The Museum of Tolerance

Our tour guild, Walter, was around 70 years old. At first, he seemed like another old man volunteering just to fill the time, but the moment he started talking I knew I was wrong. The way he talked showed us how serious he was. He warned of the of the things we would experience, see, feel, he told us that each time he taught the subject, he felt like part of his heart was getting ripped out. 

Before we really started, each person got a card with the name of a child who had either lived or died in the holocaust. He told us that at the end of the day we would find out whether they lived or died. As I was reading about the little girl on my card, the first thing I noticed was her birthday, January 27 just four days apart from mine. The little girl was around 7 years old when the holocaust happened. In the museum, the thing that stood out to me the most was when we walked through the simulated gates into the gas chamber. As we stood outside the gates, I could feel my heart start to beat faster. Even though they weren't real, just seeing the barbed wire, the tunnels separating the weak from the strong, made me feel scared. On the other side of the tunnels was a simulated gas chamber. In there, we watched a video talking about the things that had happened to the men and woman, girls, and boys, young and old. We saw pictures of the piles of bodies, and men climbing on top of each other to try to escape. We were told of our responsibility as the future responsibility. In the end of the tour I found out that the girl on my card had not survived and had died from starvation in Auschwitz.

As the future generation, our responsibility is to learn from the mistakes in history, to make the future better. We have heard the story of the one of the last holocaust surviver. That makes us a witness. As Walter told us, being told the story of the Holocaust makes us a witness. The future generations need to make sure no one in the world is discriminated against. No one should be discriminated because of their gender, color, religion, or anything similar. That is the my responsibility as a witness and as part of the future generation.