Cat and Maus

After reading the entire first volume of Maus this week, we spent the last minutes of class talking in small groups about how we felt after reading a quote. I was talking with my friend Liam and we both agreed that people tend to make the holocaust a lot more depressing than it needs to be. Now before you get the chance to sharpen your pitchforks let me explain; for those of you that were lucky enough to go to Washington D.C. in the 8th grade, what did you feel during or after you left each memorial? Well if you're anything like me then you felt heavy, you felt the weight of all that history ball up inside of you all at once and at first it felt overwhelming and no matter what catastrophe or war the memorial was... well memorializing you felt some form of patriotism. I left the tomb of the unknown soldier feeling big country energy for america, I thought this must be what people felt when they saw uncle sam photos for the first time. Although one day in class this week we were shown a memorial for the holocaust and all I felt was a cold and erie feeling overtake me. the memorial has six glass pillars with various different holocaust number sequences engraved inside the structures, which can be symbolized as the chimney's of the gas chambers or the bars of a cell. Accompanied by multiple vents that constantly emit "fog" to symbolize smoke every single day of every single hour, no matter what the weather is. After seeing this it made me think, whenever we view the holocaust it is always in the most negative way possible. Now dont get me wrong, the atrocities of the past should never be forgotten but I dont think they necessarily need to be seen in the same horrifying way until the end of time either. You never see any memorials for it that show life after the holocaust or any of the survivors who were able to start new families; you only ever see the pain. At least with the other memorials like the 9/11 one in New York, or the marine corps war memorial in Arlington, you see the image of the hardships and pain America had to go through but you also see the message of perseverance. That all American can do attitude that probably annoys every single country thats not America. You leave having a stronger grasp on history and with a new look on life, but I cant help but notice when I look at those six glass pillars I just feel like a helpless child. I dont know, this might just be me overthinking a completely normal thing but at the same time I cant be the only one who sees this as a problem. History is meant to share and inform, not to scare us under the covers.

Your's truly
-Connor