The End of an Adventure

28 days in the District have come and gone, and what a special time it was. We read a lot of articles, shook hands with congresspeople and took many a tour. One of the last things we got to do was take a Moonlight Monument Tour on Wednesday night. Around 8:00 a woman named Wanda picked us up in a "party bus," a bus decked out on the inside with lots of lights, loud speakers and seats lining the walls. We picked up Jack, our professor, in Georgetown and we headed west across the Potomac into Arlington, where we stopped at the Marine Corps War Memorial. We got off the bus and sang the Marines' Hymn because Jack is a proud Marine veteran and he felt compelled to get us to do so.

After we left Arlington we went back into Washington and visited the US Capitol where Jack talked about the Statue of Freedom which stands atop the Capitol Dome. Thomas Crawford sculpted it out of bronze in 1863. Following our final visit to the Capitol, we rode two miles down Independence Avenue to see the Washington Monument in all its obelisk glory. Then we ventured over to the World War II Memorial, an especially picturesque sight under the moonlight. The last of four landmarks that line up directly with each other in Central Washington, we stopped at the Lincoln Memorial and spent a few minutes there, admiring Daniel Chester French's beautiful sculpture of Lincoln as well as his second inaugural address and the Gettysburg Address, carved on the north and south walls of the memorial chamber, respectively. Dr. Martin Luther King's magnificent memorial was next on our list and all of his quotes that line the walls surrounding his likeness really add to his calming effect. Across the Tidal Basin from the MLK Memorial is the iconic Thomas Jefferson Memorial, which was our next stop and the second-to-last on our list. With our Moonlight Monument Tour winding down, a few of us got off the bus to take one last look at Thomas Jefferson's enormous and dramatic representation before our time in Washington came to a close. The Jefferson Memorial is a sacred place, and with only a few visitors there at that hour, it was also a tranquil place. The steps of the Jefferson also offer one of the best views of the Washington Monument that the area has to offer, so we took that in for the final time as well. We rode back into town and over to Lafayette Square to exit the bus for our final stop: The White House. We walked through the Square and took a short look at the President's home before the police told us the Avenue (Pennsylvania Avenue) was closed for the night. From there we headed back over to George Washington University's Mount Vernon Campus, and called it a night. The Moonlight Monument Tour was very special.
It was a nice end to an amazing adventure.

The Holocaust - Voyage of the St. Louis

Washington, D.C. is home to one of the world's largest museums dedicated to remembering the victims of the Holocaust, one of the most horrific and devastating events in history. I had visited the museum once before at the age of ten, but this time I vowed to take the time to get the full effect of the experience. Instead of simply repeating how sad the Holocaust was without gaining a thorough understanding of it, I wanted to delve deeper into the machinations of the Nazi regime and the terror undergone by the Jews and others the Third Reich deemed "outcasts", so I would not be numb and desensitized to the disgraceful injustice that Hitler called "The Final Solution." On Tuesday that opportunity came, and I discovered just how many things they do not teach in school. A particular event about which I learned a lot is the Voyage of the St. Louis. It probably resonated more because of the United States' involvement in it (or lack thereof). In May 1939, a transatlantic ship called the St. Louis, full of Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany, left for Cuba. Many of these passengers intended to enter the United States eventually, and had applied for American visas. Upon arrival in Havana, however, only 28 passengers were permitted to disembark. Cuba, enduring its own internal problems and being influenced by antisemitic propaganda, denied the other 908 aboard the St. Louis entry. After some unsuccessful negotiations, Captain Gustav Schroeder decided to sail north to Miami. While nearing the Miami shores, some of the passengers tried to contact President Franklin Roosevelt, but he did not respond. Although American diplomats tried to intervene and convince the Cuban government to allow the passengers to enter, President Bru would not budge. American citizens claimed to be sympathetic to the refugees, but only about 17% actually wanted to let them in. Roosevelt could have signed an executive order to allow the refugees in despite the United States' satisfied immigrant quota, but he knew how harmful that might be to his second re-election. A few members of Congress made attempts to help the refugees by passing a bill, but the bill did not go through. After both the US and Cuba refused to have mercy on the distressed and once hopeful refugees, the ship returned to Europe, where the refugees were dispersed throughout Great Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Almost all of those who were admitted into Great Britain survived, while half of those in the other three countries were ultimately killed by the Nazis.

Many journalists wrote with sympathetic tones about the St. Louis' passengers not being allowed to disembark. Few urged the government to do something about it. That seems to be an accurate reflection of the general attitude of the US at the time. The US pretended to care but few wanted to take action. I cannot blame President Roosevelt and other US officials simply for not letting the refugees in. I do challenge their laissez-faire attitudes though. While I would like to believe that if Roosevelt knew what kind of horrors many of these refugees would ultimately endure, he would have cared more about helping them than being elected again, it is sad knowing that probably about 250 lives could have been saved and 700 more lives could have been improved. I can only hope that we learn from this despairing episode of the Holocaust.

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Source: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267