United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

I met Helen Katz at the Holocaust Museum last week. She was the youngest of eight children, Hungarian, 13 years old, and known to friends and family as Potyo, “the dear little one”.

Helen was killed upon her arrival at Auschwitz on May 31, 1944.

Perhaps this seems like a macabre way to start a museum tour – handed a stranger’s ID card with a short life story, and finding out if your kindred spirit lived or died.

My mother’s ID card was for a survivor. All around us I saw people skipping to the end of their ID booklets, “did my person live or die?” So many died.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum is one of the finest museums I have ever visited – it is amazing how well done such a horrible era in history can be captured and presented to people. In most areas facts are presented and you are allowed to draw your own conclusions. In some places, there are really no alternative conclusions.

As a Jew, the Holocaust has always been a nightmare I cannot ignore or escape. My grandmother was at Auschwitz. It is something that I cannot culturally ignore, I cannot personally ignore it, I have seen more documentaries than I care to, and yet there is always more. Always some untold story. Always some new fact you wish was more nightmare than truth. There is little about the Holocaust that you can look upon without feeling disgust, nausea, anger, pain, panic, misery.

And even with all I thought I knew, I still learned more.

I learned that this chosen enemy of the Nazis was less than 1% of the population when Hitler rose to power. The pain of a nation, the economic woes, and all the things that were wrong with society were placed upon less than 1% of the population.

I learned that while most of the world’s governments did little or nothing to help their own Jews (Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and anyone supporting free speech), Denmark did everything it could to save its Jews. It even chartered boats to Switzerland to try to get her Jews to safety.

I learned about dozens of people who risked everything to help. Among those was an Anti-Semite who hid Jews because she believed that the Holocaust was wrong. Some of these amazing people lost everything. Those that survived all said the same thing, “It was the right thing to do.”

After all the horrors I saw that day, it was the tales of Denmark and the ones who risked everything that made me cry – because they were the ones that chipped away at my cynicism about humanity. These people showed me the goodness and the kindness people are capable of.

We spent over five hours there that day. We left exhausted, emotionally and physically, but it was one of the most important experiences in my life, and I have nothing but admiration for the people who put this incredible museum together.

When you have the chance, please visit. Bring lots of Kleenex, and be prepared for a hard day. Go with someone you love, and then go somewhere and talk about everything you saw.

And then, do Helen Katz, my grandmother, and all Holocaust victims a service, and look to fight injustice in your lifetime, because you know that someone has to stand up and fight back.

Related Stuff:
Cookie's essay on the museum experience: Artistic Veritas: There but for the Grace of God go I

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