Today I went to the Holocaust museum for what I thought was the first time in my life and as much as I would like to say it was nothing like I expected, it was, effectively making it the most emotional experience I have has since coming here. As I just mentioned,
I thought this was my first time in a Holocaust museum, only to talk to my mother and find out that I went as a little girl to the one in Washington DC. She went on to explain to me a story that I vaguely recall. We took a train down to DC from my home in Long Island and I was busy the entire time singing all the holiday songs from the tapes that my brother brought me backfrom Israel. As much as I’m sure my fellow passengers enjoyed my version of manishtana and the driedal song, I felt no shame and no need to stop.
This is the opportunity that I have been given as a free Jew living in a largely Jewish part of America. The idea that singing my “night night tapes” could cost me my life would never have occurred to me. When I got to the museum, my parents didn’t feel the need to inform me of all the horrors of this time period in my history, the most they explained was when I pointed at Hitler and asked who he was and they told me “a bad man,” Hearing my mother say this phrase now, “a bad man” really strips down the human being to the core and provides, what I believe is the most accurate three world description of Hitler that I could ever think to provide.
There is a tendency in America to overanalyze everything. I call this “English class syndrome.” When everything needs to symbolize something else meaning is lost and confusion occurs. Sometimes the sky is blue just because it is blue. It doesn’t need to represent anything but what it is. Hitler was a bad man. There is evidence to him being a genius and charismatic and deceptive, but I feel that the explanation I was given as a child holds the most truth and the most meaning to me today. When I entered Yad Vashem I knew I would cry, I knew I would feel emotionally drained by the end, and I knew I would see things that I won’t soon forget. All of this was true and if I close my eyes for a moment I can see the replication of the gas chambers and the face of a smiling child who didn’t survive and my heart hurts. In fact, that’s how I responded when people asked me how I was doing during the tour. My heart hurts for these people that could have been me or my family if we hadn’t already immigrated to the US. I also don’t mean that my heart hurts in just a figurative sense, the left side of my chest felt tight and overwhelmed by the images I saw and the stories I heard. It leapt when I heard a story of survival and sunk at those of hardship, loss and death. The only other thing my mother remembered of my original trip was that I was fascinated by all the shoes I saw and I wanted to know whose they were. Seeing them today I felt the same experience. I want to know who wore those shoes, which encased the feet of survivors and which belonged to those not as lucky. I imagined myself and my family in those shoes and that was perhaps the most emotional realization of the day. I thought my mother who has a degenerative disease could not comply with the necessary labor of a work camp and I thought of my father who recently injured his back and has to take it easy now to remain free of pain. I thought of my almost two-year-old nephew who has finally mastered the worlds “truck” and “plane” and I looked at the faces of the people and I listened to the ages of the children called and I see just how much circumstance can absolutely change everything. I love that we have discussed the concept of “everything happens for a reason” because God makes is so and I don’t know what my reason is. Why I am here born in this time and in this country will always remain a mystery much like the horrors these people were subjected to in the Holocaust. Just because I don’t know these reasons doesn’t mean that I won’t accept them and learn them while continuing to sing my songs and search for answers.