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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.
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