Holocaust Memorial Museum Visit

Today we visited a Holocaust Memorial Museum to learn more about Judaism and also about the Holocaust. The museum we visited had a detailed timeline, which covered not only the history of Judaism but also other historical events that took place from the time of Abraham to the bombing of the World Trade Center.  This first part of the museum had explanations about Hebrew beliefs and covered everything from synagogues to religious ceremonies such as Bar Mitzvahs and weddings as well as festivals and holidays. This exhibit had several interesting artifacts including a Torah (the holy Hebrew text),  a Hebrew marriage certificate, scale models of a synagogue, and a section on the importance of music and theater in Jewish culture. 

We then moved into the Holocaust section of the museum. The design of the building changed. At first the rooms had been large and relatively airy, but now they were much more closed in and dark. We realized that this was the intent of the architects, because the farther we got into the exhibit, the darker and smaller the rooms got, probably symbolizing the feeling of being trapped that people must have felt in the concentration camps.

We learned about the Kindertransport establishment, which the British government set up to allow Jewish children from the ages of 3-17 to escape from Germany. Most parents told their children that they would come in a few weeks and join them. 10,000 children were saved, but four out of five children who left on the Kindertransport never saw their parents again. You can learn more about the Kindertransport program online.

We also saw a prisoner's uniform, Nazi uniforms, a model of a train car used to transport prisoners and even a wreath of hair that a survivor made from prisoners' hair. We decided to walk quickly through the "Abyss," a dark room in which videos were played showing what the Allied soldiers found when they liberated the concentration camps at the end of the war.  One of the museum guides said that the videos really weren't meant for children.

Learning about the Holocaust is hard. The horrible things that happened in the camps lead some people to wonder how God could allow such things to happen. In fact, some Jews that survived the concentration camps gave up their faith after they were released, since they didn't understand why this had happened. Others, however, had strengthened their faith.

In one section, we saw a "thought wall," a plain polished metal wall that small pieces of paper were stuck to. On the papers, people had written why they were glad that they had come, and some emotions they had felt while they looked at the exhibits. We were reminded of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the only remnant of the old Jewish Temple that Jews come to and stick small pieces of paper with prayers written on them in the cracks of the wall.

In one of the last sections, we were able to see a quilt made of beautiful patchwork squares, each square made by a Kindertransport survivor or survivor's descendants. One of the squares said something to the effect of "Thank you to the Kindertransport for saving our grandfather, (a name). From ___, ___, and ___. This message was obviously from a Kindertransport child's grandchildren--and without the Kindertransport, they wouldn't be there. You can see the actual quilt square at this link. The quilt squares were beautiful and they gave a message of peace, hope and faith to all.