The Weekend

This weekend was nice, it was the perfect balance of relaxing and fun! On Saturday my roomate and I went and worked out at the gym while watching the England vs. US World Cup Soccer game because the gym has channels and our TV has none! It was a crazy game and the US managed to tie England 1-1 because of a very lucky goal where the England goalie had the ball in his hands and then let it slip out and back in the goal! In the World Cup there has been a lot of ties which I guess happens when the teams are so good! But today Germany beat Australia 4 - 0 which was very exciting!
That was basically the highlight of Saturday...for the rest of the day I just sat around and did homework because I have about 300 pages that I have to read by wednesday and I also have to create a Professional Development Plan!


Today we did some more sightseeing. We woke up really early because we had to get into DC before 10am to get tickets for the Holocaust Museum. The tickets are free but you have to wait in line to get a time to go into the permanent exhibition. We got there at 9:50am and were able to get a time for 11:30am which was great!
Then while you are waiting to go into the permanent exhibition you can see the other parts of the museum! We went to an exhibit on Nazi Propaganda and then Daniel's Story which is about the children of the Holocaust. It was very interesting but I definitely thought the permanent exhibition was the best and the most meaninful! It was so well done and I learned a lot!

When you first go into the permanent exhibit you receive an identification card of a Jewish person and you are that person as you are walking through...here was my person's story:

Name: Margit Morawetz
Date of Birth: February 26, 1922
When Margit was a baby, her family moved from Austria to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her father was a banker from a religious Jewish family in Bohemia and her mother came from a Viennese family of Jewish origin. Margit knew many languages: Czech, French, English and German, which she spoke with her family

That is all you are supposed to read while you go through the first floor which shows the Nazi's ascent to power.
Then on the next floor, about the beginnings of the conquering of Europe, you read the next part of your person's life:

1933-1939
In 1938, when I was 16, attacks on Jews in central Europe escalated and my parents decided I should leave. I left secondary school in Prague and went to Paris, where I studied dressmaking. It was hard to live on my own and go to school, but in March 1939 my mother came to France. She lived outside Paris, and I saw her often. Once France was engaged in the war in September 1939, it became clear that Jews in France could be in danger.

So then after reading this part you go through the second floor, and then continue to the third floor which was about the concentration camps and the horrors of them...this part of the exhibit is one of the scariest parts, but I think they do a good job of showing enough to make you realize and see the atrocities and how awful it really was but not enough to make you overwhelmed and want to run out of the museum. For this part you learn this about your person:

1940-1941
I apprehensively continued my studies until just before Paris fell to the Germans in June 1940. Refugees streamed to the unoccupied south of France, and I bought a bike so I, too, could flee. I rode for hours until I came to a school building where some refugees were staying. After a brief rest, I headed out in search of my mother, who had been sent to a detention camp on the Spanish border. Only hours after I left the building, the Germans blew the school to pieces.

Then after going through the concentration camp part you go through the liberation part which is really sad too because you see the bodies and how malnourished they were. But it is also a happier part since you see some of the people they rescued and saved, and you also get to find out whether your person lived or died on the last page of their identification card.

Mine said:
Margit eventually found her mother, and the two fled, via Spain and Portugal, to the United States, where they settled in 1941.

I was so happy to have a happy story after the many sad and awful stories of the museum, and also seeing how many could not make it to the US because the US closed its doors to Jew refugees.

That is the Holocaust museum, it's a really amazing and powerful experience and I would reccomend it to anyone who comes to DC, and I definitely recommend going through the permanent exhibition because that is where you learn the most!

After the Holocaust Museum we were starving since we had spent 4 hours in the museum and so we went to Chinatown to get some lunch! We didn't do a lot of walking around Chinatown but we saw the arch at the beginning and ate some really yummy Chinese food.

Now we are all back at home doing more homework...the only bummer of this program is how much homework we do have! If we didn't have so much we would be able to explore a little bit more! But we still manage to have a great time on the weekends and sort of fit the homework in!