This morning we went to the Imperial war museum. I didn’t take many pictures because it wasn’t that interesting until I got into the exhibits where you weren’t allowed to take pictures. The most amazing exhibit was the Holocaust exhibit. It started off kind of slow, giving a history of why Jews were hated in certain parts of the world. The hatred started sooner than I thought.
Then it started to get more intense with personal accounts on film and quotes from people that lived through the times. First the Jews were just put into ghettos where they all had to live together and couldn’t get much food. As you walked through the exhibit it kept getting more and more gruesome. They started to talk about the concentration camps and actually had a scale model of the largest concentration camp. They talked about how they had the killing there down to a perfect science. They also had personal accounts at these areas too. They started showing pictures as well. I was somewhere in between tears and getting sick by that point, but I kept reading. At the end of the exhibit they had a life after the war area so that helped get rid of the mixed feelings.
After going through that exhibit I really didn’t feel like seeing anything else. We did go to the last floor of the museum though and watch a bit of a documentary on Genocide. It was interesting, but by then it was already after 12 and we needed to come back to get something to eat.
The rest of the day is going to be pretty relaxed. Tomorrow we are going to the National Portrait Gallery and touring St. Paul’s Cathedral, so we need to work on finishing up papers and readings for class.