Sunday, October 18, 2009

Being young, not acting young


When we were at Dachau, there were several busloads of school groups--teenagers. Throughout our visit, the most obvious students were the ones who were moving as a herd and acting normal--laughing, making jokes, talking about clothes and football.

They were obvious because Dachau is not a normal place. It is a place where everyday emotions and conversations are engulfed with the memories of grief and loss that fill the air.

I prayed that these young people would visit again in a few years, or simply remember, and that God would grant them the eyes and heart to feel with those who lived and died in the camp at Dachau.

This made me all the more grateful for Grace's response to my Dachau post:

hey. my name is Grace. thank you for your thoughts. They meant so much. I am a junior in high school living over seas. I studied the Holocaust last year, and i cannot shake it out of my memories. There are things that i cannot even smell anymore because i was around them during the study I did. So, the Holocaust is a very hard topic for me. Thank you for sharing your heart.

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