Today we went to the Holocaust Museum in downtown St. Pete. In high school I went to the Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, so I had some idea of what a museum based on traumatic events would be like. The museum though small, was very informative and interesting. The shear brutality and inhumane cruelty that this museum represents has been exposed to us since an early age. Therefore most of the artifacts were not shocking or new. That being said this museum did a good job of explaining this era.
Some of my favorite pictures or displays were about the brave individuals who attempted to escape or avoid being captured. One of the displays in particular was one that showed how prisoners dug and constructed a tunnel under and outside of the ghetto. Out of the 250 prisoners that attempted to escape only 90 were captured and executed. This was a great engineering feat as well as a brave act of courage.
The second thing that I particularly enjoyed was the history lesson about the events that led to that situation. While I was reasonably informed about WWII history, it was interesting to see how everything led up to the genocide. The shear power and military might that Hitler assembled was to an extent impressive, in a sick kind of way. As an American seeing the pictures of General Patton and Eisenhower liberating the refugees from the camps was my most proud moment.