Vacation

mommato3boys · December 3, 2021

If you are on facebook you will see this post on my facebook page. But I wanted to share here also...

This past week we made a trip to Kansas City, Missouri with friends to see the Auschwitz display at Union Station, the return trip we stopped in Oklahoma City to see the OKC Memorial. I encourage each of you to visit these two memorials. I believe the Auschwitz display will be at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri until the end of March. Wear good walking shoes and take a couple boxes of tissues. The OKC Memorial will also take three to four hours and be prepared for a range of emotions. The Auschwitz display suggest that the display is for 12 and older, but I would say no younger than high school age. It is gut wrenching and it will shred your heart. If it doesn't I would say you need a heart check and not from a cardiologist. It was all I could do to emotionally make it through the tour. Several times Paul and I sat down along the way and I just leaned into him and cried. I could not contain the emotions. Even as I write this I have cried, rewritten and cried more.

The story of the “sinful” woman who washed Jesus' feet and dried them with her hair in Luke 7:36-50 made an impression on me. I still remember the scene from Forrest Gump where he was sitting on the bench and told the lady that his mother said you could tell a lot about a person from their shoes...where they go, where they've been. But I, myself, have never really given much thought to peoples feet and their shoes; however, after visiting the Auschwitz display and the OKC Memorial that all changed. Shoes have come to represent a life that is no longer with us. A life that was taken too soon. A life that may or may not have known my Lord and Savior.

Walking through the Auschwitz display shoes where part of the gripping tell of the terrible loss of life. How people were rounded up and herded to the end of their life, from the old and sick/infirmed to the very young that had just begun to live. I had to ask myself how this could have happen, why no one fought back. I learned a lot through that three hour tour. Not only where my feet hurting but I had a new respect for life as I know it. One gripping story was from a survivor that told how she had to sort the bundles of clothes left behind. When she opened a bundle there on the top was the sweater she had last seen her brother in before they were separated. Used to when I heard the word Auschwitz I my first thought was Jewish people, but I learned not all that suffered Auschwitz was Jewish. Yes most were, but many were handicapped, sick, brown-eyed, gypsies, and those that tried to help the Jewish people. Shoes were about all that remained of these people.

One of the first things you see when you tour the OKC Memorial was the rubble from the building and in that rubble was a shoe front and center. It told the story of horror, destruction and the loss of life.

“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Social-Democrats, and I did not speak out because I was not a Social-Democrat. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.” German pastor Martin Niemoller, incarcerated 1937-1945

After listening to the tells of horror and survival by those that experienced Auschwitz, I see just how this is slowly being repeated. We must speak out, we must speak for those that are unable to speak for themselves and stand beside those that can speak out and help make their voices louder.