Day Nine: Holocaust, Library again, And More Drinks

The only thing I now had a burning desire to see in Washington was the Holocaust Museum.  As Pete, Kory, and Amanda also wanted to see it, for the first time in my sightseeing, I had some company.

We arrived in good time to get tickets to the exhibition which were scheduled for an hours time.  To make the wait more interesting we thought that in the meantime we would walk the streets surrounding the museum.  Little did we know that as soon as we stepped outside, the queue had increased by about 100 times meaning that we had to join at the back immediately just to make sure we got back inside in time.

One of the side-exhibits perhaps intrigued me the most.  It had to do with collaboration and complicity of ordinary citizens.  To me this as impossible question to answer as although we all believe that in that situation we would risk our lives to save Jews, the fact that millions of people did not means that the matter was far more complicated.  It would be absurd to suggest that, by nature, Germans were inherently more 'evil' than those people who lived in other countries.  Anti-Semitism was (and is) by no means a Germany-only phenomenon.  In my opinion, it is a nigh on unobtainable goal to decide where the blame lies.  All you can do is open up an exhibit about the topic and expose people to many viewpoints.

The exhibition proper was just as distressing, depressing, and disturbing as one would imagine. It begins with the rise of the Nazis and ends with the aftermath of the 'Final Solution'.  To try and explain the exhibit in mere words would be doing it a disservice, and so I encourage everyone to visit it for themselves.

As I had done all the things I had set out to at the beginning of my trip to Washington, I decided to follow the others around to wherever they wanted to go.  Because of my strong recommendation of the Library of Congress, we headed there for my second visit.  Fortunately for me, I enjoyed it as much as the first as this tour guide talked about many different topics from my first tour guide.

In the evening we again went out into the city, this time to a bustling area known as Adams Morgan where again we visited a few more bars.

I had enjoyed my time in Washington very much, it remains one of my favourite cities, however time was running out and I needed to move on.  I set my alarm for early early morning (5.30am) to catch my bus to Charlotte, North Carolina.