My time in the Holocaust Museum has had me thinking

[Doran]

I was not suprised to find the museum sobering and emotionally taxing. I was surprised that my strongest reaction occurred on the last floor - the floor that described the liberation, the survivors, those who risked their lives to help. I can't quite put my finger on why it was that I was struck so significantly by those stories. But, I've been thinking that it's because I'm not sure how I myself would react.

Would I have had the will to go on? Would I have had the courage to help?

Not to make it all about me. I just think that the reason my heart ripped open so far at that point, after taking in two previous floors of horror without quite such a gut wrenching effect, is that I understand the magnitude of what those survivors had to live with afterwards, and what those who helped had to risk. And, I'm not sure I could have done -- could do -- any of it. It makes me question my cushy life. Makes me hurt for those I don't help. Makes me feel selfish and naive.

I'm sure I will be processing these feelings for a very long time.

Doran

[GothicGyrl]

I had a very similar reaction to the Titanic exhibit and I'm not an emotional person. You were given a card with the name of a passenger on it and you didn't know until the end, whether your passenger survived or not. You walk through the whole exibit--looking at artifacts, the staircase, listening to re-enactments... it really draws you in.

Until the end when you touch an actual piece of an iceberg. I know it's strange, just a block of ice. But somehow touching that piece and then looking at the wall behind it with the list of names, really drove home what they went through.

My person did not make it. And that hurt. I do remember yelping "Ouch" and having someone come ask me if I was all right. I had to explain to them everything I had felt--the frivolity, the dancing/food/friendship, the despair, the hope, the sadness and then I find out "I'm" dead. What a way to bring you back to reality.

It is kind of an eye opener isn't it? I am really not an emotional person, I can usually look at these things with a non-emotional eye. Not that time.

[Doran]

It is kind of an eye opener isn't it? I am really not an emotional person, I can usually look at these things with a non-emotional eye. Not that time.

I knew I wouldn't know all there was to know, or remember all I'd ever learned about the Holocaust, but I somehow didn't expect myself to react in quite the way I did. I knew I would be moved, and probably teary, but I thought it would be more about the deaths than about the lives. Does that make any sense?

I wouldn't describe myself as "non-emotional" -- I'm kind of a heart on the sleeve girl -- so you can imagine how difficult this museum experience was for me. They take a similar approach to the entry as what you experienced at the Titanic, handing out ID Cards (Passports) with the name and history for a particular individual and what happened to them. Very touching.

The worst of it is knowing that, despite the admonitions of so many [powerful] people in the aftermath of WWII, we still have cases of genocide going on today.

Doran

[Carol in Cal.]

I asked her once whether he talked about it much, and she said that during her whole life she only heard him refer to it once.

The kids were squabbling over their food, which was not to their liking, and he suddenly yelled, "Enough! I've seen men eat RATS!" and stomped out of the room.

[Jenny in Atl]

That is one flaw of man, we forget so soon. No matter the event, it soon fades for all but those who went through it.

[GothicGyrl]

I don't even have any more words for it, Doran. All I can remember of the Holocaust was reading the Diary and getting extremely angry at her situation.

The images didn't so much bother me as much as reading about it did, mainly because I looked at them with a "CSI" type eye--I knew then that's what I wanted to do, so the death pictures were more fascinating than anything.

But reading her diary really did me in.

[Chris in VA]

I had a similar reaction when we read The Hiding Place a few weeks ago, and took some virtual tours of some of the death and work camps. I had read the book many years ago, but since have had some experiences in a little bit more direct way, with the Holocaust--A college roommate's mom had been a survivor and had killed herself, and another dear friend in college got to visit Auschwitz before the Iron Curtain lifted. She kept a rock from it in a curio cabinet on our wall. She couldn't explain what it was to very many people, since she had been in Austria and surrounding "closed" areas on a Christian mission. She really shared deeply about her experience, and it was quite chilling, just visiting.
Have you read The Hiding Place? One of the most extraordinary parts of it details a vision the author's sister has, of a place where people can come to heal from the Holocaust. What the author didn't realize at first, was that her sister was envisioning a place for the *Nazi's* to come for healing--this was from a woman who hid Jews during the war--extraordinary forgiveness and compassion, for the "enemy!" It really blew me away.
Anyway, it is a profound subject, and I think it's good that you have much to ponder.
Oh, and I also recalled an incident in my history class in 8th grade--we were studying WWII, and my teacher was talking about those who hid Jews and others who were being persecuted. She stunned everyone by saying she didn't think she could risk her family's safety by hiding anyone. Of course, we all thought our friends were extremely important (as peers do become around 13!), and couldn't imagine even hesitating to offer help that way. Now, I understand much more clearly just how much it would have "cost" to do so.

[HSMom2One]

I have not seen the Holocaust Museum, but I have visited Anne Frank's house in Amersterdam and I was profoundly touched by that experience. Even going up the narrow staircase was eerie because I knew that the Gestapo had stormed up those same stairs. It was as though I could "feel" and hear them there with me!

Most of us live such cushioned lives that being faced with the reality of such terrible evil in the world is shocking and overwhelming. Visiting museums, we aren't reading books or seeing a movie that connects us to fiction. The exhibits bring us right to the reality of what happened --evidence right before our own eyes.

I find that it takes time to process thoughts and feelings like this. Some of them never even come to a place where I can verbalize or write about them, even years later.

As an artist and art teacher, I sometimes refer to great works that evoke deep emotion. I think some artists have the ability to paint as they process things like we are discussing. I have appreciated the works of Kathe Kollwitz (http://www.dhm.de/museen/kollwitz/english/artist.htm)for this reason. She was German expressionist painter who suffered great tragedy and loss during wartime, and her emotional work expesses it so amazingly. Here (http://www.mystudios.com/women/klmno/kollwitz.html) is another link to her work, but do scroll down where you'll find many more examples than the first link.

Why not get out a sketch pad and try to express your feelings through drawing? It would be only for you and no one else to see. I know that drawing sometimes helps us work through feelings. Even better, get a book or pad for a visual journal where you can draw often.

Blessings,
Lucinda

[Dot]

It was extremely emotional, but my son, who was about 11, really wanted to see it. Afterwards, in near tears, he asked a docent a question that floored her. He simply said that it seemed some of the things the Palestinians were suffering thru sounded like some of the things Jewish people experienced early on, he was remembering some of the WWII books we'd read together. She nearly exploded, and I couldn't get him out quick enough. All I could say was it must be something very personal to her, and yes, people on power, no matter who they are, often forget the past too quickly.

[saw]

many years ago. There was an elderly woman there, all alone. Suddenly she began pointing at the map of the camp locations that was on the wall, and saying loudly, that was where my mother was! that was where my sister was! And she pointed at the tattoo on her arm.
I didn't know what to do or say. I wanted to help, but had no clue. Fortunately someone else stepped in (as I recall a woman who was there with her children) and began to talk to her. It was a long time ago now, but I remember it very clearly.

[Eliana]

It is such an unimaginably enormous thing to contemplate; my mind freezes at the numbers, the horrors, the evil... but I can't feel the pain of millions; it is the individual stories that bring it home. (Though the daughter of a friend went on the March of the Living many years ago and said the point where she broke down was a display of all the shoes that were taken from the people who were gassed. The rooms full of shoes hit her so much harder than all the other things she'd seen at Auschwitz.)

Esther Hautzig (author of <i>The Endless Steppe</i>) has a lovely little book: <i>Remember Who You Are</i> (http://www.amazon.com/Remember-Who-You-Esther-Hautzig/dp/0517575027/ref=ed_oe_h)

It's a collection of vignettes, many of them of individual relatives she lost in the Shoah, and there is one in particular (the first one) which I read every year on Tisha B'Av - it has this one image which haunts me (it wasn't the focus of the story, that was Esther's Aunt Margola, who's choice was very different than the one mentioned here):
There was a selection, with the line on one side of people who would be led off to dig their own graves and be shot into them, and the other side of people who would be led to a work-camp and who had some chance of survival. On the left, the bad side, was a little girl (3? 4?) screaming frantically for her mother. One of the Nazi soldiers, with apparent pity on his face, lifted her up and asked for the mother to come forward, but no one came.

In <i> Women and the Holocaust</i> (http://www.amazon.com/Remember-Who-You-Esther-Hautzig/dp/0517575027/ref=ed_oe_h)
are some of the stories I hid from for years, but that I couldn't stop thinking about. Those I cannot reread - I couldn't keep the book after I'd finished reading it, but somehow, I had to know how it was, to think about the choiceless choices so many mothers faced.

Eliana

[Carol in Cal.]

It was realizing that, as monstrous and horrendous as the Holocaust was, it could happen again. It could happen just about anywhere.

Before I saw that exhibit, I had read a lot about the horrors of the Holocaust. I think I read and reread every novel about that time that Leon Uris ever wrote--QBVII, Exodus, Mila 18, Armageddon--and other books about that time by people like Dietrich Bonhoffer and Corrie Ten Boom. I knew what happened, in more detail that I probably should have. But it was SO horrible that it was a little detached. So clearly utterly evil that I could be distant from it; self-righteous, really.

Then when I saw the exhibit, that distance shattered. The exhibit made it seem, not reasonable, but understandable that it could have happened. Still just as evil, but no longer so alien.

Now I know why people say, "Never forget." It is because those who forget history might just repeat it. Or might just not prevent it.

[WTMindy]

finished reading Elie Wiesel's autobiography All Rivers Run to the Sea and I had such a similar reaction! I was so moved and profoundly amazed at his ability to keep going, to keep loving, and to keep his faith.

When I went to the Haulocast Museum I was almost emotionless, and I *am* very emotional. I was almost so horrified that I couldn't cry. When I was there, the basement had a Eugenics exhibit that just made me ill and mad.

I would highly recommend reading Elie Wiesel's book!

[Doran]

....

Now I know why people say, "Never forget." It is because those who forget history might just repeat it. Or might just not prevent it.


Or might just not prevent it. Yes. That's what I'm thinking about most of all.

Doran

[JennifersLost]

we don't talk about it much in our family; my grandfather on my mother's side was a German Jew. My grandmother was a Swede working in Germany. I know I've said this before here on this board, but those ties make the whole thing seem "real" to me.

When Hitler came to power and all the problems started, my grandfather was not allowed to practice medicine anymore - he was a surgeon. He and my grandmother moved to Sweden, and when my mother was three they came to America, because the hoops he would have had to jump through in order to practice medicine in Sweden were too high, too. His brother and sister were already living in America. So, the simple story is that all of them evaded the camps and the rest of the horrors by seeing where things were headed and getting out early enough.

But here's where it gets interesting and lots of my questions remain unanswered. My mother says that her parents got married quite late after her mother pushed her father to get married for years and years. Her father didn't want to get married because he had TB and thought he would die early. That's what they told the kids, anyway. The truth - or a big part of it, anyway? He was also gay.

Now, did my grandmother know this? Not clear.

Did she want a husband and children, so was prepared to overlook this? Not clear.

Did my grandfather see a way to get Swedish citizenship and get out of a tricky situation in Germany? Did he know he was gay then? Not clear.

I sometimes wonder if they were two good friends who made a deal. Other times I worry my grandmother spent her whole life not truly feeling loved or wanted.

My mother gets very upset if I question her. And one time when I asked if anyone got left behind (what happened to the other relatives? What happened to my great-grandparents?) she got very upset and cut the conversation short.

My grandparents passed away a long time ago and I probably won't get the answers to any of my questions, but obviously it was a time when a lot of people were making decisions they might not have made otherwise.

I'd like to believe I'd help someone else in danger even if it put me at risk, but the truth is I'd probably defer to my husband's wishes and he'd probably not want to risk the children getting hurt. As a young single woman I would have done it in a heartbeat - I made decisions purely on what was "right" back then.

Let's hope none of us ever has to find out the answer, eh?

[Friederike in Persia]

who spent the rest of his life hunting down Nazis. He also wrote a book about the question of forgiveness. A guard asked him for forgiveness and he wondered if he should grant it. So he went on to ask various theologians (Jewish and Christian) about their opinion of that situation.
It's been a while that I read it, but from what I remember it really stirred up a lot of thoughts on a topic I had studied a lot about already.
I'm sure the book was translated into English, but I'm sorry that I don't know the title of it (the German title has sunflowers in it).

[jmgconner]

Doran, I'm right there with you processing similar feelings. On Monday, I had a chance to visit with our Bishop's wife. She is from Rwanda and, obviously, survived the 1994 genocide, but most of her family did not. She was able to get out of the country during the worst of it. When she returned, she talked about the 8 year old daughter she adopted. This girl's mother had died prior to the genocide, her father was killed in front of her during the genocide, and her father's best friend found her hiding in a church. The best friend started to beat the girl and threw her into one of the 'pits' for dead bodies. (The genocide was planned and large pits to hold up to 40,000 bodies were dug prior to the start of the killing). She managed to crawl out of the dead bodies and escape later that night. An elderly woman hid the girl until after the massacres ended. The young lady is now 20 and thriving.

This was just one of the stories that the Bishop's wife shared with me. It was so startling to me to feel that the Holocaust had indeed happened again (at 1/6 the scale of the Holocaust, but in a much shorter amount of time - only 100 days).

[Liz CA]

Not to make it all about me. I just think that the reason my heart ripped open so far at that point, after taking in two previous floors of horror without quite such a gut wrenching effect, is that I understand the magnitude of what those survivors had to live with afterwards, and what those who helped had to risk. And, I'm not sure I could have done -- could do -- any of it. It makes me question my cushy life. Makes me hurt for those I don't help. Makes me feel selfish and naive.

I'm sure I will be processing these feelings for a very long time.

Doran

in Europe at this time once said to me "For some it was better to die than to live with it."
I think, I know what you mean. These are questions we should ask ourselves - more than once.

[kalanamak]

Was the Peace Museum in Hiroshima. I'm glad my parents took me (I was 12). We also went to the smaller one in Nagasaki. And thinking of this made me come up with yet another question I wish I could still ask them....at what age would they have not taken me.
I'll guess 7, but I don't know.

[Doran]

Was the Peace Museum in Hiroshima. I'm glad my parents took me (I was 12). We also went to the smaller one in Nagasaki. And thinking of this made me come up with yet another question I wish I could still ask them....at what age would they have not taken me.
I'll guess 7, but I don't know.

I'm not sure my kids would have been able to process this museum. I think even the 13 year old would have lasting horrible memories of the images there. Although I took her to an independent film called War/Dance (http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2008/01/war_dance_review.html) last fall which detaild the horrors in Northern Uganda. She was moved, but not tormented, by the images and messages in that. So, she's probably also ready to manage something as big as this museum.

It's just so difficult for kids to understand that this is possible in human nature, especially kids like ours who grow up in secure family situations, and safe town, who are not exposed to t.v. violence and news broadcasts on a regular basis. At some point, the choice to keep this from them becomes negligent on our parts. But, not yet.

Doran

[Karen sn]

Doran - Only kind of related to your post.
I have cared for plenty of veterans - Vietnam, WWII, etc......and I have a special attitude towards them all.
But my WWII veterans - I really love. I have a small bit of Jew in my blood and I feel so thankful for their courage in liberating an entire group of people. Yes I know the war was more than the Jewish aspect - but I revere(is that the right word?) my WWII vets. In fact, one just died Sunday night and when he could still talk on Thursday I kissed his bald head and said, "J you know I love you?" He said, "I know." And on Sunday - before I left work - I kissed him and told him that it was a great pleasure and an honor to care for him.
He might have had no real, direct influence on that part of the war - but to me his time and energy are so appreciated.

I remember once in the hospital a young man in his 50's had foot rot and he said he'd had it off and on for years - I asked if he had been to Vietnam.....yup! And then we talked and the horror stories of his life AFTER the war - make me cringe. The ones who really need care - don't get it.

I had one Vietnam vet who was completely emotionally flat. His eyes looked deeply sad and haunted but his voice and facial expressions were flat. Post traumatic stress at its finest.

And then there is the WWII OLD OLD man who had all kinds of heart problems. He told me his war story - still had the shapnel in his legs. He showed me the scars. When he tried to get help form the govt regarding his heart condition and his being a vet entitled to care - they said they lost his records and the scars could be from anything..... I WAS SOOOOO MAD. I gave him the best care and the most attention that I possibly could.

I really am not a gung ho war person AT ALL, but my veterans get respect from me and I give them all the small extras that my profession as a nurse allows. You know - small things sometimes - like you don't get chocholate or strawberry icecream - you get chocholate AND strawberry icecream.

I will never forget my old man in the hospital with shrapnel in his legs and the scars to prove it. He was incontinent and needed briefs and it was such an intense emotional situation for me because he was weak now - and had once been so strong - and I considered it an honor to care for him and make sure he had a dry brief.

It's too **** bad that our own government doesn't respect them half as much. So many veterans are ignored and lost in the system......

I totally get what you mean about the liberators.

[elegantlion]

I studied a lot about the Holocaust in high school. It has always touched me a profound way. It seemed so far removed from my typical midwest suburban upbringing.

I was undergoing cancer tx when Schindler's list came out. I went by myself to the theater and looking back I think that is part of why my radiation tx seemed so easy. (I'm "cured" now,btw)

I agree, we must not forget.

[Doran]

....
I have cared for plenty of veterans - Vietnam, WWII, etc......and I have a special attitude towards them all. But my WWII veterans - I really love. ......

I totally get what you mean about the liberators.


My Dad is a WWII vet -- really a post-war vet, as he was never in active duty, but was in Hawaii after the bombings, and on a destroyer after Hitler had surrendered. There aren't many of them left, and they have such a different outlook on our freedoms, war in general, deprivation, and sacrifice. He's 83 and failing rapidly (this has been a particularly bad week for him). It is hard to imagine that he and so many of his contemporaries were once the strong, courageous souls who did what they had to to protect and liberate us.

I know there are many more like him still fighting today. Despite my deep wish that wars not be needed at all, that troops not be needed to protect one people from another, I have the utmost respect for those who give themselves and their lives in service to their countries.

Oh, and thank you, Karen, for the care you give, and the love you share!

Doran