Thinking

Given my somewhat subdued mood yesterday, I went for a wander in the sunshine. Where is an ideal place to wander on such days? That’s right, the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. You were going to say that weren’t you?

I have been to the exhibition a couple of times before but haven’t been to it for a while. I think partly what put it in my mind was that on Friday night when I was browsing through some books I saw a copy of Night by Elie Wiesel which is a brilliant, if rather depressing, account of the holocaust. I must read the other books in that series. Anyway, the exhibition is a very moving experience and I had to keep reminding myself as I looked at the photos and footage that those were the actual people who perpetrated those crimes and those were the actual people who were slaughtered. I think it would be possible to go round that exhibition and look at it from a very academic perspective and see it as an “interesting look at history” and yet if you’re willing to let yourself engage with what is there before you, you’re reminded that it’s real people, actual lives, people who were exterminated because of their religion or their sexuality or their ethnic background or for standing up against oppression.

At the end of the exhibition there is a video made up of interviews with the survivors of the holocaust and they are explaining how it impacts on them now. Some were able to return to the cities that they were taken from all those years ago, others cannot bear to be reminded of a place that brought so much sorrow into their lives. Some have rebuilt relationships with those who looked on powerless to stop what was happening and others look at the people they meet now and on instinct judge whether they can be trusted - and most often do not trust.

The holocaust impacts me in a number of ways. It makes me wonder what can make people hate a particular group so much that they would want to see them totally wiped out. It makes me think about what it takes for people to survive such evil perpetrated against them and somehow rebuild a life. It makes me wonder if we are blind to things going on around us right now that somehow allow people to carry out acts that one day could be comparable to those crimes committed by the Nazis. Would I notice? Would I be willing to do something about it? Or is it just easier to stay silent? I think it is often the extremes of life that show who we really are and I wonder who we would have found ourselves to be if we had been faced by those circumstances. Elie Wiesel once said "Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."