Seniors visit The Holocaust Museum to complement studies

“Never again.” These words are found throughout the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. The atrocities suffered during the Holocaust should never be forgotten; the museum serves as a warning. History, should never be ignored. To ignore is to forget, and to ignore is to repeat. Never again.

It is important for this generation to learn about the Holocaust. This generation is responsible to prevent this from ever happening again. Seniors were given an opportunity to visit The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC just weeks ago; it is an amazing experience for anyone who goes, but for students who have studied the novels Night, I Have Lived a Thousand Years, and even The Diary of Anne Frank, it is truly a remarkable chance to vicariously live through the turmoils that victims went through.

Ruth Cohen is a speaker at the Holocaust Museum. She survived the Holocaust along with her sister, and her words are inspiring. She survived Auschwitz as a girl of fourteen. She experienced horrors that are unfathomable, but despite the crushing reality the museum presents, it also offers hope for the future. Inside the museum is an exhibit. A pile of leather shoes is all it shows, with a simple quote. “We are the shoes. We are the last witnesses/We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers/From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam/And because we are only made of fabric and leather/And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.” Thousands of lives were lost for one man’s horrific plan. Thousand of lives, and yet all that remains are their shoes. They should not be forgotten. Never again.