United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

One of the things that I have enjoyed greatly since moving to Richmond is the city's proximity to the free museums of Washington DC. Ever since my Mother made me skip my school's 8th grade trip to DC, I've wanted to see the Holocaust Museum. I had always heard about how moving the museum was, and am a true believer in the idea that by learning about the past we can avoid making those same mistakes in the future. The Holocaust Museum may not be fun, but I think that it is our duty to understand what happened and to use that knowledge in our own lives.

I walked away from the museum with two thoughts:
1. The curators of this museum have done an amazing job at weaving together video, artifacts and texts.
2. I still cannot imagine what the Nazi regime must have been like for those who lived it

On the one hand, the Holocaust Museum was truly well done. The time you spend in the museum's permanent exhibit is a journey from the beginning of the war to the end, and does a nice job of showing how seemingly insignificant changes came together to create genocide. On the other hand, I was disturbed by the number of middle school aged kids who looked bored or were making fun of the exhibit.

I stepped over stones that were used to pave an actual Jewish ghetto. I walked through one of the rail cars that was actually used to transport people to concentration camps. And yet, while I can connect the stories told at the museum to my own life and future, I can't say that I truly understand what that must have been like. Standing alone in a rail car in an air conditioned museum, it is hard to understand what it must have been like to be sandwiched in with 100 frightened and tired people people, travelling 30 miles an hour day after day in the middle of a freezing winter.

It was a wake up call to realize that for many of the teenagers at the Holocaust Museum, this trip was nothing more than another chance to prove ones coolness by putting others down.