Museum of Tolerance

Last week I went to the Museum of Tolerance as part of the Diversity Committee at work. I'm still struggling to find words to express what I experienced. The hands-on exhibits were great at getting one involved with the issues we're facing today and from our collective past: child slavery, the history of the world good, bad, and indifferent, and the Holocaust, among many other exhibits.

We only had time to really explore the Holocaust exhibit so that lingers more freshly in mind. I thought I knew about the Holocaust, I read about it in text books... but to experience it through the eyes and words of the survivors, to see actual displays of items that belonged to survivors, this truly brings it to life. At one point each of us was handed a small plastic card with a child's face and name on it. This card worked similar to an ATM card, when slid into the computer it brought up more detailed facts about the person. At the end of the tour I slid my card into a different computer and this time I received a print out of the personal information on the child. I asked the tour guide how they came to know this information about the little boy who's card I had. He was murdered with millions of others, how could they know anything about him? The guide explained that surviving family members in the states had provided the photo and other records.
It is sickening to think that this adorable seven year old, Bronislaw Honig, was murdered simply because he was Jewish. It's something I'll never be able to comprehend. 3,000,000 Polish Jews were murdered. 1,100,000 Russian Jews. I don't recall the exact numbers of the other groups that were exterminated, but the rough total is 6,000,000. SIX MILLION people murdered.

During one of the exhibits a screen played various images while a woman described what she witnessed. She was visiting a relative who had just given birth to a baby girl. Then many trucks arrived. Men from the trucks evacuated the patients from the hospital and drove them away. Visitors were turned out onto the street. A final truck remained with an open bed. A window from above was opened and a small object was tossed into the truck bed. This woman and others on the street weren't quite sure what they were watching until another, then another and another baby were tossed from the window. The people on the street, upon this realization began to scream and cry. They were completely helpless and unable to do anything but breakdown.

How any human being could treat another in this manner, toss it out like trash, is abominable. And yet such atrocities are happening today. Countries trying to do an ethnic cleanse, cocoa farmers enslaving children, terrorist attacks, the trafficking of people... the list of atrocities seems endless. I don't know what the answers are. I don't know how to stop it. I'm still in a state of disbelief, shock.