My Museum Reflection...
Earlier this week I went to the Deadly Medicine exhibit at the Reece Museum, which was as heartbreaking as expected. I spend nearly an hour in the exhibit, and even though there were several other people in there it was silent. I knew the majority of the information in the exhibit from previous history classes but it still is upsetting to read and there were things I hadn't heard before as well. One of the things that surprised me was how much the United States took part in eugenics, which is the science of improving human population by controlled breeding. This fact is never taught in class, maybe because it was not taken as far in America or maybe just because the United States are supposed to be strictly "good guys." The main emotions going through my mind were shock and disgust that humans can be so heartless as to decide that a small section of people are above all others.
The exhibit contains horrific images and propaganda of the time, three examples are
shown above: Jews are lice. They cause typhus, The Ten Commandments for Choosing a Mate, and Racial Map of Europe. Walking through the silent museum by myself gave me a chance to truly reflect on this horrible time in history while simultaneously trying to understand how it was able to get the point that it did. The last portion of the exhibit was on the Final Solutions which, in short, was mass euthanasia of people of all ages. The section that affected me the most was the wall of pictures showing eight children that were killed, which I will not show here. Overall, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted after walking through the exhibit, but it was worth it in the end. I highly recommend the exhibit to anyone, but if you do go please take the time to read through it to truly understand what happened.
As a little side story, while I was walking through the museum a woman entered with a camera and began speaking with one of the workers. Apparently she was there to take pictures of the museum's "Color Me Wednesdays," but unfortunately there was no one there coloring at the time. Which meant that the museum employees went around recruiting visitors to go sit and color for a picture, which I happily took part in. So if you see the picture in the paper or online, I'm in it!
