The Holocaust

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I visited a very sad place on SaturdayJune 17th, 2006. Walking through the building, although filled with hundreds of people, there are many areas where you can hear a pin drop. I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC with my 20 year old daughter. I cannot express the importance of every individual in the world passing through the doors of this sad place.
There are many different "displays" available to visit within the museum walls. My daughter had learned much about the Holocaust in school and wished to walk through the rooms that contained the bridge with the shoes under it. I did not really understand what that meant, so I said okay. Before we entered this portion of the museum we were instructed to pick up a small booklet resembling a passport. My identification card contained a womens name as well as a picture. Her name was Emma Freund, born 10-14-1893 in Kippenheim bei Lahr, Germany. Emma was the second oldest of 6 children, raised by observant Jewish parents in a small town in southwestern Germany. Emma married and settled in the industrial city of Mannheim after WWI. There she had two children. a son in 1924 and a daughter in 1930. Emma helped her husband run his business until the Nazi's came to power sometime after 1933, when her husbands business was taken from him. Then their synagogue, school and home were taken from the. The Freunds were ordered to leave Mannheim sometime between 1940-1942. They assembled at the train station, were deported to Gurs a camp in southern France, then another camp, Rivesaltes, and then another camp, the Drancy transit camp in August 1942, and finally to Auschwitz on August 14th 1942, and gassed upon arrival.
I guess the most horrible part of that horrific story is that Emma's only crime was her Jewish heritage. She committed absolutely no injustice against the Nazis.
There were aweful scenes and visions within the museum, but when I walked within one of the very trains that transported these innocent people to their deaths I stopped and said a prayer for every individual whose life was touched by the atrocities that the nazi's committed. I then opened my eyes, looked at my daughter and asked, "what if some fiend decided to persecute and murder every Methodist in the United States." She said, "oh come on Mom". I said. "why not, what did the Jewish people do?"

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