The Holocaust Memorial Museum

At the Gates of Auschwitz
What is to become of us if no one reads our names or counts the shoes we left behind?
What is to become of us if no one dares remember the torture or the anguish?
What is to become of those who died before us? Those that died with us?
What is to become of us when young women and young men forget the meaning of bravery?
What is to become of us when little girls and little boys grow up not knowing the truth?

I saw her face in the tower of pictures. Her face was almost mine. Few subtle differences and we could've been sisters. A gypsy's face in a sea of faces, all lost to ignorance and blind hatred. All lost in a sea of broken humanity. My fate could've been her's if we were to switch places. And that knowledge is like a punch in the throat. I can't breathe when I look at her. I can't think anything except that she could've been me.

Standing at the gates of Auschwitz, I hesitate. I don't want to feel what I am feeling. This place is full of ghosts. Not the ghosts of stories or movies, the intangible that frighten us with their intangibility. These are real people pressing against me, real faces staring blankly at me. These are real people whose genitals have been sewn shut and whose brains are exposed to high pressure winds. These are real people who are tortured and gassed and tattooed like cattle. These are real children that are starved and mutilated in the name of science, in the name of Aryan science.

These are the faces of the Holocaust. The Jews, the Gypsys, the Homosexuals, the Catholic priests and nuns, the disabled and mentally handicapped. Those who believed differently, those who believed in equality and fought for the lives of others. These are the faces of those who stood up while the whole world held its breath and twiddled its thumbs. These faces could have been mine or yours.

If no one smells the death and the fear, if no one reads the names, if no one stands up when everyone else is sitting down, what becomes of them? What becomes of us? Could we be as brave? Could we face those who were murdered for our silence?

If there is no one left to remember, what becomes of us?

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This was inspired by my walk through the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.

While in DC I took my notebook everywhere, so I could remember everything to blog it later. I took a lot of pictures and videos too, to keep track, to remember.

I am proud that I still have the ability to feel. Even remembering what I saw and heard, what I read and witnessed, second hand, makes my stomach churn and my eyes fill with tears.

If we all turn blind eyes to atrocities and prejudices what becomes of us?

Some of the things I wrote in my notebook while walking the museum:
* The museum is full of ghosts, but not the kind you find in stories or movies. These ghosts have a heavy presence because of the photos. Their faces stay, even after the photos are gone.
* Standing at the gates of Auschwitz while listening to recordings of the dead and their stories. (They weren't actual gates, they were doors to one of the many buildings in Auschwitz, but my feeling was that of standing before Auschwitz in winter, feeling chilled and horrified)
* Could I ever be so brave?
* What happens if no one reads the names or counts the shoes?

The thing that inspired me most was this exhibit that was nothing but shoes. This exhibit was on loan from a Poland museum. It was one of the most horrifyingly devastatingly real exhibits I've ever experienced. You could smell the death, the fear, the sweat and blood. It made everything so horrifyingly real. I don't think I've ever felt something punch me so hard in the stomach and the heart.

Sometimes we become so desensitized to violence and gore because of the books, music and movies that we have now-a-days. Things become so surreal to us at that point. We don't believe it is real, even though we know it is. And that was so real to me. Seeing those shoes, those empty shoes. Smelling them. Being so close I could've reached out and touched them. Little children wore those shoes. Pregnant women and old men wore those shoes. Before they were brutally killed or tortured or experimented on.

The other thing that inspired me was the small poem that was above the shoes. It is by Moishe Shulstein, a Yiddish poet. It is titled "I Saw a Mountain."

"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 one of us avoided the hellfire."

The most frightening thing that I learned, aside from the experimentation on prisoners (which I knew a good portion of), was the fact that Germany (and consequently Hitler) was emulating the racist policies in the United States. Especially the Jim Crow laws. They began to mark benches and fountains to separate Jews from Aryans.

Other frightening things were the forced sterilizations and euthanasia of people, most of them weren't even Jewish or disabled. Most of them were regular Germans. Even though the program was originally created to prevent the population of Jews and mentally challenged people.

The last thing I would like to post here (I will probably blog about this more on a future date) is a little poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a Russian poet.

"The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning gray.
And I myself
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here."