March 2000:
Reflection of the Holocaust Museum
At first when I heard we were going on afield trip I thought great, a day out of school. I was never in the Holocaust museum so I had no idea what to expect. It was when we got there that I realized the horrible conditions the Jewish people had to put up with and live with. I’ve seen Schindler’s List and I’ve read The Diary of Anne Frank and Number of the Stars, but nothing could’ve prepared me for some of the exhibits I saw in the museum.
The architecture of the building was bland yet told so much about the Holocaust. The walls were a cold gray and they were even cold to the touch. Some of the walls were brick. There was nothing fancy in this building and no furniture. This made me feel empty and maybe even alone. The lighting wasn’t modern and these too were plain Every room had just enough light to see.
The first thing my group and I did was go into Daniel’s Story. As we walked through, it began to get more and more depressing. I don’t see how anybody can live in a barely furnished room with dirty blankets to sleep on and eat practically rotting turnips or whatever they were. Everything they owned was confiscated by the Nazi’s. The father eventually wasn’t allowed to work and they were sent off to concentration camps. It’s sad that such happy family could be erased just like that.
While walking thought the actual exhibits it was shocking and depressing. The large picture as you first walked in really set the tone. Looking at a picture of the charred remains of what was once living and breathing people who had lives and were torn away from them because they were Jewish saddened and disgusted me. How could the people working under Hitler let this happen? How could they believe that genocide was right? I asked questions like those frequently to myself while going through the museum. The grossest part was the films showing the medical experiments and cleaning up the bodies. Again I asked how a human being could destroy another human being and treat them worse than animals. It was disgusting! The only way I could watch it was because it was black and white. If the films were in color I probably wouldn’t have been able to watch it at all.
The boxcar was also hard to walk through. To think that hundreds maybe thousands of cars just like it were stuffed full of people. I overheard someone say that they put a hundred people in that little car. I couldn’t even imagine putting thirty people in a car that size! After walking through the boxcar I noticed a rusted metal sign. It said, “Arbeit Macht Frei”. I know a little bit of German so I translated it as “Work makes you free” which was pretty close to the translation. This sign was placed over the entrance of the Auschwitz concentration camp. By this sign, the Jews were led to believe that they one day would leave the camp and be free. This of course wasn’t true because when they could no longer work, they were sent to the gas chambers, or were starved to death. Some of the people liberated were only seventy pounds.
The Holocaust is a terrible reminder of the cruelty and hate that can occur. Because of one man, this gruesome event happened. What I can’t believe is that there are people in this world who still say it didn’t happen. Hate is real, prejudice is real, death is real, but it does not have to happen. The museum was hard for me to walk through. I know a little bit more about the Holocaust now and I’m glad that America helped liberate people in those camps. I hope that everyone gets a chance to see the museum because we can’t let history repeat itself.
E.S.