to say, I'm a wee bit jealous. Maybe we will come down and bombard you this next summer. :o)
What a thoughtful day that must have been. I would love to get back east someday, to see some of the historical sites and museums. I have always been interested in that period of history. I hope we can see that exhibit someday.
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