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Monday |
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We arrived
Charleston SC Amtrak depot for 8:45 pm departure to
Minneapolis. World Series on TV, a man with 2 canes
falls down and fellow travellers come to his aid,
one of our bags is overweight so we buy a box for $2
and transfer 20 pounds of contents. Train is 30
minutes late. WC in our coach car is broken, we're
seated near some very smelly people but luckily
humans get used to anything and we quickly
acclimate. Arrive DC 7 am, 8 hour layover, Jen
Seltzer who I met in Spain 1995
meets us outside and Andy drives us to swank
breakfast place. They treat, drop us at Holocaust
Museum. As with all DC institutions admission
is free. I like how much background is given about
Hitler's rise. Assholes take over when good people
do nothing. I get choked up when I read about
resistance... the White Rose Society. As a child
I had a morbid interest in WWII. Partly because my
family lived it. And to children, vicarious violence
is totally cool. As I get older, I feel more
empathy. Some of the films are hard to watch but
necessary. I'm struck by how dead people seem so
alive as they're carried or dragged to mass graves
and funeral pyres, heads bobbing. Maybe film can't
differentiate between life and death; it kills all
equally. I find my step-father's name on the wall of
righteous rescuers: Otto M.
Springer, Germany. Hero or villain is a matter
of perspective. I was bitter when he left my mother
in 1982. By 1990 we were reconciled and I'm glad to
have known him. He taught me some things. It's hard
to say what exactly--maybe just a basic sense of
skepticism and the importance of never forgetting.
Across the street from the museum is the US Dept. of
Agriculture building, erected 1913 with exterior swastika motif. How quickly
symbols can change their meaning.  |