Holocaust Museum

Although I've heard stories of the Holocaust and seen several videos on it, this is my first time in a Holocaust museum. This was a bit of a shock for me because I'd never seen artifacts from the Holocaust and definitely made for a surreal experience. This just adds to my understanding of what we are discussing in class about the power behind physical objects and how it relates to trauma. I knew that the Holocaust was a terrible event, but it was only just a concept until I saw the artifacts that the museum had in the exhibits.

What I found really interesting was the fact that throughout history, everyone really focuses on the gas chambers and the execution pits. Many people leave out the part about the Nazi doctors performing all kinds of crazy experiments, surgical removal of body parts and organs, and experiment with drugs to test the effects of certain treatments and to see how the human body worked, most of which were horribly unsuccessful. Although much good came from these tests, the cost of obtaining that information was and still is unforgivable. Many of today's treatments for diseases are the tests that succeded in the concentration camps, which is a very sobering thought. Even after many generations, we are still subject to Nazi science, which had brutal ways of testing that science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC0cxE-BX4c&feature=related

This video is 1 of 5 that explain what happened in the concentration camps. This video is very chilling because it ties into the whole goal of Hitler, to make a supreme race of people. It's very sickening to think that this really could have happened, but yet everyone who uses pharmacutical drugs to keep them healthy are basically saying thank you to the Nazi's for this practice. I feel that this is probably one of the most disturbing, but not so well known part of the Holocaust. To relate this back to class, it is all about perspective. As we've moved forward since the Holocaust, we've "forgotten" this part and changed it into a great modern marvel, rewriting our own history.