One of the most memorable and best uses of my time was the two hours I spent walking through the Holocaust Museum yesterday. This short post is dedicated to the time and dedication it took to collect all the art, photos, artifacts, stories, and data from one of the worst human rights tragedies, which were all collected and displayed in such a horrifying and beautiful way.
Before you begin the exhibit, you take an I.D. card of a Jewish man or woman who lived through the Holocaust. Each card provides information of where they were from and you get their perspective of the beginning, middle, and end of the Nazis’ expansion and destruction. You take the card to be reminded that although we speak of this atrocity in terms of unbelievably large numbers and statistics, each one of those numbers was an individual.
If you are in the DMV area, and have never been, please take an afternoon to spend an hour or two walking through this extraordinarily important place. It is free, and it will leave a mark on you. It left me with a feeling of stillness. Not a calming stillness, but a stillness which left me breathless and unbalanced, physically and mentally.