We chose to come to Washington as way to celebrate Mary's last chemo treatment and to see two things we've wanted to see for some time. One was the Capital monuments (from the outside) with Cherry Blossoms in Bloom. The other the Holocaust Museum.
The span of from the Capital building, through the Mall, to the hill perched with the magnificent Washington Monument looking over the reflecting pond with the Jefferson Memorial and all around the spectacular planted flowering Cherry Blossom trees has to be one of the most remarkable scenes on earth. The other, the Holocaust Museum, everyone on the planet should see and know what others had to witness so we may never again be a witness.
"I call heaven and earth to witness this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life -- that you and your offspring shall live" Deuteronomy 30:19
Spending the day between two such extreme contrasts is evidence to the remarkable range of human capacity. On the one hand, the most profound horror and on the other hand the most profound glory.
Two moments from my experience shocked me. In addition to thousands of photos, the Museum set up exhibits with physical remembrances. Things like concentration fence posts that would have been be run with electrified barbed wire, the wooden prisoners' barracks (cells), an operating table where unimaginable atrocities occurred, thousands & thousands of shoes from people who removed them to take their last steps. It is all so so horrible!
As we made our way around, I found a few minutes when I could be alone inside an actual rail car that transported the Jews, and others, to the "final solution." The museum wisely provides places for private meditation. One of mine, was this rail car. I think I was alone, but I don't know. It was dark with only filtered light. The wood floors and ceiling where all scratched. I paused and closed my eyes and put my hands flat on the boards and let my imagination run. Voices came to me! Many voices, little children, mothers, an old man. They weren't speaking to me - the voices were talking to one another and I just listened. They said different things - but they all were about the same thing - FEAR!! Oh, my G-d, the FEAR.
"What have you done? Hark, thy brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!" Genesis 4:10
The other moment that grabbed me with my own personal fear was a juxtaposition in time and space. I had just exited a glass room where an audio tape played narrations of survivors' memories. One listens and may cry or want to scream. How could they survive? But that is not the part that grabbed me with fear. I must have been in that room for a little while and when I came out I noticed I was in a re-creation of a concentration camp. I stepped into a foreign and frightful place. There are photos of prisoners all around the walls, with museum visitors wandering through and mixing in with the images. Then it struck me! I had lost Mary. My eyes searched and for just fraction of time, maybe 2 or 3 seconds at the most, I imagined the unimaginable. Then I saw her hat - the hat with the flower that she wears to hide her bald head. Her beautiful head, her beautiful face. Relief!! And then I thought to myself, I couldn't stand 2 seconds and their nightmare lasted for eternity.
"Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children, and to your children's children." Deuteronomy 4:9
