Well, I have to tell you all about my wonderful D.C. trip! It was splendid! I went to school Thursday and had an absolutely wonderful Environmental Club meeting! I didn't sleep at all that night because I was too excited. I left my house at about 5:20am to head to RCHS to board the bus. (by this time I had been up for 22 hours). I gratefully sat in the adult-ish section. Basically there were 3 teachers (Ms. Greenwalt, Ms. Klein and Mrs. Tranquillo) and three parent chaperones. The first two rows on either side were taken and Ms. Greenwalt ended up sitting across the aisle from me. She said, "You know you're in the adult section right? You don't have to move, but I just wanted you to know." Yes, I told her, I was aware of that. "It's better up here-- quieter." I told her, laughingly. It took us until roughly ten thirty to get to D.C., all the while Ms. Greenwalt was rustling her N&O, and I was desperately trying to sleep to no avail. I had interesting discussions with Courtney and Emily, and Ms. Greenwalt switched seats with me because the speakers for the movie were on her side, so that way I could hear.
We went to the OAS (Organization of American States) and I got a little pocket consitution of the OAS in Spanish. And ya know what?!?!? I could understand 90% of it! YAY! Oh yeah, and we took a bathroom break right as we got to the OAS. And while i was in the bathroom, Jason called and said his White House tour had ended early and he wanted to know if he could join us! How cool is that????
Then we had lunch, which we had all packed. After that, we walked a few blocks passed the new WWII memorial and onto the Holocaust Museum. This is one of the most eye-opening, and heart-wrenching places dealing with WWII other than visiting the actual Auschwitz and Bgurkenau themselves. Imagine you see this. The wall itself is about 20 or 25 feet high and another 25 feet long, and all over it are names of Holocaust victims. It's very powerful when the victims suddenly are not just a mass grouped together, and they start to take on personas. They are no longer just the 6.5 million victims of the Holocaust, but now they have names.
These things were intriguing as well. Imagine sleeping on that with thirty to forty other people. That is why pneumonia and typhus were so rampant.
Things like this and the room full of shoes of victims were what brought me to tears. How could human beings be so cruel and hateful? (actually, cruel and hateful don't even scratch the surface of the horrors that went on in the work and death camps.) This room is like 50 feet high and a fairly wide room, filled floor to ceiling with pictures of victims. The room with the shoes is about the same width as the other room, and there is a small bridge that stretches across its length. All around the bridge are shoes from victims. On the wall it says something to the effect of "Because we were made of leather and not of flesh and bone, we survived." I cried the longest there. When I finished my tour through the museum, Ms. Greenwalt and I had a chance to talk which was nice because I was feeling very...lost. I asked her what made Hitler up and decide to do this. I asked her why his S.S. guards followed so freely, and felt nothing when lining people up and shooting them. I asked her why the rest of the world let this go on, thinking that waging war would solve the problems. I asked her why the people of the towns, when prisoners were on death marches, could not spare even a piece of bread. We had to read an independent reading book for 20th Century Topics. I read All But My Life, by Gerda Weissman Klein. One quote from that book is "All hearts are dead." There's more to it, but that should give you a pretty good overview of the sentiment at the time. I'll write more later.