Israel Matzav

The Holocaust Museum is personal

This is slightly off topic.

I've only been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington once. It was the summer of 2000 and it was the last time we took all the kids to the US (there were six of them then). I don't remember whether we took the three eldest or the four eldest to the museum (the fourth didn't remember last night), but Mrs. Carl and I split up, with one spouse taking one or two kids to the museum and the other spouse staying with the remaining kids.

As many of you know, my Mom a"h is buried in Boston, and thus far I have managed to make it to her grave there at least once a year - it will be four years this summer, and I was just at her grave two weeks ago.

What's the connection? As you're about to read, this blogger's father-in-law used to visit the Holocaust Museum once a year because his entire family was wiped out in the Holocaust and he had no other grave to visit (Hat Tip: Instapundit). Somehow, with Mom's grave so far away, I feel like I can relate to what the blogger's father-in-law felt.

I have a special memory of Pop (as we knew him) from last summer. It was a few weeks before he received his cancer diagnosis, during what turned out to be his last visit to the Holocaust Museum. Because he lost his parents and all of his siblings to the Nazis, and because no grave site exists for any of his family, Pop made it a habit to visit the Museum at least once a year. It fulfilled for him the custom that many Jews practice of visiting the cemetery of loved ones once a year. I only got to accompany him on one of these visits, that one last year, along with my wife's nephew Jake.

I described him last year as "kind and optimistic soul," and he certainly was. But when he entered that museum, something changed. He was not unkind, but in that place, as I soon learned, he suffered no fools (nor anyone else).

We wandered into the museum, through the same doors and into the same foyer where shots rang out this afternoon. My wife had given us visitor passes that she receives as a member of the Museum. The lines were long, and it was not obvious which line we needed to stand in.

Pop was having none of it. He walked away from me and wandered up to the museum staffer standing at the head of the long line leading to the elevators that takes all visitors to the museum exhibits. I thought for a moment that Pop was going to ask directions. I was wrong.

He thrust out his arm in the direction of the staffer, displaying the number the Nazis tattooed on his arm at Auschwitz just a few inches from her face. Without making eye-contact and barely breaking stride, Pop kept walking. Understandably, the staffer barely blinked. She didn't make a move to stop him.

Please, read the whole thing. It's a sad and poignant story, but somehow it made me feel a little bit better about life to know that there are still people out there who care about strangers.

And I'll get back to our regularly scheduled fare in just a little bit.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:57 PM