Editor’s note: South Tampa resident Irene Potter was visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with her family on Wednesday when a terrorist opened fire. Here are her words:
On Wednesday, I found myself both on the inside and on the outside while touring the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Our tickets were for 11:15, but as we became more and more immersed in the propaganda machine depicted so well through the museum’s exhibits, time seemed to pull apart. It was almost 1 before we crossed the glass walkway which not only split exhibit sections, but split us from “outsiders” to “insiders”.
I have only experienced hatred as a periphery news item – gang violence, killings in Darfur featured on the news, racial prejudice here at home, but at the Holocaust Museum, I was immediately thrust into what it feels like to be actively persecuted.
As I made my way down the stairs, there was a sudden noise that was both familiar and inexplicable at the same time. I thought at first it must be some other exhibit further down-perhaps a slamming of a train car door, or a film of trucks rumbling over train tracks.
As I was anticipating what I would soon face, a person’s panicked voice broke the hushed silence permeable throughout the museum: “Stay where you are! There’s a shooter in the building!” “Stay away from any glass!”
There was a mix of confusion, disbelief and in a peculiar way, a strange sense of complacency. With security so tight in this museum in particular, surely this must be some kind of drill-like a school fire drill from a nightmare. As I turned back to retreat into the depths of the 2nd floor, I found my husband and son perched on the steps where “The Final Solution” exhibits would begin.
We looked down to the now vacated bottom floor. We witnessed police, security officers and FBI agents sweep the museum and within a matter of minutes, we were told to run down the stairs and out of the rear entrance.
Little did we know that an 88 year old white supremacist, wearing a Confederate hat, long coat and wielding a rifle had made an attempt at his own solution: he killed the guard who opened the door for him – the very same guard who cleared us for entry into the museum only a few hours before.
This hater struck terror in those who were trying to learn from this museum. While contemplating how evil on such magnitude can be created, perpetuated and endure, a living example was just feet below us, already shot twice, lying in a sea of broken glass.
I was drawn immediately into the inside of what real fear feels like: having no idea the terror that lies ahead, and after finding out, not knowing what to expect or what was going to happen.
My experience at the Holocaust Memorial Museum makes an immediate statement to the fact that although hatred is alive and well amongst us, within its perverted sense of bravado, there lies a heart of fear; I tapped my own heart of fear Wednesday and felt a fleeting sense of what all victims of hate confront. What a relief to run to the “outside.”
For those of you who can’t make it to DC, the Florida Holocaust Museum is in downtown St. Pete.
crack ho
9 months ago
we should all study the Holocaust, because trying to comprehend it really blows your mind. How could such a thing happen? it would be easy to doubt it happened, if it weren’t so damn well documented. the Nazis were as thorough in their documentation as the were cruely, montrously murderous (and efficient!) in genocide.
Now we have this guy Von Brunn, but believe me, there’s more where that guy came from.
Never Again, indeed.
junebee
9 months ago
Thanks for posting this first-person account. Good work by both you and Ms. Potter.
Meredith
9 months ago
I was at the museum Wednesday morning for the Web Content Managers Roundtable meeting. I was late arriving to the meeting and mildly impatient with the security guard who made me take my laptop out, as if we were at the airport. (The guard was not the fellow who died.) Later that afternoon I sat at my desk, a pair of comp tickets to the museum sitting by my computer while I read the news, and I wondered what it will be like next time I go there. As a colleague noted, this tragic event shows why the museum’s work may never be done.
crack ho
9 months ago
ok, you have met Von Brunn.
now, imagine a government, of a major western industrial power, operating on the murderous principles of Von Brunn. Minorities are terrorized, robbed of all their possessions, separated from their families (including infants), shipped to camps where they are slaves, held to the most inhuman treatment, subjected to barbarous “medical experiments,” and finally “liquidated” by gassing or burning or some other unspeakable method…
it really happened! and the story is much, much worse than i have described here, as you will realize when you take the time to learn what happened in Germany and the rest of Europe from 1933 to 1945.
flash forward to 2008, when some guy named “Ski” writes in a blog called “Sticks of Fire” that “calling that board’s moderators Nazis is an insult to Hitler.” He’s referencing the moderators of a message board. see http://sticksoffire.com/2008/06/10/the-buccaneerscom-message-board-is-an-embarrassment/
to me, this was the lowest point ever for Sticks of Fire, which is usually a great website. Hitler was the worst thing that has ever happened to this planet, and a comparison such as the one made by “Ski” is sickening to anyone who knows anything at all about WWII or the Holocaust.
i asked for an apology, which never came.
once again, i ask for an apology from Tommy. Hitler was not just a bad guy, he was evil incarnate. it is highly inappropriate to compare him casually to just somebody who pisses you off a bit. Please consider this.
thank you from the crack ho.
tommy
9 months ago
Crack ho,
The remark you reference was a stupid one and certainly offensive to many. I judged the phrase to be in reference to Nazi Germany’s police state and censorship, rather than pertaining to the Holocaust (perhaps you feel there is no difference). However, there are many other phrases that could have been used to get the point across, and we should have found another way.
steven
9 months ago
give me a break