Trip To The Holocaust Museum

     On Thursday my class took a field trip to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. Since we were learning about the Holocaust in school some facts my class and I were oblivious of but others we already knew. I learned a lot from going to the museum. Something that I found interesting was that there were opera singers singing in some ghettos. There were many virtuosos who performed in the ghettos.
     People who worked as part of the Resistance had to be very diligent otherwise they could get caught. Some workers in ghettos and concentration camps showed big acts of Resistance by taking apart gas chambers. This was not extemporaneous. They planned it all out. Others showed small acts of Resistance too. For example, at the museum there was a picture of a menorah in front of a window and there was a Nazi flag right outside. That isn't very prudent because the people living in that house could have been apprehended by the Nazis because the Nazis were not altruistic people who cared for others.
     The museum was layed out in a way that it started out dark and towards the end it became lighter. We had a tour guide who explained the rooms of the museum and we asked questions. Overall I think we had a good morale. Towards the end of the tour, we went inside a train car that the Jews were put int to travel to places. It was big but not big enough for about a hundred people to fit in there. People would sometimes die inside those cars. It would smell really bad and people would be so uncomfortable. After we went inside the car I had a greater contempt towards the Nazis.

July 20, 2011

Dear Diary,
     I'm so tired and my feet hurt. Today I probably walked like twenty miles. This morning my family and I drove from Angamaly, Kerala to Velankanni, Tamil Nadu. It was a 10 hour drive. I checked on google and it said that we basically crossed the whole country of India! We went on a big bus with my cousins, aunts, uncles an grandparents.
     As I said, we got to Velankanni which is a city in South India. Not many tourists come to places in South India but this place was packed with people. This city was named after Our Lady of Good Health. People usually visit this city as part of a church pilgrimage because there were so many miracles that occurred here with Mother Mary.
     I was really surprised when I got here because this place wasn't like anything I expected. Since so many people come to visit, I thought that the city would be more cleanlier than other cities in India, but that wasn't the case. Our hotel was... let's just say it didn't look like hotels that we have in the U.S. There were poor people out in the streets begging for money. It was really sad to see so many poor people in such a holy place. There were stay dogs out in the streets which was normal but here there were so many. Also, the beach was like gray. I was disgusted. My grandma said that it was the natural color of the sand but I was still kind of scared to sit down.
     The only place that was actually pretty clean was the church. I mean the basilica. A basilica is way bigger than a church or cathedral. It was so big and white. My family and I attended mass there. It was too crowded, so we couldn't get inside. I bet there were more than a thousand people. I was holding onto my grandma's hand the whole day because there were probably kidnappers and I could easily get lost. Overall, this trip was very tiring but it was really worth it.

~Aneena

My Loving Grandmother

"We must live, and when this is all over, we must work to make the world a better place. And if we die, we will die knowing that it was not our fault, that we did our best, and we can go to our deaths in dignity...I want you to both live...And to remember...You must choose love. Always choose love." 

     This is a quote that Erika said to her brother, Daniel and her friend, Rosa. When I read this quote, I thought of my grandmother. I called her Ammama, which means older mother in our Malayalam. She may not be with me me now but she was the most loving person I have ever known. Till this day my whole family talks about how amazing, kind and spiritual she was. I may not have known her for long but when I look back at pictures of me and her, both of us would always be laughing or smiling. My parents would tell me that if I cried she would be the only one to console me.
     She was loving to me just as Erika was loving for her brother and friend. Erika told her brother and Rosa, "...You must choose love. Always choose love." My grandmother was the kind of person would would say something like that because she cares for me and she wants me to have a good life. Erika looked at both sides of the situation and made it positive. She said, "We must live, and when this is all over we must work to make the world a better place. And if we die, we will die knowing that it was not our fault, that we did our best, and we can go to our deaths in dignity..." By all this she meant that whatever happens to them, everything will be okay. Daniel and Erika were very lucky to have a person like Erika in their lives just as I was so lucky to have my loving grandmother.