The first time was just over a year after it opened. I was newly out and went with a new gay friend and a straight ally. Those pamphlets were kept behind the counter, like the dirty magazines at 7 Eleven. It was a somber visit. Seeing the shoes was the hardest.
The owners were dead. Only their shoes left to give witness. My last visit to the museum was a few months ago. Donald Trump had been in the White House for several months. I still had not called him the P word. It felt right, though. Again, I clutched my identification papers. Last time I cheated and looked to see my assumed persona lived or died right away.
This time I wanted to find out in real time. The crowd added to the experience, especially when I saw the train car. Last time when I said Never Again it was defiant, a promise. Now it was a question. The tour starts at the upper floor with the lead up to the Holocaust. Shave his mustache and tint his skin orange and it could have been the buildup to the elections. It scared me, the Othering part of the German people. Never again? Something else was wrong. A group of people in front of me laughed at some of the videos and exhibits.
Not nervous titters. I do that sometimes. I smiled nervously when I told my mom that Mr. Lamar, my seventh-grade gym teacher died. I was nervous. These people now, though, were enjoying themselves. I keep hearing people speaking abstractly about 2 nd Amendment this Crisis actor that.
Or the flashing lights of emergency vehicles and worried parents behind barricades. But the shooting victims I saw had half their heads missing, their entrails hanging out, entrance wounds the size of a quarter and exit wounds the size of an orange. And yet those laughing people at the Holocaust Museum took pictures with their smart phones of the photos and videos of the atrocities of Joseph Mengele to show off to their friends back home.
