The Scars of USHMM Part Six- Shoes

To lead into this sixth part of the blog series on my USHMM visit I want to tell a story about when I was a child.

When I was little and went to the pediatrician for yearly checkups, a visit which I loathed to the point of spitting on people (but that's irrelevant so we'll ignore that), there was this one doctor named Dr. Smith. He used to always come in to see me and then proceed take one or both of my shoes to mess with me. He'd tell me how good they'd look on him instead of me and at my young age I must not have understood his sarcasm because I would cry and beg him not to take my shoes.

On the second floor of the Permanent Exhibition at the USHMM there is a display of hundred of actual shoes taken from victims before they were gassed at Auschwitz. The shoes are one of the artifacts that a lot of people familiar with the USHMM say affected them the most. The shoes range in all styles and sizes, but they are all this gray color because time has taken a toll on their appearance.

If you can imagine the smell of old shoes than that's what he shoe display smells like. It's almost as disgusting as the circumstances of the shoes is and it's chilling.

While I looked at the shoes that story of Dr. Smith and my shoes came into my head and the comparison nearly was too much. I always got my shoes back from Dr. Smith but these shoes before me were never returned to their owners who were unknowingly walking to their deaths. Their shoes, suitcases, and clothes would never be returned to them. Instead they'd be confiscated and sent to Germany in most cases.

Be thankful for your shoes, people. Be thankful for your clothes, your glasses, your possessions because you never know when they won't be returned to you. It's a privilege to have what we have and we take that for granted way too often.

The Scars Of USHMM Part Five- The Vastness Of The Place And The Crime

Sorry this is late, I've been super busy with school things!

Anyway...

In part five of this series I'm going to cover the museum itself. It's a huge place, and an unsettling one. When you're in the main lobby/atrium you look up and the ceiling is caged like a barbed wire fence and you just know this place is unlike any other place you've been in your life.

The atrium itself seems like a never ending hall when you stand in it and even though I spent a good bit of time at the museum I did not see all of it, but I'd like to one day.

When I first stood in the atrium I knew this place was different. Something was wrong here, was my first thought. And it is but you can't put your finger on it right away unless you're an architect. The walls are mismatching, the ceiling lets light in yet you're caged. It's like an architectural paradox.

The exhibit is laid out in a similar fashion with the walls getting narrower and narrower as you move through to symbolize the walls closing in as the Nazis gained power over more people's fates. At one point on the first floor there is a blocked off section and to get to it you have to go this really complicated way around. I assume whomever designed the museum had these intentions to make you feel like you're walking along this path.

And it's horrifying.

I can see how clever they were when building the place because the architecture becomes part of the story and the feelings of unease stay with you after you leave. I know I will never forget looking up at the ceiling of the atrium and seeing the sunlight shine on me but never quite reaching me. The architecture, I think, is a huge part of what makes the museum such an unforgettable place. There you feel a small fraction of the pain the victims felt and that feeling stays with you forever.

They say time heals all wounds, but I don't think these will ever heal.

The C-Word

I'm going to take a break from my USHMM theme for this post because this is something that needs to be written about, I think. It affects us all at some point whether we are affected or we know someone who died from or survived it.

Yes, I'm talking about cancer.

Recently, my mother's mother was diagnosed with lymphoma. From my assumptions, the cancer is most likely Stage I which means its contained, but then again I'm not sure. Lymphoma is a common cancer of the lymphatic system that generally is divided into Hodgkin's or Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among other rarer subtypes. Prognosis with first round chemotherapy is very good but there is always a risk of relapse down the road. That risk goes down if it's treated early.

So why did I choose to write about this?

In my earlier post about my love for Grey's Anatomy and House I may have mentioned that my favorite character on House is Wilson, House's best friend who is an oncologist. Also while I was writing Saving Angels back in 2011 I had to do a lot of research on the basics of cancer and treatment options so I'd suffice it to say I know quite a bit about how the disease works without actually having an oncology degree.

As sad as this topic can be it's important to discuss cancer because most likely we will have some encounter or another with it in our lifetime. It's a leading cause of death worldwide as well as a research focus in many institutions. It's important that we're educated about the disease even though most of us will never be oncologists but still we all need to know some basics.

It's important that we talk about these things because we never know what might happen and we need to know that these things do happen.

The Scars of USHMM Part Four- Silenced By The Night But You And I Are Going To Rise Again

My favorite song by the English band Keane has a line in it that goes, "We were silenced by the night/But you and I are going to rise again/Divided from the light/I want to love the way we used to then."

In part four of my series on the USHMM I'm going to be talking about what the museum might call the impact "beyond their walls"- what happens after you leave. In part two I wrote about grief and processing but this post is about how the museum changes the way you think about genocide, your behavior towards others, and even the world around you.

I'm very much a realist, so when I left the museum I knew I wouldn't or couldn't change the world. That said, I could however assist in a change by telling people about what I witnessed and speaking out against genocide and human rights violations. I am actually awaiting an email from the superintendent of Fulton County with regards to opening a fund for county schools to make educational trips down to the Breman or the Anne Frank exhibit. The museum taught me that there was no way I alone could change the way we view crimes like the slaughter of others different from you but I could help, and that's enough for me.

Right now, the museum is featuring stories of people around my age in Syria. I actually did some research on the conflict over there since I didn't really know what was going on. A common anecdote is that history is doomed to repeat if we do not learn from it and that is what's going on over there. These teens the museum features have dreams that someone like me would be free to pursue in America if I wanted, but over there they have had to put their survival in their war torn country before anything else they think about and grow up fast. These teens are living a life no one should have to live and my heart breaks for them.

Does that sound like it has happened before? It sounds a lot like 1930s Germany to me. Although Hitler wasn't as smart as Al-Assad is the two regimes look eerily similar in their use of terror to keep people in line and that, to me coming from a country borne out of the concept of liberties afforded to everyone through a Constitution, is not an ideal country to live in at all.

So why are we not doing more? We need to be doing more so that no group of people should ever be forced to hide themselves because they are afraid of the country they live in.

You might not change the world, but why not help change it if you can?

The museum made me realize how much we as Americans take for granted this country we live in and our natural rights. We, as the upcoming generation, need to help make sure history is preserved rather than repeated.

The Scars of USHMM Part Three- The Actual Tour

I could honestly take one long blog post to write about the USHMM but I have too many subtopics of my visit I want to cover so I'd rather just break it up and go piece by piece. In this third segment I'm going to talk about my actual tour experience.

I had done the research on planning the visit as soon as my mom gave the OK for us to go. I was looking at booking tickets, because from March to August you need timed tickets to do the permanent exhibition because of the volume of people who come, when I came across what they called the Guided Highlights Tour.

According to the museum's website, the tour is for blind and visitors of low vision (i.e. between 20/60  and 20/200 which is blindness) and their families or friends. The tour usually only is available for groups of four or less but apparently they can accommodate larger groups if planned in advance. The tour uses visual aids adapted to the needs of the tour goer. In my case Mrs. Sara, my guide, had black and white prints of the big murals we saw so I could see them more in detail. She also used a flashlight to light up the pictures or artifacts as most of the exhibit is dimly lit. We also used touchable reconstructions of things like a milk bottle that was excavated or a model of the museum.

Another great thing about this if you have low vision like me is that your tour guide will literally guide you if you need. For a good majority of the tour, Mrs. Sara held my left hand and made sure we got as close to the front to see as we could which was nice. It was also a good thing because like I mentioned most of the exhibit is lit dimly so I never got lost. It was actually kinda funny because Mrs. Sara was about a head shorter than me!

In between the floors of the exhibit there are rooms for you to rest your feet and just take a break because it is A LOT of walking and/or standing and looking at things. The rest stops on each floor are a great idea not only for that but also because some people get really sensitive to certain things they see and they might need time to process it.

Another good thing is the tour takes its time. Usually with timed passes you only get an hour and a half to go through all three floors and that seems kind of rushed to me. My mom and I were at the museum for four hours, three of which the tour covered. In truth, they probably ought to call the tour the Guided In Depth Tour, because we hit everything, not just highlights.

I have never in my life felt so appreciated because of my low visual perception skills, but USHMM sure made me feel that way.

The Scars of USHMM Part Two- Grieving

In this second part of a series on the USHMM and my experience I'm going to cover the topic of grief. 

Firstly, grief is actually defined as "A multifaceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, spiritual, and philosophical dimensions." That sounds like the grief we have all known at some point or another in our lives, right? It implies that we knew the person we are grieving for closely.

But what if that's not the case? What if you never knew them?

That's where the USHMM comes in. I have never in my life experienced such a level of grief for people I never met. I was used to grieve for people I had known personally like my Nan who passed last August. Anyway, you walk into the place and know you're about to see something horrible but you don't know when you'll start to feel the grief. You might even doubt you can because you most likely never knew these people.

There's a part of the permanent exhibit called the Tower of Faces. It's a bridge you walk across and on the walls you see hundreds of photos of people smiling, living life. Then you hear what happened to them:

The town where the photos were taken was Eishyshock in Lithuania. German troops arrived in Eišiškės on June 23, 1941, and on September 21, 1941, an SS Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing unit) entered the town, accompanied by Lithuanian auxiliaries. More than four thousand Jews from Eishishok and its neighboring towns and villages were first imprisoned in three synagogues and then taken in groups of 250 to the old Jewish cemetery where SS men ordered them to undress and stand at the edge of open pits. There, Lithuanian auxiliary troops shot them to death. The old cemetery is now a site of remembrance with a memorial stone in three languages. The new cemetery was destroyed in 1953 and turned into the yard of a kindergarten.^[8] Some of the private Jewish buildings survive and are protected as part of the urban heritage. One school is now a library, while another was demolished. There are no Jews living there today.

More than four thousand Jews killed in two days by shooting each one to death individually. 

If that doesn't make you feel something, I don't know what can. But as I looked at all these happy faces of pre-war Jews who had all been killed I could barely tell my mom the story of the Tower I almost broke down. And looking back, I wish I would have. 

Moving on is a necessary part of life, but before you do that you need to grieve what you lost. I am still doing that, even though I am still whole; I didn't lose anything. And yet, I'm shattered.

The Scars of USHMM Part One- No Words Are Enough

As you guys know, I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday. It was one of the most horrifyingly amazing things I've ever done and it's very well worth a trip to DC to see if you have not. I could write a blog post with words about the trip (which I might when I'm done processing) but in this part of a series of blogs about the USHMM experience I want the pictures to speak.

They say a [picture is worth a thousand words, but these images have no words to describe them. We are the witnesses. Pass these images along if you can.

Never Again begins with us. What YOU do matters.