I felt that my experiences at this specific museum today deserved their own post. The feelings evoked, the lessons learned, and the morality pondered will stay with me forever.
I have been to a Holocaust museum before in DC. I was 13 and immature and wrapped up in the drama of eighth grade. I was sad, sure, but it's different now. I've studied history, especially the World Wars, for five years now. I've been exposed to multiple perspectives on Judaism, Christianity, race, war, and evil. And, perhaps most importantly, I've lived for a month in a Jewish state.
When you walk into Yad Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem, Israel, you are assaulted by harsh concrete and soaring walls of grey. It is built in a manner in which you cannot skip a single room--you must go through the entire museum to get to the exit. You wind your way through about twenty or so large exhibits about the rise of Nazism, the painful process of ghettoization and internment in concentration camps, and the progression of World War II.
I think one of the things that impacted me most was the visual and verbal explanations of Nazism's spread throughout Europe and Africa. It was EVERYWHERE. Greece, Belgium, Tunisia, France, Bulgaria, Poland... the German Reich spanned almost all of Europe. Not to mention--the countries that had escaped Germany's power-hungry rampage closed their borders and their states to desperately fleeing Jews (all except the Dominican Republic and China were closed until 1943). How hopeless it must have seemed. As a Jew, you could hop from country to country, refuge to refuge, attempting to outrun the threat of death--but it was nearly impossible. So the scope of the movement really touched me.
I was sobered and saddened and educated by the two hours I spent in the museum. But I did not cry until I reached the final room. A video of an older woman who had survived the Holocaust was describing her final days on the Death March she was forced to undergo by the fleeing, losing Nazis. She began to describe how she had to literally carry her sister through the harsh conditions, starving and exhausted, in order for her to survive. And then, they reached the hospital, the last destination, and her sister passed away calling out her name. I broke down in that instant. Imagining losing Sierra or Miranda, or having to watch them waste away, or being told that one of them had cried out for me on her deathbed while I was busy recovering from the murder attempts of an entire nation.... I could not bear it. The thought made the entire atrocity very real and very personal.
Then we walked through the Children's Memorial. The tears continued to flow. You walk into a tall, cool, dark hall that has no lights except for six candles whose light is refracted by a plethora of mirrors to create six million points of light. It was like being suspended in the night sky. A looming voice chanted the names and ages of every single child that died in the Holocaust. And while I used to be able to tell myself, "well, at least they will be remembered," a place in memorium seemed to matter so little in that moment. What is the intonation of a few syllables that make up one's name every few hours in a dark room when one's life has been stolen?
Five years old, sixteen years old, seven years old... Each individual lost, a potential scientist, or writer, or leader; every one a friend, a daughter or son; never to be a mother or a father or a wife or a husband. It broke my heart. And while it made me question how? why?; it seemed to give my own life meaning. It is only by the grace of God or by fate or by luck that I am alive on this earth. I have security, I have love, I have joy. Who am I to squander the gifts I have been given when so many have lost everything? I may not know exactly what I will do with my life, but I know that it will have meaning, and I know it will have an impact. Even if I die tomorrow, I know I'll leave behind friends I made laugh, family I loved, words I've written down, and hearts I've touched. And while I hope and pray that I may be given an extra day, or year, or decade, I can only do my best with every hour given to me. I strive to make the most of them--and sometimes the best way to do that is to write a blog every once in a while.
With many thoughts,
Aubrey Noelle
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