War and remembrance
Trip Start
Jan 23, 2007
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86
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Trip End
Dec 24, 2007
London,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Made ourselves some Sannies with the left over Lamb from the other night and set off into town for the Imperial War Museum. Arrived there at about 12.30, and didn't leave again until it closed at 6pm - a truly great museum.
While the entrance way was a bit Boys Own, with a great number of tanks, bombs and planes, and seemed at little too 'tally-ho' for our liking, this contrasted with the other excellent exhibits we saw - extensive and well balanced displays on the first and second world wars (included at walk through dramatisation of what the trenches were like in the first world war) and a exhibition on the children in England displaced during the blitz. It was really sobering to think of the small children being sent off into the countryside without their families, in some cases returning years later as orphans. Equally sobering were the tales of children who were remained in London and told by their parents that their friends had been sent into the country, when in fact they had been killed.
What made the visit all the more fascinating were the Londoners walking through talking to each other about their parents or grandparents experiences during the blitz - one young mum telling her kids that their Grandma had only just taken down her air-raid shelter from her garden the year before.
Also excellent, were the Holocaust and atrocities of war (not its exact name sorry, but basically its theme) exhibitions. Naturally the Holocaust exhibition was chilling - very personal accounts from survivors documented on video and piles of shoes and bags from the actual camps very vivid reminders of the horrors. Survivors of the concentration camps spoke candidly on how the dreadful things they had experienced and survived still affect them and their families today - their stories really showing incredible strength of character and resilience, and going some way to explaining the lengths Israel will go to not give in to aggressors in any form today. Being a nation founded by a huge number of people victim and witness to the most inexplicable hatred against their family, friends and race, it is understandable (although in some ways cruelly ironic) that it sometimes acts harshly against threats to its security these days.
The scariest part of the exhibition was the examinations of how the Nazi regime could get people to agree to conduct these murders, or whip the general population of Germany up into such a hateful state. Sadly, the lesson we took from the exhibition was that it could happen again, given the right elements, in any country in the world.
This conclusion was reinforced by the brief amount of time we spent on the top floor at the Atrocities of war exhibition, which had a looping video on the Serbian, Cambodian and Rwandan conflicts and genocides, and touch screen computers where you could learn more about these conflicts. It seems it doesn't have to be a question of race for hate crimes to perpetrated - only a belief that it is the other side that is the cause of all your troubles and that eliminating them is the best solution.
All in all very sobering and left us much to think about - if only history could be so vividly shown to us in classes in high school.
Home to find Jenny found us the best deals to the transport to Stansted for our flight over the Irish Sea in the morning - the 2.30 am wake up call was going to be rough!!
Comments
If only history...etc.
Would you have listened! Maybe there's some benefit in homeschooling in that a small group, following particular areas of interest, is so much more conducive to real learning. I'm sure the odd teacher is capable of passionate and meaningful teaching but one day in front of a seconcary class is almost enough to kill it. I know - go to school to socialise and stay home to learn!