DC Day Five

Today we wanted to get to the Holocaust Museum to get tickets first thing in the morning. We finally got an elevator to take us down to the PACKED lobby. The free breakfast area was thronged too (saturday morning - yikes!).

Again, we hopped the Metro (to "Smithsonian) again and walked to the museum. The line was LONG to get tickets, but it moved pretty quickly.

It was 10AM by the time we got ours, our ticket time was for 11:45. So we walked to the Jefferson Memorial. We read the quotes, took some photos, admired the view, rested in the shade & breeze on the marble steps, and Deevs & Lando did some dancing/filming.

By the time we walked back, we were able to go in to the museum.

We toured the Holocaust museum for about 2 hours.

It was VERY crowded and VERY quiet (respectful, solemn) which was tremendously encouraging - to see SO MANY people there willing to walk through an entire museum about a sad and convicting subject that requires a lot of reading and patience... pretty cool.

We each had various "favorite" parts of the exhibits.

Of course the building itself was awesome; the beams, the glass, the architecture, the brick etc.

You walked through a cattle car used to transport the jews to concentration camps.

There was a room filled with shoes taken from all the victims.

I was particularly moved by the area dedicated to all the people who were "safe" and not targets of the Nazi killing machine, yet the risked their comfort and well-being to save people who WERE targets.

They smuggled babies out of ghettos to non-Jewish homes,

they fed prisoners through fences,

they wrote articles which called attention to their anti-nazi sympathies,

they supported the resistance,

they hid jews in their homes.

These people were admirable heros.

If I was comfy and cozy and my family was safe and not in jeopardy, would I risk them and myself to do the RIGHT thing?

To do the human thing?

Do do the Golden Rule thing?

To do the Jesus thing?

Would you?

(No photos allowed in the exhibit, so this is in the entry area.)

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After the Holocaust Museum, we walked past the National Mall

over to the White House.
We had lunch at a little museum cafe (we couldn't find any where else). Then we went to the other side of the White House.
The boys did a little dancing & filming.

We enjoyed all the different protests.

Particularly moving was the plight of the Tamils (a minority) of Sri Lanka.

They say the government is holding thousands and thousands of them in camps and in the last 6 months alone, 50,000 of them have been murdered. The man who handed us the flyer was a Tamil who lives in the US and is a US citizen - and no longer even has relatives in Sri Lanka - but he cannot sit by and let this continue in the country he once called home. Meanwhile, a Tamil woman kept wailing "Obama! Obama! You're our only hope!" This was especially heart-wrenching after just coming from the Holocaust Museum.

What is America supposed to do? No one wants America to be the self-proclaimed 'police of the world" and yet how can we just stand by and let atrocities occur?

Such a complex issue. No easy answer.

Behind them was a "no nuclear war" protest with one angry, crazy lady. Her signs claimed that someone had been present at her site 24 hours a day since 1983. Wow! Then behind her on the lawn was a "no torture" rally circa 1960's complete with a "prisoner" in jail, blindfolded in an orange Gitmo jumpsuit. (Jade - currently really exploring Christian pacifism - bought a t-shirt from them to support their cause.)

We came back to the hotel to rest and gear up for another night of fun at Penn Quarter/Chinatown.