I visited the Holocaust Museum last week....

What's on my mind today?

To blog or not to blog?

I've journaled by pen in one of my Moleskines. That's where my written thoughts have landed lately...as opposed to landing on a public blog. So, what will land here on toss & ripple in the next few moments.

Hmmm....well....

I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, this past Friday, July 27, 2012.

I handed my pass to the clerk to enter the permanent exhibit. I then picked up an identification booklet from the female booklet stacks. I still haven't read my idee booklet, and I feel a bit guilty for not having yet read it. Each identification booklet contains a photo of and information about someone who experienced the horror of the Holocaust. Some people of the booklets died during the Holocaust; some survived.

A group of us museum visitors then entered the elevator. The elevator walls resemble the inside of a train car, or what I imagine the inside of a train car would look like.

A museum guide stood in the open elevator doorway where the visitor group had entered. He told us we would exit on the floor above through the opposite elevator door, that was then closed, and that the exhibit covered three floors. In his hand he held three identification booklets.

"These idees are survivors of the Holocaust who now volunteer at the museum," he said as he outstretched his arm handing one book to someone on the far left of the elevator, someone in the middle, and then to me on the right. I looked at it momentarily then tucked it away in my hip-pack with my other idee booklet.

The elevator doors shut and the box ascended.

After so many seconds the elevator door opposite the door we had entered opened. I got chills over my whole body. I don't know why. I have no special, personal relationship with the Holocaust. I've even doubted if the Holocaust happened in the magnitude which I have read about. Perhaps I wanted to view the reality of it? But why?

As I walked the exhibit, one word that kept repeating in my mind was "horror." There is no other word to describe the torture and inhumanity of it all.

As I stared and studied the miniature sculpture depicting the process of masses being herded into an underground delousing building, of the masses then declothing, of the masses then entering the gas chamber, and then the bodies being discarded in the crematoriums; as I stared at the process noticing especially the naked parents holding naked children, I thought, "That would have been me. I would not have fought. I would have resigned myself to fate."

Horror.

As I saw photo after photo of Hitler devotees, not ones actively pursuing the non-Aryans, but simply the masses of every day people who believed in Hitler and his cause, I thought, "That could have been me as well; one of the believers and not an opposer."

Horror.

As I saw the photos of dead bodies, as I read about massacres, as I saw the photos of hair and bags of hair which was shaven from heads alive and dead and the hair then sold for profit and manufacturing of goods; I was struck with....

Horror.

As I looked at the broken eye glasses of a Holocaust victim...

Horror.

As I walked across a wooden(?) walkway lined on both sides by piles of actual shoes once worn by Holocaust victims, my heart dropped and my stomach churned...

Horror.

As I read the names of destroyed cities etched in the glass windows of the museum corridors that led from one section of the museum to the next....

Horror.

I thought, "I never want to give up my right to bear arms."

Horror.

I bought myself a postcard - a photo of the shoes - and mailed it to myself.

I bought a magnet - a photo of the shoes - for the side of my refrigerator.

I'm now reading Mein Kampf, which I found online. I've never read it before. I'll see how far I get. I'm not sure what to believe of Hitler's words about his own life, and what not to believe.

Horror.