I was in Berlin last week on vacation. I took the time to go quite a few museums, two I want to speak about this time were the Jewish Museum and the Topography of Terror. These museums were both about the Holocaust and the horrors that occurred. They both came at it with a lot of information but shared in different manners.
The Jewish Museum was created in a fashion that the architecture breeds into you as you walk up and down the hills and dimly lit halls, the pain, and confusion that the Jews went through. As the name suggests this only shows the stories of Jewish people during the holocaust, sharing mementos and photos in shadowed holes in the wall. The stories and the mementos were left alone for you to feel the stories of each individual person's life.
The Topography of Terror was completely different. Firstly when you come in, there is a stuffy feeling of information, it is shared in a maze like turns of posters from the ceilings with lots of pictures and information. It is shared from a straight German perspective and not from any religious or singular groups perspective. It doesn't spare you or your feelings, giving very straightforward details about the horrors that went down. They have an incredible 3-D diorama (if they still call them that) of all the buildings in Berlin and how the SS took them over. You do a lot of reading, and learning as much as I thought I had already known about the Holocaust growing up in a religious Jewish system. I learned about other marginalized groups that were also terrorized, it gave me a lot to think about and left me with lots of conflicting thoughts and feelings.
This is one of my main feelings and responses to the hell that hitler ran.
Eradicating senses of self, was your main idea. Making people easier to kill, when you've broken their souls. Shave their heads, take their clothes jewelry and food. Make them work hard enough to forget where they came from and where they are trying to go. The ones that had a stronger soul-kill first to shatter the others. Silence their heart with black gasses and boots. You destroyed their souls.
So hitler, I'll strengthen my soul, and sense of self. I'll grow my hair long and make myself feel powerful and beautiful as a disabled Jewish woman. My people survived.
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