United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
“Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children, and to your children’s children.”
~ Deuteronomy 4:9~
In the last few years, there has been a rise in anti-Semitism, leading to violent attacks against Jews, around the world, malicious boycotts, systematic campaigns of misinformation, and a degradation of the relationship between Israeli and American heads of state.
I have listened to seemingly intelligent people, who would never think to speak ill of a class of people based on race, socio-economic standings, gender, or sexual preference, disparage Jews in national forums as if they were talking about criminals.
More than ever, I feel this is the perfect time to visit a memorial or museum about the Holocaust and take someone with you! We cannot forget what happened to six million Jews, at the hands of the Nazi’s; lest we see such atrocities again.
May I recommend a visit, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington D.C., which is one of the finest and most thought provoking museums, of any type, which I have ever been to.
Shortly after the museum opened, in 1993, we solemnly made our way, for a visit. Recently, with a free afternoon, in D.C., I decided to go back. Photography is not permitted in the majority of the museum, in deference to the people whose lives and deaths it chronicles, thus, I will be sharing the post cards, which I purchased, in the gift shop, as well as the photograph I took in the Hall of Remembrance, where you are encouraged to light a candle to remember the dead. In this room, inscribed, on the walls are many of the names of the death camps where the innocent were murdered; this is a place to reflect and remember.
You will want to allow several hours to stroll through the four floors of permanent and temporary exhibits.
“In October 1943, Danes rescued virtually all of Denmark’s Jews – more than 7,000 people – by transporting them in fishing boats, including this one, to neutral Sweden.”
“Barracks of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp frequently held hundreds of prisoners, who were forced to sleep five or six across on a single bunk.”
“Wagon owned by a Roma (Gypsy). The Roma were persecuted in every Nazi-controlled territory because they were held to be ‘racially inferior.’”
“The Ejszyski Tower – Yaffa Eliach, a survivor of Ejszyski, collected over 6,000 portraits commemorating her lost community. Photo by Timothy Hursley 1993”
“We are the shoes, we are the last witness.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers,
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam.
And because we are only made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.
~ Moses Schulstein ~
It was this exhibit where I began to weep uncontrollably. Each of these shoes was put on, by a person who believed they were preparing for a journey, not being marched their death. May we never forget and may our generation not add to this blood shed.
http://www.ushmm.org/
