Walking Small: Reliving the Holocaust

Spring in DC felt like summer in Africa. Temperatures were soaring and the soles of my shoes were getting up close and personal with the concrete in a sticky way. The couple of days away from the normal grind of classes were welcomed, no matter how hot it was.

Once a year, sophomores at the Green Mountain Valley School are treated with a trip to either New York City or Washington, DC. Since I had been to The City so many times before, I decided to go against the grain and check out our nation's capital instead. The trip from Vermont to DC was long, but I didn’t mind. I was escaping from Vermont, for young people a not so exciting state, unless if you are really into cows and Ben and Jerry’s. Our first stop on the trip was a gloomy one, the Holocaust Museum.

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"The Holocaust is the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims -- six million were murdered; Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany."
(Source: USHMM FAQ)

The building looked like a concrete fortress on the outside surrounded by a moat of flowing street traffic. With the hot sun beating down upon our bodies, our school group rushed inside to the museum’s wonderfully accurate, cooled enclosure. The day was young and we were full of energy. Each of the three floors of the museum would provide our eager minds and bodies with the entertainment we would need for the next several hours.

I took it all in, and as quickly as possible. My attention span seemed minimal at best as I shot from one exhibit to the next. In what seemed to be approximately 5 minutes, I and a few friends had navigated through the three floors; it had all gone by in a blur. Considering that the rest of our group was only half-way through the tour, one more go-around seemed appropriate, so we started our sprint again.

Were we running? It felt like it as the exhibits passed by with blazing speed. The air is getting hotter in the building, maybe they had turned down the air conditioning to save money. My legs were tired from all this exercise. I had finished my walk through again before the rest of my group had even finished their first. I sat down on a marble bench near the entrance. The dome that enclosed the entrance was ever so slightly expanding before my eyes...

Had I fallen asleep? I think I'm dreaming. Feeling as light as a feather I levitate to my feet. My steps seem to slow in my dreamlike state. I'm not controlling my body anymore as some supernatural power floats me from one point to another. I can see people walking by me as I open the doors to another world. Everything is bright, hazy and feels soft to the touch. Am I dead? This place doesn't look like heaven...

And heaven it was not. The quick pulsating sounds of the ambulance brought me back to reality. Awkwardness stared back at me in the form of a paramedic. His eyes darted away as he checked my vitals. Not again I thought to myself. My mind had cleared, I know what had probably happened, I just couldn't remember how or why.

"I’m going to ask you a few questions, answer them to the best of your knowledge.", "Ok.", "What’s your name?", "Marc Epstein", "When where you born?", "February 25th, 1984", "What year is it?", "2000". There was one question that baffled me, an important one, "Where are you right now?", "An ambulance", "I meant, what city?", "Um...I don't know". How could I not know where I am? I thought long and hard, but the answer never came to me. The ride seemed short but stressful to the hospital.

I lay in confusion on the hospital bed for what seemed like hours. Would my group ever find me, would I be in trouble? Had I done anything absurd? I gave the nurses all the information I had about the school I went to, what my teacher's names were. They took the information from my medical alert necklace to call my parents and inform them of the situation.

Somehow, without my knowledge, the connections were made and my group was notified of my location, which I still was unsure of. When I was finally picked up by my caretakers, I was given the story of what supposedly happened.

More than likely, all the running around had put some strain on my blood sugar levels. I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and by the time I had finished my second viewing of the Holocaust Museum it was already around 12:30pm. Combining this with the extreme temperatures outside threw me into a Diabetic reaction. One that made me lose all touch with reality.

I had wandered around the main entrance hall of the museum for a few minutes, and then decided to venture outside, never a good thing when you're in a drunken like state. After taking in the view, I decided to go for a stroll across 4 lanes of traffic. Fortunately a police officer noticed me before I was struck by a moving vehicle. He grabbed me, called for an ambulance, and then I was whisked away. The rest, is history.

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