holocaust museum

January 18, 2006 at 7:37 PM

Has anyone ever been to the National Holocaust Museum in D.C.? I went yesterday with my class, and--boy...well it was intense. I took a class on the Holocaust this past semester. Also in English, we were reading Night, so the whole junior high took a day trip there. The bus was about three hours each way, so we spent more time traveling than we did at the museum but I'm really glad we went. There were a lot of very disturbing parts, of course, like pictures of the medical experiment victims, I won't elaborate. But for me the hardest part was at the very beginning. Our whole class was riding the elevator up to the top floor, and one of the parents who came along on the trip said to us, "They designed the elevator to look like the interior of a gas chamber." I'm sure she said it purposefully right then when we were smushed together, wall-to-wall, and let me tell you...that was pretty horrible. That made it real.

Another really interesting part were the piles of everyday items -- like toothbrushes and cheese graters and things -- that were taken away from the people. To know that they had actually owned these and used them and now we were standing three feet away from them.

In other, less interesting news, I still have an awful sore throat and a headache. I had to skip my voice lesson today! Ahhh! Well it'll give me more time to practice. I'm finding it hard to make the "e" sounds more like "ah" sounds without sounding incredibly pompous and well...stupid! Okay I should start trying to get something done.

--alice

From Eric Stanfield
Posted on January 18, 2006 at 7:52 PM

No, never been there. I'm curious though, did they point out how many Poles, Russians, gays, Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses and other enemies of the state were executed in the camps or did it focus mainly on the impact it had on the european Jewish community? I've seen other exhibits, and some tend to focus only on one group of people who the Germans hated.

From Eric Stanfield
Posted on January 18, 2006 at 9:29 PM

Haha your sister/mom (?) answered my question on another site lol.

From alicelizard s.
Posted on January 18, 2006 at 10:00 PM

Yeah, they did have a lot of stuff about the other minorities oppressed by the Nazis. Of course it mainly focused on the Jews, but there was a whole section on gays, gypsies, Romas, Jehovah's Witnesses and physically and mentally disabled people (including deaf people).

From Colleen Russo
Posted on January 18, 2006 at 11:42 PM

Yeah, I've been there and I know exactly what you mean. It was extremely sad and hard to see and read everything there. For example: seeing the dolls that were taken away from the little girls, and their little dresses... :(
I remember that elevator, but I didnt know that before, how aweful...
Wow, it definately makes all of our lives seem like heaven... I thought I was having a bad day, but how could i possibly complain?!
Thank's for posting that... wake-up calls are definately needed every once and a while!

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holocaust museum

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