Now sitting in my warm apartment on this cloudy, but not snowy, day in Charlotte, sipping my coffee I am reminded of the day we went to the Holocaust Museum. What an amazing museum. If you haven't been, go. If you have, be like me and go again the first chance you get.
The museum was expertly designed to create an even flow through the exhibit. The artifacts on display, pictures, videos, sound bites, actual belongings of Holocaust victims and their oppressors/murderers, were all there for us to explore. Some of it I would rather have not know. For example they showed pictures of people, even children, who were subjects in medical experiments. Experiments including, seeing how long the body could handle frozen water, seeing how long the body can survive without food or water, and examining the effects of burns on the skin. These grotesque and evil experiments were horrible but do we owe it to the victims to share what horrors they lived and died through? I think this is why people keep coming back to the museum. Not because we really want to but because we have to know. We need to know what happened to justify in our minds the place America has in history as a super power. I do not believe from my limited eduction and experience that day at the museum that we, as America, did enough for the Jews but I do believe that the museum teaches us a lesson that no one should be treated like less than human. And we should do all in our power to stop regimes and people who do treat people that way.
As we left the museum behind and walked into the National Mall where the Capitol building and the Washington Monument flanked our sides, I thought...we should be doing more. Not in the name of democracy, or in the name of America, or even in the name of God but we should be doing more for each person out there who has no rights and has no hope.
On a brighter side (thank you for letting me rant a bit) here are some pictures from our trip.
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