Today we went to the Holocaust Museum in downtown DC. It was very disturbing. The power of ideas was made very obvious through everything that happened. Adolph Hitler controlled the media and was able to tell the people whatever he wanted them to believe. The depravity of man was also apparent. Every person had a choice to support or oppose the Nazis. While Hitler made it hard to resist him, many people willingly accepted his lies and acted on them. We heard stories of friends and neighbors who turned each other in. We saw a video of a community publicly humiliating a couple because an "Aryan" married someone from an "inferior race". They shaved their heads, hung a sign around their necks and marched them out of town. The people standing around were just laughing and smiling at the whole thing.
It was horrifying to see the huge pile of shoes from all the people who were killed. You hear stories about the people who survived the camps and people who sheltered or helped the Jews during the Holocaust, but you don't hear about all the people who worked in the death camps or the medical experimentation facilities or everyone else who did nothing. To be a part of the genocide and have those memories would be devastating.
Sorry to leave you with such sobering thoughts. This is what we did today.
No comments:
Post a Comment