Moving is an adventure! For me it has been discovering items that I should have discarded 3 moves ago! But every now and then I open a box and discover memories that are precious.
That happened as I opened a box and discovered a box of memories from the semester I spent studying in London. Fall of 1978. I found ticket stubs from concerts, playbills from plays, faded pictures. But I also found the journal that I kept.
The book was given to me by a dear friend/mentor to help me remember my time in “the old world.” I was pretty faithful in writing every day.
So imagine my surprise when I looked to see what I was doing on this day. October 10, 1978.
We were on break and part of our group was in Munich. That afternoon we ventured out to Dachau, the infamous concentration camp. Here are the reflections of a 20 year old:
It was hard for me to imagine everything that went on there. I saw the crematorium, the gas house, a reconstructed barrack, a museum and a film. Walking into the camp, through the barded wire fence it hit me real hard. I felt trapped and cut off—even knowing I could leave. I wonder how I would react if I was ever put in a place like that. What would I do if that was going on around me?
It’s that last question. What if it were going on around me? What would I do?
It is becoming more that the wonderings of 20 year old. Every day our neighbors are being pulled out of cars in carpool lines; drug away from immigration hearings, rounded up because the look suspicious (meaning not white.)
Suddenly that question from 1978 becomes really urgent.