A Crisis of Humanity

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While reflecting on the past six months on the South Africa-Washington International Program, it dawned upon me that I had yet not written about one of the most difficult experiences of my life, which happened to take place in Washington DC: the visit to the Holocaust Museum.

It took me a long time to make my way through the entire permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—a very long time. I was lost in that place. I could not understand what was going on. I remember gliding between the exhibits and information boards in a semi-detached way, never quite sure what to make of the images and information I was taking in, but never missing a word of text or a detail in the fabric of each item on display: each crease in the striped pyjamas, and the stiff smell of leather. Those shoes!

I felt like a voyeur; I was not meant to be there. These were the things of other people—human beings, each one of them. And they suffered. And I who had escaped such a fate by virtue of time and space, I who was alive was bearing witness to a past evil at the hands of other people—human beings, each one of them. And they suffered… didn’t they?

As I walked, it was like fiction.

Some time later, during a facilitated debrief session with a museum staffer, I entered my body and I cried. The internal conflict that raged between my disbelieving mind and my shamed body made it difficult for my heart to reconcile this Holocaust thing with Humanism. It was a crisis that I was undergoing, and it frightened me and left me in a state of deep despair.

We say, ‘Never again,’ but it happens again.

I said this to the group as best I could, but even those words—a Crisis of Humanity—were not enough. But they would do.

I am glad for my team. It was my team that expressed to me the importance of never losing spirit. Some fights are tough, and sometimes it is necessary to slay the beast thrice or four times before it is defeated, and even then it may rear its head again. And then again we must fight. Like Sisyphus we must roll the boulder back to the top of the hill, each time it rolls down. Despair is part of life; it is that part which makes happiness so beautiful. And it is our Crises of Humanity that allow us to sing in the calm.