Florida Holocaust Museum

As you walk by you smell the gas from the 11 eternal flames: six on the front for the Jews, and 5 on the side for the non-Jews who were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. Now imagine what music wasn't written, the art never created, literature never written and all manner of human talent the world has lost from that generation and all subsequent generations who were never born.

You enter after a security guard checks you out and it has the solemnity of church and the air of a sacred place. This is just a building, but it contains the stories and spirit of people frightened, beaten and murdered. It is a place where there is no laughter. It tells of camp commander's sons who on their birthday got to take target practice with live ammunition on Jewish babies tossed in the air. It tells of one enterprising German who discovered you could kill five people with a single bullet. Of children tossed in mass graves alive and buried.

It is a building that houses one of only 3 boxcars ever shipped out of Europe. This boxcar was used in the transportation of Jews to Treblinka in Poland. The general rule of thumb for these boxcars prior to the Final Solution was "40 men or 8 horses." But these boxcars carried a hundred or more. Many suffocated before arriving to the camps. Maybe they were the lucky ones. When this car was being power washed prior to placement in the museum a child's ring came out of one of the cracks. It is on display.

There are also these shoes and another set on display. Kids didn't need shoes once they were killed. In the Jewish Ghetto in Poland sometimes German soldiers would kill the babies right in their strollers.

The suspension on the boxcar designating this one was built just after WWI. I touched the car, you can get right up to it. The wood felt like any kind of rough wood. The door can still be opened. There is a worn board underneath the car where I imagined countless thousands stepped on to enter the car. I touch it also. I got chills thinking of the families uprooted, separated, lost forever to each other.

There are people today, some even teach in universities, who claim the Holocaust is a lie perpetrated by some Jewish cabal. Shame on them. The building I was in was very quiet today. People moved slowly looking at the faces of innocent people on the walls and the theme throughout in words and deed are simple: evil takes root when people fail to speak out. The building was quiet but I heard 6 million voices screaming, "Never Again".

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Flashback Friday

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Existing In BFE

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