Statement Of Purpose: A Visit To The Holocaust Museum

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My fascination with history started while I was in elementary school. At this time in my life, history comprised purely of just what happened in history. Thus, learning about history was purely an intellectual pursuit. I had read numerous books about history—especially American history—for the sake of understanding the past better. I particularly preferred to read novels about former presidents and significant wars. Moreover, I never truly thought about history beyond the different names, places, events, and dates. However, I began to think differently about history when I started taking high school history classes and chiefly when I visited the Dallas Holocaust Museum this past summer. While I have visited numerous history museums in the past, I had never before changed my perception of history just by visiting …show more content…

Certainly, the museum’s providing of concrete objects of the Holocaust’s impact was the driving force behind the transformation of my view of history. A prime example of a poignant historical artifact was a large boxcar that was located in the museum’s central exhibit. The Nazis would have used that same boxcar transport Jews and political dissenters to concentration camps. To think that people were transported in crowded trains from their ordinary lives to their deaths in just a few hours is quite a dreadful thought. At the end of my visit, I read an inscription on a tombstone that served as a memorial to all those who died during the Holocaust. The inscription essentially stated that people today must remember those who suffered during one of the largest systematic mass-killings in modern history; no one should allow anything like the Holocaust to happen ever

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