The Florida Holocaust Museum is well worth your time. It painstakingly chronicles the plight of Jewish people beginning in 922 BCE until today. And it breaks your heart.
The more photos and memorabilia you see, the heavier the history becomes – required identity cards, discarded shoes, bricks from the crematorium chimney. It is overwhelming but so beautifully chronicled and curated that you can’t back away. You are left wondering how insensate someone must be to treat another human like that and more important, why?
Then there’s the gut punch of the train car. The Nazis crammed over 100 people in that tiny space. No water. No food. No toilet. Hour upon hour upon hour. Take a good look at it. Can you imagine yourself in that train? You’d be frightened beyond description. You’d wonder where you were going. Were you ever coming home again?
You’d heard the stories. Would someone come looking for you? If something happened, would someone remember you? You sure as hell knew you weren’t headed for a comfy hotel.
And once again, why?
But thank God there were people who risked their own lives to help the Jews during World War II. It takes a certain kind of bravery to be so selfless. What would I have done, I wonder? What would you do?
Whatever you do, don’t miss the “Dimensions in Testimony” on the 2nd floor. You walk into a room where a life-size woman sits facing you, blinking, engaging. She looks real, which makes the experience more poignant. There is a podium with a microphone where you ask her questions about the time she spent in a concentration camp. The answers are taken from exhaustive interviews. I don’t know how they manage to make it sound like she’s listening to you and tailoring her answer to your question. History books are informative, to be sure, but there’s just something about a “real” person talking to you that adds pathos.
Just one more thing: what does it say that, centuries later, it still requires an armed security guard and body scanners before you’re allowed inside the museum.
The Florida Holocaust Museum has 3 floors (elevator accessible for wheelchairs). There’s plenty of metered parking nearby but spaces are in high demand so you may have to search a bit. They are open Tuesday – Sunday 10 am – 5 pm and closed on Mondays. They’re located at 55 Fifth Street South and if you want to call, it’s 727-820-0100. It’s $14 for seniors. The website is http://www.thefhm.org.
Lisa Browder 
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