deathly silent

as you know from my last post, i went to washington DC last week. i dont feel much like talking about alot of it, but it will most likely be covered in another, later, post.

the day after our arrival, an entire day of touring the capital. our first stop was something i’ve been waiting to see for years.

the national holocost memorial.

this place can only be described in two words: humbling, and disturbing.

the first thing you see as the elevator doors open is a wall-sized photograph of nazi soldiers murdering jews. things only become more grisly and dimented as you continue down the remaining 3 floors. these creatures werent human. they murdered human beings like cattle. i saw the door to the auschwitz gas chambers. how many thousands of men, women and children passed through that door thinking they were taking a shower? i saw hitler’s memo giving hospitals permission to give the incapacitated “the mercy of death”. i saw the operating tables, with the drains in the middle for the gallons of blood to flow through every day. i saw the hair. the bags and bags of hair that were made into socks for u-boat crews. i saw the shoes of hundreds of children who died naked and alone. but what hit me the hardest was the glass. after each floor was a glass walkway leading to the stairs to the next floor. and every inch of this glass was covered in names. names of people from countries overrun by tyrany, opression, and murder. walking through those halls, i was fighting back tears for people i’d never even knew existed, and i was passed a a man talking on a cell phone, and a group of middle school girls being overly “grossed out” be the entire memorial. after snapping at them that yes, there were really dead people in that photo, and they should show some respect, i realized: there were two kinds of people there that day- people who saw the names of the dead on the glass, and people who had a hard time seeing through the window because of the names on it….

my question: which one are you?