Books from 1939
I spent the afternoon at the Imperial War Museum, one of London’s many fantastic free museums, which gave me an opportunity for some picture-taking. I was surprised at quite how large it was although this did lead to some amusing phone conversations when people got lost:
“Where are you?”
“I’m in World War One.”
“Oh, I’m in the Holocaust.”
“Well you better get out of there, I’ll meet you in the trenches.”
The World Wars One & Two exhibitions in the basement were huge (and at times confusing to navigate – especially World War Two) but it was interesting how much information they had and what made it come alive were some of the smaller things such as propaganda flyers, newspaper headlines etc. What my history teacher would have called primary evidence.
Gas Mask from WWII
In fact the Holocaust Exhibit was probably the most impressive part of the museum, although after a while it did become a bit overpowering. There is a large scale model of Auschwitz, which I didn’t spend anytime looking at, it just made my skin crawl. The rest of the exhibit though was incredibly detailed and in-depth.
I once went to the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague where the Jews that had been killed from Bohemia region (some 80,000) had had their name inscribed on the walls. They were big walls and there were a lot of names which filled them. This brought home the holocaust to me and the scale and impact. No museum or textbook or film has ever come close to standing in that room surrounded by name after name after name.
The one thing that really struck me from the Imperial War Museum today was from a video of talking heads, which was really beautiful, with all these concentration camp survivors sharing their stories and experiences. One Jewish woman stood out more than the others for me. She was talking about the experiences she had suffered and whether they had informed her personality and the way she interacted with the world today. She said (and I paraphrase slightly):
“It is as when you throw a stone into a lake. At first there are large ripples where the stone breaks the surface and these become smaller ripples as time passes and then, eventually, the surface of the lake becomes calm again and flat. But the stone still lies at the bottom of the lake and that stone remains in my heart.”
