The Place Where Silence Shouts the Loudest

So, with it not being fall around here (on the weekend we got up to 32 out), I needed a place that was going to be more on the cooler side of the thermostat which hopefully would not be too busy. So I look in my trusty and handy guide book and what kind of slightly jumps out at me - the Holocaust Museum.  A classmate of mine went a couple of weeks ago and said that it is uber depressing (I don't see how they could make it cheerful of a place) but highly informative and interesting.  And, on the plus side, it read that they keep the museum on the cooler side as they want to preserve all the artifacts.  Perfect!!! To the Holocaust Museum I go (http://www.ushmm.org/ if you want to check it out online). 

Here is some background knowledge for you guys on this wonderfully informated, uber depressing and nicely chilled 4 floored museum.  The Museum first opened April 26, 1993 and since then it has had nearly 30 million visitors.  There is a whole schwack load of information to absorb when there - more than 12,750 artifacts, 49 million pages of archival documents, 80,000 historical photographs (which were probably my favorite), 200,000 registered survivors, 1,000 hours of archival footage, 84,000 library items and 9,000 oral history testimonies. The tone of the museum was also quite amazing - if you know me at all, you know that my ipod is forever in my ears; however, I could not bring myself to listen to music while I was there (firstly because some videos had sound to them and secondly, it just felt wrong to not listen to the silence and hear the people sniffling (because of the air conditioning or tears, I don't know) but for those 3some hours, I did not listen to a single song). 

When you first enter the museum, you pick up an 'Identification Card' that you can keep with you which tells you a story about a real person who lived during the Holocaust.  There is a stack for women and a stack for men.  I, because I have some of my sister in me, took both.  Sadly, neither person in my identification cards made it through the Holocaust alive.  I wonder if anybody did in those cards.......So, after you pick up your card, you are shuffled into this elevator that feels like a steel cage, and you watch a video of the prisoners in the concentration camps, something that will basically tell you how the whole tour is going to be.  Once you get off the elevator, the first picture you look at is a picture of the bodies dumped at the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp.  I knew right then that it was going to be a very somber, yet somewhat enlightening experience I was about to have. 

Another thing, if you know me, is that I am a quote fanatic and this place was full of them.  I drained my phone battery from trying to write them all out on my notepad since we were not allowed photos (which reminds me, all of the photos you will see below did not come from me - I googled them and took them from other peoples sites).  So instead of telling you the history of the Holocaust and the timeline of what happened, which we learn in school and you can easily Google and Wikipedia, I will just share with you some of my favorite experiences and readings while I was at the Museum. 

One of the first quotes I came across was from General Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 15, 1945 which said: "The things I saw beggar description ... the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were ... overpowering... I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'".  It, along with the first picture of the concentration camp, foretold the visitors what exactly they would be looking at, reading about and experiencing. 

 

A prayer that was said on the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) in 1938 was as follows:  "Our history is the history of the grandeur of the human soul and the dignity of human life.  In this day of sorrow and pain surrounded by infamy and shame we will turn our eyes to the days of the old.  From generation to generation God redeemed our fathers and He will redeem us and our children in the days to come.  We stand before our God; we bow to Him and we stand upright before man". 

 

The shoes was probably one of my favorite areas.  It was just this room with all shoes from victims of the concentration camps.  The quote that is above the shoes is as follows:  "We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.  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 of us avoided the hellfire". 

This quote from Elie Wiesel was close by the shoes:  "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

 

Another one of my favorite parts was there two rooms that just had pictures going up to the roof; pictures from 1890 to 1941 of more than 100 families.  Just standing there, looking at all the different photos was breathtaking.  The history behind those pictures is astounding.  Just looking at the photo now takes me to a quote that I read from Harry S. Truman on February 25, 1946:  "There are left in Europe 1,500,000 Jews, men, women and children whom the ordeal has left homeless, hungry, sick and without assistance.  These, too, are victims of the crime for which retribution will be visited upon the guilty.  But neither the dictates of justice nor that love of our fellowman which we are bidden to practice will be satisfied until the needs of the sufferers are met". 

 

Another interesting part of the museum was a Karlsruhe freight car, which was one of the several that deported the Jews.  In this tiny space, nearly 100 victims were packed in, not knowing where they were going to go.  There were two different types of camps that they were getting shipped to:  either the Death Camps where they got gassed right away (Chetmno, Betzec, Sobibor and Treblinka) or the Extermination/Slave Labor Camps where they basically got worked to death (Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek).  This car was unbelievably tiny that I could not fathom putting 100 people in it. 

 

So the last, wonderfully spectacular part of the Museum was when I got teary-eyed.  It is called the Hall of Remembrance.  You walk in to, and this is mind boggling, even more quietness than the rest of the museum.  There is a guard who just walks around the area and you see candles lined up along the walls.  In the middle is an eternal flame that says the follow:  "earth gathered from death camps, concentration camps, sites of mass execution and ghettos in nazi occupied Europe and from cemeteries of American soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany".  Just standing there, lighting a candle, and thinking of everyone who died during that time was such a powerful feeling. 

Okay, so hopefully I didn't just totally depress you and get you all sad and whatnot, although it is a very morose subject.  I wouldn't hesitate to tell people to go there just to see everything and read everything.  There is a sound booth where you can sit and listen to survivors tell their story, which is enlightening and inspiring.  You get to see children's toys and drawings, children who made it through the Holocaust.  There are uplifting things to see there, but it is shrouded by the misery and sadness of the word Holocaust.  That being said, I am going to leave you with one final quote, this one from Albert Einstein:

"A desire for knowledge for its own sake, a love of justice that borders on fanaticism, and a striving for personal independence -- these are aspects of the Jewish people's tradition that allow me to regard my belonging to it as a gift of great fortune.

Those who today rage against the ideals of reason and individual freedom and who seek by means of brutal force to bring about a vapid state-slavery are justified in perceiving us as their implacable enemies. History has imposed on us a difficult struggle; but so long as we remain devoted servants of truth, justice, and freedom, we will not only persist as the oldest of living peoples, but will also continue as before to achieve, through productive labor, works that contribute to the ennoblement of humanity."