Museum, Monuments, & Memorials

Today we had tickets to go to the Holocaust Museum. I was regretting that I didn't help Corey plan things, cause it would have been nice to tune in for General Conference, but we did catch President Nelson's message as we drove into DC (and his message was wonderful!). I was also kinda hoping to go see Nicole again, but we were at the mall all day. It was a bit crazy finding parking cause of the Cherry Blossom festival. Parking was $40 for each car, yikes. Before we went, I took a few kids for a walk in our old Centreville neighborhood. I was hoping to go on the little trail through the trees that we did in 2006, but it was possibly overgrown or it's not there any more, or I just couldn't find it cause it is early spring and the trees don't have any leaves. But I did wander around with the kids. 

I was glad that Abi came with me to help. We went on a walk, and walked to a park, and then Peter had to go to the bathroom, so I left Abi in charge while Peter and I walked to hopefully find the port a potty I saw. 

We found one, which was a bit of a brisk hike away for me to take him to, and then Peter took one look inside and let me know he actually didn't need to go. I think he did, but not bad enough to go to the bathroom in that full to the brim toilet. So then I took him back to the park. Corey texted that he was ready to leave and that we were kinda late, so he was heading in and would meet us at the mall. At that news, I admit I was a bit irritated, cause I had taken the kids out of the hotel to give him a little bit of peace, and I was also just killing time cause I was wait for him to join us so we could drive together, and now we were late, and I was at the park, and the car was parked over far away, so (grrr) I left Abi with the kids and I ran as fast as I could back to the car, picked up the kids and then we left. 

Traffic in DC was nuts, I was a bit stressed in it, we took a few wrong turns, then Corey texted me that he had parked, knew where we could park, and told me where to meet him. We found him and the kids, we got out, he went and parked my car, and we waited for him to catch up as we started to walk to the Holocaust Museum. It was a good experience, but it was crazy busy with a bunch of high school looking kids who came together on buses. So it was busy. 

I was able to read a little bit of all the info, but Katharine wasn't being very nice, so I tried to discreetly nurse her as I stood and walked... I don't know if it actually was discreet but I tried. I found it so interesting the way that Hitler came into power. I took photos of this so I could review it after I got home - I'll put in caps the titles of each essay displayed:

TAKEOVER OF POWER, 1933: Hitler rose to Power in January 1933.
THE TERROR BEGINS: The Nazi's relied on terror - violence and brutality were used to prevent opposition. The Nazi SA group grew to be 450,000 and then dwarfed the German army. When he became Chancellor, he inaugurated his regime with a ras of SA violence against his political opponents. Street battles on "Bloody Sunday" February 12, 1933, left one communist dead and hundreds wounded. Two weeks later was the Reichstag fire, where 4000 communists ans social democrats were arrested. And in June, during the "week of blood", Nazi thugs killed 91 communists in Berlin alone. They were making concentration camps in April 1933 as political prisons for anyone who opposed them.
BOYCOTT: On April 1, 1933, the Nazis staged a massive nationwide boycott against Jewish businesses and professional offices. The decision to boycott was Hitlers.
THE BURNING OF BOOKS: Spring of 1933, members of Nazi student organizations raided libraries and bookstores in 30 cities and towns across Germany. They removed truckloads of books and cast them onto bonfires. On May 10, more than 25,000 books were burned in Berlin alone. The book burning were not spontaneous: they were a calculated, coordinated effort to "purify" German culture.

NAZI PROPAGANDA: Nazis used propaganda, along with terror, to manipulate the German population. Among these was the "Leader Principle" which promoted Hitler as the ultimate source of power and Justice. Slogans such as "One people, one Reich, one Leader" helped catalyze the publics perception of Hitler as a National Savior.

THE "SCIENCE" OF RACE: All human beings were grouped into a hierarchy of "superior" and "inferior" races

FROM CITIZENS TO OUTCASTS

JEWISH RESPONSES - German Jews struggled to preserve their rights. Because of th Nazi persecution, Zionism became the dominant political trend among German Jews. By 1939, emigration to Palestine had become a major objective of the Jewish community. 

EXPANSION WITHOUT WAR: Hitler was determined to increase the territory of Germany. Until 1939 he was able to do this without a fight. His first aggressive act was sending German troops west of teh Rhine on March 7, 1936. On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria. In a conference on Sept 29, 1938, leaders of Great Brigain, France and Italy allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland.

NO HELP, NO HAVEN 1938: There was a refugee crisis, but the US did not intend to increase it's immigration quotas. "A Useless Conference: From Julv 6 to 15, 1938, delegations from 32 nations met at Évian-les-Bains, France, to identify refugee havens for German and Austrian Jews. Country after country acknowledged the refugees plight, yet offered little more than excuses. Great Britain would admit few Jews, and kept Palestine closed to large-scale Jewish immigration. Canada was willing to accept farmers, but this did not help the urban Jews of Austria and Germany. Australia declined to assist because it "does not have a racial problem, and (is] not desirous of importing one." The Venezuelan delegate was reluctant to disturb the *demographic equilibrium" of his country: no Jewish merchants, peddlers, or intellectuals were wanted there. The Netherlands and Denmark offered only temporary asylum. The United States finally agreed to admit-for the first time-the full legal quota for immigrants from Germany and Austria. The Dominican Republic alone offered to receive a substantial number, 100,000 Jews."

"NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS"
"ENEMIES OF THE STATE" Jews were the main target, but Communists, Social Democrats, trade unions, liberals, and pacifists were all arrested for their political views or activities. Dissenting clergy faced imprisonment if they spoke out against he regime. Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted for their refusal to sweat allegiance to the state. Homosexuals, Freemasons, Gypsies, Czechs, Poles, and Slavic people were all stigmatized as racially inferior and persecuted. The Nazis also regarded mentally and physically disabled persons and "lives unworthy of life"

NAZI SOCIETY 

POLICE STATE

SEARCH FOR REFUGE

THE BOYAGE OF THE ST. LOUIS

TO SAFETY

THE WAR BEGINS

THERROR AGAINST THE POLES, 1939-1940

HEALERES AND PROTECTORS BECOME MASS MURDERERS (This one made me cry) 

"At five-and-a-half, I was sent to a children's home that cooperated with the Nazis. The children there were declared mentally ill Behind our dormitory were the babies. And one day I was surprised that I didn't hear the babies crying anymore. That was in 1940. I had been in the institution for two years.Then I looked in, and all the beds were empty. I ran down the long hallway to the other room where the older disabled patients were. All of those beds were empty too."

-Elvira Manthey, Eyewitness to 'euthanasia" facility

The Nazis targeted people with disabilities for systematic mass murder. The regime considered them to be a genetic threat and an economic burden. Resources, the Nazis believed, were better allocated to healthy Germans. In spring 1939, they planned a secret operation to kill children with disabilities. That fall, Hitler authorized "Operation T4, which extended the program to adults. Victims of the program were patients living in care facilities in Germany and German-annexed lands. They had conditions such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, and intellectual and physical disabilities.

Cooperation from doctors, nurses, and hospital directors was critical to the program. Medical personnel took part in nearly all aspects of it. Their roles ranged from planning and victim selection to outright murder. Staff killed patients by gassing, lethal overdose, or starvation. The Nazis referred to the deaths as "euthanasia," or mercy killing.

In 1941, public discovery of the killings led to protests by a number of church leaders, judges, and citizens. Hitler issued a halt order to the adult program in late August. The killings secretly resumed in 1942 and continued until the war ended in 1945.An estimated 250,000 people died in the "euthanasia" program.

A SHTETL - THE EJSZYSZKI SHTETL COLLECTION

THE "FINAL SOLUTION"

ANNE FRANK

GHETTOS, 1939-1944

DOCUMENTING LIFE AND DEWATH IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

THERESIENSTADT

THE WARSAW GHETTO

THE LODZ GHETTO

THE KOVNO GHETTO

FOUR HUNDRED GHETTOS

INVASION OF THE SOVIET UNION 1941

MOBILE KILLING SQUADS

Babi

The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar. 

The trees look ominous, like judges.

Here all things scream silently,

And, caring my head,

Slowly I feel myself

Turning gray.

And I myself.

Am one massive, soundless scream

Above the thousand thousand buried here.

- Yevgeny Yevtushenki (b. 1955, Russian poet

BABI YAR

  A few days after the Germans captured Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, in September 1941, Soviet saboteurs blew up several buildings occupied by German authorities. The Nazis decided that in retaliation, the Jews of Kiev would be killed, On September 28, signs were posted in Kiev ordering all Jews in the city and its surroundings to appear the next morning, September 29, at the Jewish cemetery. They were to be resettled," the posters stated; failure to appear was punishable by death.

  Thousands of Jews came to the designated place the next morning. They were taken to Babi Yar, a ravine two miles from the city center, and were forced to hand over their valuables and remove their clothes. Groups were then herded into the ravine, where members of a German killing unit shot them.

  More than 33,000 Jews were killed at Babi Yar in two days.

  During the following months, thousands more Jews, as well as partisans, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet prisoners of war, were executed there. Soviet reports after the war estimated the number of victims at 100,000; the true number may never be known.

  In August 1943, as the Red Army advanced, the Nazis returned to Babi Yar to remove the evidence of mass murder.

  Bulldozers unearthed the thousands of corpses, which were then incinerated.

HOLOCAUST IN ROMANIA

THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE, 1942

THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING, PASSOVER 1943

DEPORTATIONS

WHO SHALL LIVE AND WHO SHALL DIE

PRISONERS OF THE CAMPS

THE CONCENTRATION CAMP UNIVERSE

IN THE CAMPS

WHY AUSCHWITZ WAS NOT BOMBED

SHOES

These are shoes found at the Majdanek camp in Lublin, Poland, at its liberation by Soviet troops in July 1944

We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses. 

We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers from Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam. 

And because we are only made of fabric and leather - and not of blood and flesh - each one of us

Avoided the hellfire.

- Moses Schulstein (1911-1981) 

Yiddish poet

So, I'll need to go back sometime and write more under each of those topics, but you can google them too. It was a sober visit. 

Deuteronomy 30:19 - I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. 

So after that we walked past the Washington Monument...

Kids were tired, but they were troopers.

We walked down to the Lincoln Memorial.

Daniel was tired and didn't want to walk anymore after that. We went to the Vietnam Memorial, Owen started walking on the grass and then up on the memorial which horrified me when I saw it. I called him down and got a disappointed look by a lady who passed by. My apologies to her and any of the brave deceased who might be offended by that. We passed by the Washington Monument again on our way back to the cars. Time to do a photo - I did Natalie's perfectly!

I didn't do as good on the other girls' photo illusions.

Cool to have the moon in it though. 

And Lily got a kite too. 

Lily had everyone touch the monument.

Even you, Katharine!

Ok, it's been a long day, let's head back to the hotel.

One more day of sight seeing tomorrow, and then we travel home on Tuesday. Corey, Wes and I all felt exhausted by keeping track of little kids at the museum and dragging them along at the mall. I also felt a little sad that we went to a restaurant afterwards (cause it's a Sunday, so that's why I was sad about that, not keeping the Sabbath day holy, but maybe going to the Mall in the first place wasn't keeping it holy either...) But we went by Subway for dinner after the mall. We didn't have food in the room, and no one wanted to fast with me, so we fed them. I texted Nicole saying that if I could redo today I would. And I would have taken the family up to visit her instead so we could have watched conference. I know we can listen to it later, but it would have been good to make it a priority and to have watched second day of General conference. Hopefully the kids learned good moral lessons today from the Holocaust Museum. I caught a little bit of the morning session but missed all of the second. But this is a lesson for me, like Pres Nelson's experience with the bad tempered surgeon was a life lesson for him. I am determined to not miss listening to General Conference on General Conference weekend again. Especially when we can listen with friends!!! I think tomorrow is a full day but I'm hoping we might be able to see Nicole again before we head back to Utah.