Down to my last day in London, I made a quick trip to the Imperial War Museum. The rainy day got worse on the bus trip to the museum and by the time I arrived after a lengthy walk from the bus stop, I was very wet. With only two hours to see this extensive museum, I realized I would need to do a superficial glance at everything and focus on one area. This is generally true at all museums in London due to their sheer size and magnitude of the collections. One could visit London for 3 months and only spend time in the museums, resulting in still not being able to see everything.
The overwhelming size of the tanks, the submarines, the guns, the weaponry, and the many associated war items was both daunting and empowering, serving as a bold reminder of what war means and what it requires. Called the Large Exhibits Gallery, when a person enters, he suddenly becomes very small and in most ways quite insignificant compared to the massive bombs, rockets, and aircraft. Quickly I moved through the gallery and with a passing nod at the Bond Correspondence, a fascinating study of Ian Fleming and the Cold War by his niece Lucy, I entered an art gallery. Called This Storm Is What We Call Progress by artist Ori Gersht, I was moved by the austere and yet beautiful artworks depicting nature and humanity with their combination of darkness, courage, and beauty. Without lingering and yet impressed, I moved into another room called Crimes Against Humanity. Sitting in a room on a bench, I watched a lengthy film detailing crimes by political power, regimes, totalitarian leaders, and even well-intentioned uprisings by insurgents against innocent people. The disturbing images of human destruction, pain, and suffering as families were destroyed, lives ruined, and constant inflicting of horror took place affected me to the point of immobility.
As the film ended, I walked slowly to the exhibit on the Holocaust which is where I stayed until time to leave. The rain falling hard on the roof added to the accompanying terror as I began the walk through the extensive exhibit. Chronicling the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime, the Holocaust exhibit demonstrates how and why the horrors happened. Wanting to read every word, but yet not wanting to, I learned about genocide, about human culling, and about getting rid of the people who were different. I read about hatred, violence, fear, and about the total disregard for human life. But as I read and felt the anguish, I also reminded myself of my own disconnection to the events. After all, I was not alive at that time plus had no real connection to either the victims nor the perpetrators. But as I rounded the corner, after having read about getting rid of Jews, blacks, and the elderly, I read about the culling out of humans with learning disabilities. The feeling of disconnection left me as I realized my own middle son would have been exterminated.
Further pictures of concentration camps, death camps, mountains of bones, valleys of bodies left me numb as the rain beat down upon the building. Leaving the museum, I walked slowly through the rain in a state of great sorrow at the horrors of the Holocaust. But it was time to do a little book shopping, so I headed to Cecil Street. This short block located off of Leicester Square has about 12 bookshops specializing in different genres of books. Each one is a gem and I eagerly explored the contents. Beautiful, well-kept books adorned the shelves and I found myself pleased with the care and compassion of the books by the owners. Mostly out of my budget, I did covet several titles and smiled when I found some books printed in England that I own back home. Finally deciding to buy all three volumes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming, something I have sought for years, I headed back for a great fish dinner.
London time is over and much has been said and will be said again. The heritage of this great country, though filled with past violence and destruction, in the end is a history not of war but of peace and love, for it is in peace that we make progress and in peace that we love humanity. Though not me home, I have come to love London and will miss it.
No comments:
Post a Comment