Yesterday I visited the Florida Holocaust Museum. As I approached the entrance, I realized I had set myself up for a heavy experience. It was not going to be a relaxing Sunday afternoon, but that was alright with me. I have only 765 days left on the Trust Tour and this was a great opportunity to remind myself what happens when trust really goes wrong. There is no more dramatic example in human history of selfishness, hate and manipulation. If you have been alive for the last decade or more you probably know enough about the holocaust to fill a small book, so I don’t need to describe all those horrors. I will say however, yesterday I felt myself hit new levels of outrage and sadness.
In my short visit, I started to identify some behaviors that are uncomfortably familiar and consistent with what happens in our society everyday. The only difference is the depth and the volume. It is not over, it is still happening today, just on a much smaller level. Below I listed the ones that likely contributed to horrible things we did to our fellow human beings during WWII.
A Divided People
Whenever we generalize about a sub group, we are becoming separate from them. They become different, something to stay away from. They can make us feel uncomfortable. They look, talk, eat and think differently. They may do things we don’t approve of. All of this can make us feel threatened. In extreme examples we forget that they are human beings. Maybe they have a different religion, color, education, political view, economic status or sexual orientation. 
Maybe they have tattoos, or weird hair, maybe they are old or homeless. It was not just Jews that were burned in those ovens, it was people that were “different.” Today, we need to be very careful about demonizing anyone or any group. We must refrain from anything that separates us from our fellow man. We are all human beings and one people, we are them, they are us.
Trusting Yourself
At least some of the fault for the holocaust was the empowerment of Hitler. Many, many people had to step aside and give him his power. Many more, pledged their loyalty to him. The early followers had much of the responsibility for the devastation that followed. He was obviously a sick man, by every definition a psychopath. Yet they cheered him on. I have some thoughts about how that happened, but the question that I cannot get a perspective on is… why did they stop trusting themselves? At some point, the German people stopped trusting themselves and started trusting Hitler. He became a god like figure, the savior of Germany. Why would so many turn to this man for direction? Was it fear? Did Hitler give them hope? Was it out of greed and selfishness? I began to to wonder if idolizing any person is trouble. When we turn people into gods (even our celebrities) do we make them something they could never be? They are human – just like us, right? Maybe the real answers are to be found inside of us. Maybe we call it by different names like God, or intuition, or gut feelings. Maybe there is a moral compass built right into each one of us, one that we can use to navigate the full experience of our lives. Maybe that is what we need to trust in the future.
We All Have A Choice
At the end of my tour I listened to an audio thanking me for coming and suggesting that I help to make sure this never happens again. It suggests that we will all have the power to bring harm, and the power to bring love, that it is a choice we each make everyday. There was a visual time line showing that humans are still at it. It did not stop after WWII. There were similar horrible events that consumed much of the last century, in fact one as recent as last year in Darfur. So it seems that the Holocaust lives inside each one of us. We are all capable of helping to create another one as well as preventing the next one. I found hope for us in a quote from Anne Frank as I left my experience at the museum.
“It’s really a wonder I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
