Dear journal,
In 2023, my brother and I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., an experience both transformative and deeply unsettling. The museum presents the Holocaust not merely as a historical event but as a complex, human tragedy that demands reckoning. Among its many exhibits, one moment has lodged itself in my memory with an almost physical weight: stepping into the dark, confining space of a train car that had transported human beings to their deaths.
The experience was profoundly disorienting. The oppressive darkness inside was a vacuum, a silence that reverberated louder than words. The smell—earthy, aged, and deeply organic—clung to every surface, but it was more than that. It was as if fear itself had been absorbed into the wood, into the iron rails that once bore this car. This wasn’t an artifact to be observed at a distance; it was an artifact that forced engagement, a confrontation with its history and its horrifying purpose.
What struck me most in that moment was the humanity of those who carried out these atrocities. This isn’t to diminish the monstrosity of their actions, but rather to underscore their ordinariness. These were not demons or caricatures of evil; they were friends, neighbors, and family members. They lived among those they would later dehumanize. They were capable of love, laughter, and acts of kindness, and yet, under the right conditions—fear, propaganda, economic desperation—they became agents of unspeakable cruelty. Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” came sharply into focus for me in that train car. Genocide is not executed by an abstract "other," but by people—by individuals—acting within systems that normalize violence and dehumanization.
The experience raised questions that I am still grappling with. How does a society move from coexistence to complicity? How do individuals navigate the tension between self-preservation and moral responsibility? And, more urgently, how do we, as contemporary witnesses to injustice, ensure that the lessons of history are not lost amidst the noise of modern life? These questions demand more than historical awareness; they demand introspection and, ultimately, action.
The Holocaust is often remembered as a unique, almost singular atrocity, but this framing risks limiting its lessons. Genocide did not begin with the Holocaust, nor did it end there. Even today, there are ongoing efforts at ethnic cleansing and systemic oppression in various parts of the world. To view the Holocaust as a closed chapter in history is to absolve ourselves of responsibility for the present. Memory alone is insufficient—it must be paired with vigilance and moral courage. The train car reminded me of the stakes of that vigilance. Every policy, every prejudice, every silence has a weight that accumulates over time. The train car was not a beginning or an end; it was a midpoint in a process of systemic cruelty that began long before the deportations and continued long after liberation.
Stepping out of the train car, I felt an overwhelming mixture of grief and anger, but also a heightened sense of responsibility. It is one thing to condemn the past; it is another to act in the present. The museum forces visitors to grapple with this tension. It does not allow for passive reflection; it demands an active reckoning with the reality of injustice in all its forms. It challenges us to confront our own capacity for complicity and to recognize the subtle ways in which systems of oppression take root and flourish.
The memory of that train car continues to weigh on me. It is a reminder that the preservation of humanity requires more than passive goodwill; it requires active, intentional resistance to injustice. Silence, whether born of fear or indifference, is not neutral. It is a choice, and often, it is the choice that allows atrocities to unfold. The Holocaust Museum, and the train car in particular, serves as a call to action—not just to remember, but to stand firm against the forces that threaten to dehumanize others. In doing so, it holds up a mirror, asking each of us to confront the question: What would I have done? And perhaps more importantly: What will I do now?
Always,
Dave