Remembering

This morning I decided to visit the holocaust memorial at Washington Park before beginning my daily hike. Here is a short description of the area. "The memorial features a stone bench adorned with wrought-iron gating, screened from the street by rhododendron bushes. The bench sits behind a circular, cobblestoned area - simulating a town square. During the Holocaust, many Jewish families were gathered in town squares before being loaded onto trains and taken to concentration camps. The square contains scattered bronzes of shoes, glasses, a suitcase, and other items to represent everyday objects that were left behind. A European-style, cobblestone walkway with inlaid granite bars, simulating railroad tracks, leads to a wall of history panels - giant, stone placards that offer a brief history of the Holocaust and quotes from Holocaust survivors. At the end of the wall is the soil vault panel. Buried below the panel are interred soil and ash from six killing-centre camps of the Holocaust - Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The back of the wall is engraved with the names of people who died in the camps, followed by the names of their surviving relatives in Oregon and SW Washington."

As I walked up the stone path and saw the discarded items cast in bronze (a violin, baby shoes, a teddy bear, suticase), my heart was heavy. All of the tragedy and horror that happened during the holocaust is represented in these though provoking symbols. As I approached the wall, one quote in particular caught my eye. It read "All of us children were crying for our parents. A guard came over to us and yelled, "Stop all of your whining! See that chimney, see that smoke, smell that stench in the air? That is your parents!"

Knowing the emotional response I had today, I can only wonder what it was like for the people in those camps whose lives were changed forever. I will remember the people of the holocaust and their stories; it is my responsibility as a global citizen.