OTT: Sometimes I go a little overboard

Today I went to the Holocaust Museum on Caroline St. in Houston. As far as experiences go, I thought it would have a very different effect on me than I believe it actually had. I was expecting it to feel like taking an emotionally sensational, disturbing roller-coaster ride into the the hellish place that was Nazi-occupied Germany and Poland, but it wasn't. It was a simple, graceful, reverent, solemn place. There was not much that was nightmarish or horrific about it. 

In fact, it smelled overwhelmingly of gardenia and cape jasmines (my favorite). 

Strange though, were the thoughts I was prompted to ponder while escorting myself from exhibit to exhibit. 

"Wow, they actually house a version of 'Mein Kampf' here. I hadn't thought they'd have that."

"I hadn't realized that they burnt Hemingway too."

"That suitcase is so small. It looks like a child's toy." 

"Those broken glasses frames and lenses were actually worn by people before they became victims of the brutality. To think that a glass box is all that separates me from holding something that they wore on their faces... wore on the faces that I see in all of these photographs all around me... wore over the eyes of those faces before they became vacant and hollow."

"Isn't it odd that the Danish rescue boats to salvation were about as big as the railroad cars to extermination?"

"Now that I'm standing in it, this railroad car is much smaller than I thought it would be! They squeezed how many people in here again? 200?!?!? "

The hardest thing to endure was listening to the first-hand accounts of a few of the survivors. 

     One remembered having to try to beat to death a fellow prisoner, who'd recently arrived from the Warsaw ghetto. The man remembered that his fellow Warsaw prisoner had been paraded naked, dragged by a chain around his neck, in front of all of the other prisoners who were later forced to beat him to death in order to avoid being beaten themselves. That Warsaw man stood alone against his fellow prisoners, taking beating after beating after beating, refusing to fall. The  strongest of the other prisoners were hitting him the hardest out of pity... trying to at least put the man out of his misery quickly... but he just refused to die. Eventually the survivor had been forced to watch as the Nazis had to forcibly shove a baseball bat down the man's throat and pour fouled latrine waste water into his mouth and nose to drown him. 

     Another had been forced to watch two men hung for various "crimes" against the Nazi officials. The first was a 16 year old who was to be hung for singing a "communist" song. The survivor had been forced to watch while the boy's first rope snapped. He saw the 16 year old fall then plead for his life a second time on his knees, only to be hung again. The other man, the survivor remembered, was to be hung after the 16 year old. This second man (who had somehow managed to conceal a razor), while watching the 16 year old hang for a second time, had slit his wrists. They hung him bleeding.  

Listening to those accounts was pretty difficult.

On the whole however, this wasn't a place that tortured me mentally and emotionally. It was, overwhelmingly, a place of contemplation.

I've had much more difficulty getting a good night's rest after evenings of self-inflicted torture, while reading about the horrible medical experiments of Josef Mengele and viewing the images of malnutrition and starvation that abound online. Still, being a place of contemplation, I couldn't get it out of my mind, and I still can't... such is the nature of such a place. So, upon arriving home I looked up the Museum's online site and found out that. 

A) Senator John McCain is to be honored in May by the Museum.

B) The Museum is hosting a theater production of "The Timekeepers". 

and 

C) There had been (or was to be) a recent (or upcoming) viewing of the 2008 award winning movie "The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas"

This new search (of course) led me to others.... predominantly concerning, "The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas". My intense interest in this movie is probably inspired by another similar film that I recall seeing bits and pieces of a few years ago that still haunt my mind. That movie being, "The Devil's Arithmetic". Even though I have not yet seen "The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas" myself, I do feel the need to see it... and eventually (hopefully) I will have more news concerning it once I do. 

( I do caution - from what I have seen in previews and trailers, if you are of a mind to view this movie yourself,  this isn't a movie that I'd strongly recommend taking children to, unless you REALLY want to have a serious discussion about the Holocaust. 

     As it's main characters are children themselves, and as children are relatively quick to identify with other children, it would be understandable to have children coming away from seeing this movie very hurt and confused. 

     I am not going to say don't allow your children to see it, but I would definitely advise some parental precaution in this instance. Have a talk about it beforehand and afterward and listen to what your kids may have to say or ask.)

To those who refuse to forget... all my best!

Kisses, 

Kayla