Holocaust Museum Visit & Reflections

In May, as part of our trip to the east coast to see our daughter and son-in-law, we visited Washington D.C. The purpose was to see the new museums opened since our last visit there. We saw the new Air and Space Museum exhibit next to Dulles Airport, The Indian Museum, the WWII Memorial, and the Holocaust Museum. All are worth seeing, although the WWII Memorial seems somewhat sterile; it certainly doesn’t invoke the emotional reaction that one gets from visiting the Vietnam Memorial. WWII veterans may take exception to my impression. But as someone who wasn’t involved in either war, I had a much more emotional experience the first time I saw the wall.

The new Air & Space exhibit is also worth visiting if only to see the Enola Gay, the most famous aircraft of WWII and the most controversial. The museum also contains the new McDonalds, McCafe which is their attempt to emulate a Starbuck store. They did a pretty good job, although Peet’s is still the best. It sits next to a conventional McDonalds, which is also nice, since they offer a good variety of salads now.

The Indian Museum, up the road from the original Air & Space Museum is in an architecturally impressive building, with a very interesting café, which showcases a wide variety of American Indian themed food from all over the Americas. The food was excellent with reasonable prices. If you’re looking for something different in food choices, this is the place to go in D.C. The exhibits in the Museum are hit and miss; some are very impressive, such as the hand painted converse basketball shoes, but much of what you see is not visually creative and looks like a cut and paste history of the Indians from Encyclopedia Britannica. I did like some of the material on the Spanish conquest and how the Indian population was practically wiped out by European diseases. A little known fact is that when the Indians greeted the Pilgrims in 1620, the Indian population was already severely decimated by disease.

On the first day of our visit we took in the Holocaust Museum, and spent almost a day 1/4 there, since there was so much to take in. The memorial to the holocaust victims is an emotional experience almost beyond compare. I already knew quite a bit about how the Nazi’s systematically exterminated most of the Jewish population in Europe and many others who they deemed not desirable. But I wasn’t prepared for the depth of Nazi moral depravity graphically shown, and the lengths to which the Nazi’s carried out their horrible crimes. What was perhaps equally disturbing was the degree of anti-Semitism in the world during this period, which in part caused much of the world to look away from what, was going on, including the United States. The U.S. State Department in particular was very culpable in turning away Jewish refugees who needed a sanctuary somewhere.

There was also a good analysis of which Nazi occupied countries did the most to shelter Jews from the Nazis. Denmark had by far the best record in their citizen’s sheltering Jewish families from the Nazi’s. Since I am part Danish that left me with a feeling of pride.

The museum does a superb job in illustrating via artifacts and movies the lead-up to the Nazi’s coming to power in Germany, and how the German people went along with Hitler’s crimes, in the name of state security, and the sanctity of the German state and the German vision of Aryan supremacy. Hitler over a period of less than three years took away all citizenship rights of their Jewish citizens and within another three years confiscated most of their material possessions. All the while this was happening German’s went along with the program. That all of this happened in a country that considered itself one of the most cultured in the world is almost beyond belief. In Ellie Weisels book “Night” which I read on the plane ride home, he describes how his family and friends would not believe that the German’s would do what they did, all evidence to the contrary – such evil was just not possible in the 20th Century. Not till they entered the death camps in Poland did they finally realize that true evil did still exist in this world. The museum visit left me with a different perspective on world events today, especially in the U.S. From gay marriage to illegal immigration, it gives me a very uneasy feeling about how we view our fellow man in this country, and how quickly we are to give up our liberties in the name of state security. We are also witness in our time to atrocities in Bosnia, Darfur, and other countries, to which we reacted very slowly if at all.

The most positive aspect of visiting the Holocaust Museum is the number of school children there with their teachers and parents. They made up most of the attendance at the museum that day. They were very respectful, and one can only hope when they grow up they can truly change of world for the better. There is one haunting quote in the museum which all Americans should keep in mind as we confront the war on terrorism and the affront to our personal liberties:

"In Germany, they came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists but I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up."
Martin Niemoeller, Dachau, 1944