On the way to the memorial and museum, we stopped and saw part of the Berlin Wall and part of where it once was. It was interesting to see the setting of where it was and how there are now buildings that stand in the middle of the walls path. There were a couple of things that surprised me when we saw it. The first thing was how small it was. In my mind it was taller, not the size of an average wall. The other thing that surprised me was all of the defacing that was done to the wall, especially all of the gum that was stuck to it. To me, it seemed disrespectful. Once again, I was surprised when I saw the memorial for the day. When I first saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe I was not sure what to think. At first glance, it looked like a bunch of cement boxes scattered around, but once I began to walk in I realized the extent of the memorial. The unevenness of the ground reminded me of the Jewish Museum and Memorial and I had a sense of unbalance take over. Walking towards the middle of the memorial, as the walls grew taller around me, I felt alone and trapped inside. I could see the world around me but it seemed like it would take forever to get to the outside. It was not a comfortable feeling. The museum was a very touching experience. I learned a lot of information in the first room that I did not really care to know. I did not wish to know how long the car exhaust deaths took, which was way longer than I expected. I also learned a lot about the people that were involved with a lot of the deaths that I did not know participated. The rooms that affected me the most were the room with the journals and the room with the information about the families. Reading the journals, I had a hard time putting myself in the spot of the person writing them. I cannot imagine writing someone I loved, knowing that it would be the last thing I ever wrote them because I was going to die in the next few days. The hardest one was the Mom writing the journal to her older daughter about how her other children were going to die and there was nothing she could do about it. I could not imagine my mom writing a letter like that to me. The room about the families was also really hard to read. I didn’t even finish reading them all. It was depressing to read about how they all tried to help each other live, but in the end almost everyone ended up dying. I do not know what I would do if me family had to do that. Overall, it was a day that made me very thankful for my family.
Beccie
non-member comment
Love all the photos
I love that you are able to post so many photos. I thought at first there were only the ones showing on your blog page but now I see all the additional ones too. The iron faces...wow.