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| 1/20/2009 2:14:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Students Tour Holocaust Museum; Anticipate Inauguration
David Slone
Times-Union Staff Writer
Editor's Note: Times-Union staff writer David Slone was invited to travel with Dave Hoffert's WCHS history class to attend Barack Obama's inauguration. He will be filing daily reports.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Barack Obama has talked a lot about diversity and tolerance.
While the country took part in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. commemorations Monday afternoon, Warsaw Community High School Step 1 U.S. History students in Washington, D.C., saw what can happen when people aren't accepting of others. The 30 students and chaperones toured the U.S. Holocaust Museum as part of their trip to the U.S. capital.
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The museum has four floors of photos, videos and other items left behind by the Nazis' victims. If someone were to read and watch everything, the museum guide told the WCHS group, it would take more than 16 hours. The students had less than two hours to get through it all, but all the students said the museum was Monday's highlight.
They also swung through the American History Museum, viewed the White House and Capitol Building and saw many of the statues placed around the Washington Mall.
"To tell you the truth, it was a mix," said junior Tony Climaco, 17, of Monday's highlights. "(The trip) was one big highlight. It was one of the best trips I've ever been on, so much to see, so little time."
If he could spend more time at one place, Climaco said he would have spent more time at the Holocaust Museum. He said he didn't get to spend as much time as he'd like there.
"I could have spent the whole day there. It's so quiet. The images. The graphic nature they had behind them. I just can't figure out why someone would lead a nation to do something like that. I can't wrap my head around it."
Senior Matt Voss, 17, said the Holocaust Museum was a pretty big place.
"I've never been to a museum that's so graphic. It's very quiet. People are in there trying to wrap their heads around it."
"I probably would say the Holocaust Museum (was the highlight) because it was kind of history you could reach out and feel," said Kyle Tucker, 18, senior.
The most startling aspect of the Holocaust Museum, Tucker said, were the shoes. One room has a display of many of the shoes taken off the victims of concentration camps. Tucker said the shoes were most startling to him "just because the amount of shoes that were there." Each pair of shoes represents a couple of victims, he said, because the shoes would be reused in the camps.
Tucker said the museum makes the Holocaust more real. It depicts and shows everything of the Holocaust from the gas chambers to the train cars that were used to transport the victims.
Kayla Smith, 18, junior, said, "It suprised me a lot. It was more dramatic than what I expected, and I really didn't know much about it going in. You couldn't go out of there not feeling bad about them. The things going on still today are just not right. I probably think the things they did to little babies" was the worst thing the Nazis did.
The Nazis killed babies, and she said she couldn't understand that. "The thing that shocks me the most is all this went on for a long time and people didn't even know that those camps were there. To think that they were being tortured and starved, and they had no hope."
"I think the Holocaust Museum (was the highlight) because that's what I was looking forward to the whole trip," said Dana Harmon, 17, junior.
"It was amazing to see the maturity and critical thinking that these students put into analyzing the Holocaust. They were able to see from the museum what a horrendous atrocity it was while also being able to understand that genocide still takes place in our world today. In many ways, they learned that our nation needs to be proactive instead of retroactive with human rights around the world," said David Hoffert, history teacher and trip organizer.
Today, the students attended Obama's inauguration ceremonies and planned to view the various war memorials around the Washington mall.
Climaco said Monday night he was looking forward to the inauguration ceremonies and "to see the president. I've never been anywhere near the president. Just the feeling you're going to be that close, seeing what he's about."
Desmond Mudd, a 17-year-old junior, said the inauguration was important to him "because it's very important to me because a different race will be in the White House and it's making history."
Cherish Fisher, 17, junior, said that "knowing that I was going to the inauguration made me more interested in (the presidential election)."
She said she couldn't decide between Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama on who would make a better president.
"There are some things I like about both of them," she said.
"I just think it's overwhelming," said junior Devan Lockrdige, 17, of the whole Washington trip. "I'm not used to it coming from a small town. I've been to big towns before, but I'm just not used to it."
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