The Imperial War Museum was not an easy task to accomplish. In the beginning, we went through the families in wartime exhibit and it showed clothing, signs, and food rationing that the people had to endure. The rationing would be very difficult because I am used to being able to go buy food whenever I want/need. It would be hard for that to stop all the sudden and it would be difficult being told what I can and cannot eat. The war signs took me by surprise when I first saw them. I was not able to get a picture, but most of them were encouraging everyone to stay calm or informing them on what to do if a bomb would hit. The art work on the signs were fantastic, but the words told a different story.

The hardest part to encounter on this trip was the Holocaust Exhibition. The first floor was a little easier to take because it showed the years before the war and the years as Hitler was coming into power. When you walk down the stairs, you start reading and watching stories about what happened to those people. They were targeted and murdered for no substantial reason. The museum included a model of the Auschwitz concentration camp. We were guided through the process of the prisoners exiting the train and being selected to work or to be killed. Most of the prisoners thought they were getting a shower, but instead they were being gassed to death. We saw some of the shoes the prisoners were wearing before they died. We were guided all the way until the end of the war when the camps were closing, but even them a lot of the prisoners were too ill to survive. In my opinion, I think everyone should see this exhibition even though it might be the hardest thing to witness.

Six years ago, I had the opportunity to tour the concentration camp Mauthausen. It is hard to describe what it was like to see this horrific place. It was already a dark and gloomy day, but as soon as I walked into the main gates, I got this awful feeling. I stood in the crematorium and in the gas chambers where hundreds of thousands of people were murdered. I walked the stairs of death like many others who died before they could make it to the top. It is truly awful what happened during that time and I really hope this will never happen to anyone else again. This museum did a really great job of capturing what happened at those terrible places, and you can not help but feel sad when you leave. I needed to take time and sit in the peaceful garden collecting my thoughts before I was able to leave the museum.

(Photo By Me)