Today was a very emotional day as we spent the whole day walking through the Jewish Museum which includes the Jewish quarters and its major sites like the Old Cemetery, the Spanish Synagogue, Pinchas Synagogue and Frank Kafka’s home.  It doesn’t matter how much one knows about the holocaust or Jewish history in general, which I do,  I was still hit with the heartbreaking pain of how human beings can do this to each other.  So much of the pain has to do with accepting the systemic and strategic premeditated plans by otherwise rational human beings.  For those of us who are aware of the reactive self’s ability to hijack the Creative Self’s sophisticated and imaginative qualities in the service of its own domination drives, we can see how this could happen.  Yet I still find it very  difficult to fully grasp the minds that can so brilliantly and cold heartedly pull this kind of genocide off.

What was most painful, yet also inspiring is learning how parents and teachers attempted to shield the children from this hell.  The Pinchas Synagogue has some of the most beautiful and heartbreaking drawings made by children while in the Ghetto as they were inspired to draw what they were feeling.  They used art and music to help lift the spirits of the children to try to keep their minds off the inevitable reality that they will soon be transported away to unknown places.

Finally, the old cemetery, from the 15the century, is remarkable in how the Jews, living under the oppressed conditions in the Ghetto of that time period, coped with having to bury their family members  in the smallest quarters allotted them.  In a very small area are buried 100,000 Jews, one of top of the other, 12 layers deep.

I really didn’t plan on writing a post today, but I needed to share this experience and my sentiments.  I honestly believe that we are capable of perpetuating this kind of atrocity again and my work is about helping us understand that while we are capable of the darkest of dark, we are also capable of tremendous generosity and compassion.

It begins with becoming conscious of how we treat each other in our day to day life; how we treat our family members, our neighbors, the stranger on the street and most importantly ourselves.  Let’s be kind.

Let us practice the fullness of love.

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