European refugees turned away from our shore. Liberation of concentration camps. Unfettered slave trade. The Emancipation Proclamation. An East German death tower. Segments of the Berlin Wall, remnants of a dismantled regime.
My family's recent weekend trip to Washington, D.C., served as a reminder of the weight of history, with intermingled grief and triumph, despair and hope.
We have visited our nation's capital half a dozen times, but this was the first time I felt comfortable taking both children to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It's essential that we study and attempt to understand the causes and devastating effects of the Holocaust, but the exhibits are tough to process, even for adults.
The museum immerses visitors right away, with individual stories of victims. Then you walk through the permanent exhibit, three floors that chronicle the rise of Nazism in Germany, the "Final Solution" and its aftermath.
The primary accounts, artifacts and explanations offer chilling context and lessons in the destruction that humans can create. Few visitors talk while walking through the galleries; words fail when confronted with so much horror.
There are plenty of tears.
Yet amid the evidence of unspeakable hatred and mass murder lay fragments of light and whispers of hope. There are stories of the persecuted who rebelled, of heroes who housed and protected Jews, of insurgency within Hitler's ranks, of Americans who never stopped seeking intervention.
We left with renewed courage to resist conformity and to speak up for those without a voice.
The next day, we were fortunate to get entry to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, which celebrates its second anniversary this month.
We could have spent an entire day at the museum and still not seen every exhibit. We had only a few hours, so we focused on the history galleries, which tell the stories of slave trading, the American Revolution, life on plantations, Civil War and Reconstruction, Jim Crow era, civil rights movement and more.
It's impossible to reconcile the words of the Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal," juxtaposed near artifacts of slavery.
The galleries offer more complex stories than any history textbook I've read. The exhibits reveal pain and sorrow, yet, because they are about the human condition, they also describe resilience and honor.
We left with a deeper understanding that the only way to tell the American story is to include the full African-American story.
Before we returned to Dallas, we required a repeat visit to one of our favorites, the Newseum, a testament to the First Amendment. The exhibits offer a distinct viewpoint of the past century, with Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs, video clips from breaking news and front pages from pivotal days in history.
The museum's Berlin Wall Gallery features eight panels from the Berlin Wall, preserved after the concrete wall was dismantled in 1989. The East Berlin side is stark, an empty slate, a reminder of an oppressed population. The West Berlin side is covered with graffiti that represents both frustration and freedom of expression, with phrases including "You are power" and "Act up!"
Another exhibit recalls the events of Sept. 11, 2001, with published accounts from around the country and videos that recall the horrors of that morning, 17 years ago. In the center of the space stands a mangled section of the broadcast antenna that once stood atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
I remember those days and weeks after 9/11, when amid shock and fear we witnessed the best of humanity, when we both preached and practiced unity.
We are light-years removed from such civility.
I wonder how history will judge us a century from now. Will historians find hints of hope amid evidence of public name-calling and angry divisions? Are we using our power and voices for good?
Tyra Damm is a Briefing columnist. She can be reached at tyradamm@gmail.com.
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| The Berlin Wall Gallery at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., includes pieces of the fallen wall, with West Berlin's graffiti-covered side standing in stark contrast to the bare East Berlin side. |
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