"I have been to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC on several occasions. I have taken each of my daughters there to see the photos, the video footage, and the exhibits documenting the atrocities that occurred under Hitler's "final solution". The museum is a testament to the gross inhumanity of the Nazis; but it is also a witness to the complicity of millions of ordinary people in Europe who refused to resist this evil, including many leaders of the church. Even the United States, ultimately playing a key role in the defeat of Hitler, refused to receive larger numbers of Jewish immigrants from Europe at a time when the Nazis were implementing the "final solution". The Holocaust is an indictment not only upon the Nazis, but upon the entire human race.
My daughters and I walked in silence after our visits, deeply moved, disturbed, and convicted by what we had seen. That is the aim of the Holocaust Museum: to affect visitors so deeply that they leave committed to the proposition that this should never happen again."
I was unable to stop thinking about the words I had read...was I supposed to post the words that were haunting me? Was I supposed to elaborate upon them? It was while these questions were making me uneasy that I saw this quote by Maya Angelou:
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
I knew then that I was supposed to post Rev. Hamilton's words...and Ms. Angelou's words...but after reading them, you need none of my own. Just chew on these for a while.
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