I remember visiting the old Holocaust museum in El Paso as a child, and entering those doors hearing Itzhak Perlman playing the violin. Schindler’s List had come out not too long before that, perhaps the year before. Looking around to the displays on the wall, the photos, it was all very powerful and brought it to life for me. The train exhibit was what I remember the most, and the garden outside. Still, it was very hard to fathom so many people suffering, and dying because of the power of one man over a people. Even today when we learn of the War in Iraq the numbers pale in comparison of soldiers killed, even civilian casualties are not anywhere what they were during WWII. Still questions linger in my mind that I cannot comprehend. Sure it was different times, people were not as aware as we are today, the average person did not have access to information like we do now yet the stories were there, the photos were there, and still people turned the other cheek. Perhaps in their own suffering they forgot about the suffering of others. The goal of the museum is to inform people so they never forget what happened, and to teach tolerance and to fight against racism so that this never happens again. Yet we are guilty of the same thing, after 9/11 the United States sent hundreds, perhaps thousands of Muslims to what we know now were torture camps because of fear of the terrorists! Had we not learned a thing from WWII? It worries me, but at least we have places such as this museum to remind us what can happen if we again choose to turn the other cheek.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLK5OWU2YGw
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)