Our visit to the Holocaust Museum was beautiful, terrible and emotional. I thought a lot about how we make monuments and create experiences. The third floor was very touching, I thought it was such a beautiful way to bring life and joy to the faces of those who were murdered, depicting them as angels, the children were especially upsetting. The sweat and tears that must have gone into carving each portrait is a healing process somehow. Its a way to pay respect to countless victims. It is a way to materialize something that with time has become increasingly a memory, instead of a physical happening. The danger is when something becomes an idea, ideas can be forgot and to forget something is to condone it.
The qoute at the end by Wiesel was very powerful "For the dead and the living we must bear witness" Elie Wiesel has made it his personal responsiblity to share with the world, including eckerd college personally, his story. I respect and admire him with the outmost reverence. What he is trying to tell us is that, not only does he, as a survivor bear witness, but we, altough removed by time and space from the Holocaust, must bear witness, for him and all those lost. We must acknowledge and remember to honor the past and out future. We must witness the trauma becasue through this healing occurs. I found the Musuem, although extremely depressing, to give healing.
This is a link to website about remembrance and the importance of the past on the future
If we give into despair, if we are completely consumed by the trauma, if we become overwhelmed by the evil, then we will allow it to happen again, I think that that is how one has to come to terms with what they have seen, to hope for a better future in light of being unable to change to past. The best way to honor the dead, all that we can do for them, is to protect the present and future.
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