Michaela C.
Yelp
Last week, I finished watching the controversial SBS three-part German miniseries "Generation War." A perfect example of German revisionism if ever I saw it.
Last night, I finished reading "The Book Thief." In that piece of fiction, words mattered.
But today...it was the numbers. And these were all too real.
6 million.
1 million and 1
Multitudes
Countless
90 years
The 21st girl
2065
1
For today, I sat at the feet of a 90-year old Auschwitz survivor who lost her entire family in the camps and by sheer luck was spared from the gas chamber herself. There had been space for only 20 girls to be transported to the death camp; she was the 21st girl. Back then the lice-ridden girl with the shaved head, who considered the infamous "striped pyjamas" a luxury, had no name. She was a number: 2065. The large tattoo somewhat crudely drawn with a Nazi hand was plainly visible on her arm. But she isn't just a number. Never was. Her name is "Lotte." Her name is "daughter," "granddaughter," "sister," "cousin," "niece," and "mother," "grandmother," "great grandmother." She will make you laugh, cry and hope. I can't tell you how important it is to hear these stories firsthand. You'll probably wonder, as I did, how Lotte - and another 70 Holocaust survivors who volunteer at the museum - has the fortitude to sit there every Sunday for 21 years and relive those horrors for people like me. But even in the moment of asking myself that, I knew the answer. This is how the survivors honour the lost ones.
In a room not far from where Lotte was seated, 1, 000, 001 drops of water sit in a bowl: a drop for every child murdered by "the Führer" and his minions. Faces and names cover the back wall of this memorial to the lost innocents. As I stood and looked into each little face, I heard in my mind Elie Wiesel's voice asking how many Albert Einsteins and other great minds, doctors, scientists and artists might there have been among them? We will never know.
Elsewhere, we saw the multitudes. Multitudes of bodies grotesquely twisted in mass graves. Countless skulls piled high. And the face of 1 man standing in a mass grave. He was the last Jewish man to be shot that day.
Our guide today was wonderful. Incredibly, she covered a vast amount of history and hit the major points of the Holocaust in a short amount of time, without ever reducing the history to a recital of dry facts. This, by necessity, is a history that must always be told in a way that is affective and it was, because she told the story as the child of a Holocaust survivor (her mother) and the child of a Holocaust victim (her father).
It is always easy to feel overwhelmed in a museum due to the sheer amount of information that is on display and this museum is no different. You will need to make more than one visit here to take it all in, but I can assure you; you will want to come back again. (Note: entry is free on the first Sunday of each month). The layout of the museum is exquisite. Multiple mezzanines tell the multiple stories that collectively comprise "The Holocaust," and have all been constructed around a centrally-located Star of David. In addition to feeling like I am in a powerfully sacred place, the feeling I get from the space itself and the people who donate their time and their life stories to it is one of dignified strength. Like the history that this museum preserves, that feeling - for me at least - is without equal.
* Review originally written and posted 2 February 2014