Michael and i visited The Evidence Room ... i could feel the horror of that place, it moved me deeply and i wrote about it ... i will never forget how it made me feel.  We should never forget those whose lives were taken from them, or the cruelty and horrors they and survivors suffered.

Reading about the plans for the gas chambers ... doors that opened outward so removal of the dead would not be slowed. Someone thought about it, how to be efficient. They thought about the height of the peep hole, so the guards would be safe from the victims reaching it.  So very efficient.

It is horrific to think that people could so coldly plot the killing of others in such a way.

I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau with my class when I was fifteen. It was part of our tenth grade class trip to Poland. It was a painful experience, seeing all that. Thinking back on it still makes me feel somewhat queasy. When I was seventeen, I went to Prague, and we took a day trip to visit Terezín, or Theresienstadt as the Nazis called it. That was the 'good' concentration camp, the one they showed foreign dignitaries, where the prisoners were allowed to make art and put on plays and the like. Less painful, but still...

There's a poem that some anonymous prisoner wrote on the wall of one of the death camps, that was turned into a beautiful piece of music by Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen.

I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining.
I believe in love, even when I feel it not.
I believe in God, even when He is silent.

The only piece of jewelry I routinely wear, other than my watch, is a silver band with a triskelion cut pink sapphire set into it.  Subtle, but obvious to those who are paying attention.