Picture this: you are brought to an unknown place where you are immediately separated from the rest of your family and stripped off your clothing and every possession. Your head is shaved and a tattoo is engraved on your skin for identification.

What I have just described is the torture experienced during the Holocaust.

It is nearly impossible for us to fathom what it was like to be a “minority” during World War II. The majority of the U.S. is Caucasian and has rarely experienced any form of segregation. In order to learn a little more about this, I attended a lecture on the Holocaust given by Mary Boys, the Skinner and McAlpin professor practical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

During the talk, she referenced to an exhibit at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The display showed 43,325 pairs of concentration camp prisoners’ shoes and some seven tons of hair collected by the Nazis for their own use. This statement really struck me. I have never even seen that many pairs of shoes or pieces of hair in my life. It is quite depressing to think that a single pair of shoes could determine a prisoner’s lifespan. Everything that was familiar to the prisoners “was put into Hell.” Try to imagine all of your possessions and money taken from you, forever.

I have personally been to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. twice in the past five years. It is one of the most interesting museums I have ever been to and really gave me a better insight into what life was like for the prisoners. If ever given the chance, I would highly recommend attending this museum. It is definitely worthwhile.

In order to help the audience picture themselves as someone living during the time of the war, Boys described a form of propaganda during the period. She depicted a children’s book read to students in schools. The book shows Jews as the “bad guys,” even going as far as to say that they were responsible for the death of Jesus. The children were even told to remember this every time they saw the Christian cross. One line in which she read from the actual story stated, “The Jews are children of the devil, and human murderers.”

I was deeply disturbed as she read that. I can’t believe that an author would go as far as to brainwash innocent children into thinking that a different race should be thought of as descendants of “the devil.” Think of having to live by what the propaganda said was and wrong right to believe. The people had their lives centered on the belief in a false “ideal” race.

I ask that the students, faculty, staff, and community of Creighton University stop and think about this major period in American history. Try to place yourself in the shoes of these prisoners and imagine for a second how different your life would be in you were considered a “minority”. I would like to conclude with a quote from Boys, “We can never really grasp what it was like to experience the Holocaust and its effects. We will never really know or understand—”