Grinch?

I’ve always been more in touch with my emotions than most. I’m the girl who cries in movies like Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, sputtering helplessly about the poor little raccoon stuck on the log. I’ve never been ashamed of the fact that I cry more than most, and in fact have always believed it to be healthy to spill out emotions rather than keep them frustratingly un-spilled.
With the obvious exception of animals in plight, the only thing that makes me cry is people. I cry if people I love are upset, or in trouble, and I even cry if people I don’t even know are in horrendous situations. Therefore, when I heard that the week would be spent learning about German history, immigration, and the victims of the Nazi regime, I was prepared for the Sally Sputters. But when I arrived at the Topogrophie des Terrors, something strange happened: I felt absolutely nothing.
I stared at the images of soldiers, the images of books burning, and the heart-wrenching images of Kristallnacht, and thought about nothing but Christmas songs and what I was going to eat for dinner that night. I was so disgusted with myself that I started to seek out images that I knew should disturb me. In the middle of the timeline, there was a blown up image of Jews about to be hanged. I walked over to it, preferring masochism to blissful stoic ignorance. Specifically, I wanted to see the faces of the people about to be hanged. I hoped that by looking at their expressions, I would somehow understand how it feels to understand death. With my nose almost touching the fabric, I peered into the eyes of the victims. None of them looked sad. Perhaps, I thought, they were already dead. Perhaps they no longer had enough energy to care about living, to care about caring.
But observing their faces didn’t even make me cry. I scrutinized their expressions like a curious scientist rather than the weepy artist that I usually am. I thought about my upbringing: perhaps I’ve been jaded about WWII, having learned about it more than most children. Still, it continued to frustrate me that I couldn’t get upset about one of the most horrible travesties in history. Then I thought: is wanting to get upset over something like this just selfish? Do I want to be upset about this just so I don’t feel like a bad person, not because I actually feel sympathy? I decided then to abandon my quest for a heart-wrenching picture, only to stumble upon something that spoke to me.
On my mother’s car, there’s an upside-down rainbow triangle—a symbol of what makes her unique in the world. Today, the upside-down triangle is the symbol of homosexuality. I was interested to see that gays under the Nazi regime were forced to wear a pink upside-down triangle. I wondered: is this where the symbol stems from today? Is the symbol of homosexuality just sort of a “Fuck you, we’re proud!” to the Nazis? And then, as I continued to ponder, I realized that nothing else had spoken to me because I couldn’t relate the tragedy to anything that I’ve directly experienced in my life. Gay culture I’m familiar with, so it made sense that the one thing I would be interested in was homosexual Nazi-culture.
Then, as the days progressed and we began to learn more and more about the lives of the minorities under the Nazis, I became more and more immersed in my sadness. Certainly the culmination of this progressing sympathy was the visit to Sachsenhausen. The tour itself wasn’t tear jerking at first—I’ve always been morbidly fascinated by stories about concentration camps, and have visited several. Therefore, nothing our guide said surprised me at first. Again scientist-like in my observations, I listened to as many victims’ stories as I could, but even then I couldn’t connect with their plights. They still seemed so fictional. Watching someone tell a story on a television screen is hardly witnessing his life. And as a generation we’ve been so exposed to television as fictional entertainment that it’s often difficult to feel like anything we’re told is real. So, I listened to the stories, read the articles, learned as much as I possibly could and later reiterated the stories to my loved ones, fascinated by the how cruel people could be.
Later, when Adam took us down into Station Z, I had what I considered to be my first real contact with labor camp victims. Now, I have a problem with blood in general. I can’t look at my blood when it’s being drawn, I get woozy when I cut myself, and I can’t stand to see others bleeding. To see bloodstains of innocent victims was probably one of the most memorable images of my life so far. Finally, what I had been searching for: something tangible, something non-fiction, something incredibly jarring. I let myself stare at the stain, and was careful to not exaggerate my own feelings. I knew that the stain should upset me, but I didn’t let that thought make me upset. I wanted to feel my body reacting to this image. I just, looked at it. I felt like I wanted to vomit, and I felt like I wanted to cry. So I left.
I left. I felt sick when Adam gave us that appreciation speech at the end of the tour, talking about what wonderful people we are to come to a labor camp in our free time, and how the experience will surely live on with us. We won’t forget it, he says. But I think that I will. I think that as a defense mechanism, I’ll simply not think about it at all. And that made me feel about three inches tall. Stop it, I thought, when he kept thanking us, I don’t deserve to be thanked. The rest of the day, it felt insulting to smile. My lips didn’t really know what to do, and sort of hung there loosely on my face, painted into a lazy half crescent of forced detachment. I guess I’ll only know in time whether or not I’ll forget the experience, or choose to do so, whether consciously or unconsciously.