STL 250 Adventure

So St. Louis turns 250 years old this year. To celebrate this milestone, the city is doing a fun "scavenger hunt" type of celebration all year long. There will be 250 birthday cakes displayed all over the city and surrounding counties. Each cake is placed a location of significance, either a historical landmark or a St. Louis original landmark. My newest adventure idea is to visit all 250 cakes. I realize it is extremely unlikely that I will find them all, but I'd like to try! Since I am planning on living in St. Louis after graduation I would love to get to know more about the city. I figure doing a scavenger hunt is the perfect way to learn my way around this town! I am eager to learn about each location and why it is significant to St.Louis. I have already been to several of these places, but I'd love to go back and learn more! I am officially declaring this my year of STL!

As part of this adventure I will take a photo with every cake as well as write a post about what I experienced while visiting that cake. So here's the first one!

St. Louis Holocaust Museum

This past Sunday I had an opportunity to visit the St. Louis Holocaust Museum in the Jewish community in Creve Couer. I had been to the museum once before with my public health clinical group, but this was a great opportunity to visit again and learn even more. The Holocaust has always been an interesting topic to me. It seems like something completely made up, because I just can't imagine human beings that would do such a terrible thing. This is why it is so important to visit these museum and learn more about it, so that no one forgets that it was a very real event. After having a guided tour of the museum we got to listen to the story of a Holocaust survivor. She was an infant at the beginning of the war and her family was forced to flee to South America for safety. It was the only place that would allow Jews in, because most countries were refusing to allow Jewish immigrants. It was amazing to hear how the events of WWII affected her family, well beyond the end of the war. The first time I visited the museum I heard the story of a survivor of a concentration camp and the Death March. Both stories are so humbling. I can not even begin to imagine living through such an ordeal.

One thing that really struck me and sits with me is the fact that Hitler was able to assemble such a following. People then and now still are so influenced by public figures. We are so willing to believe what someone says as long as they say it well. I feel like there are so many times that we agree to whatever we hear without really comprehending what it means. So many Nazi soldiers stated that they were just "following orders." This really bugs me that a person will just do as their told without thinking about whether it's the right thing to do or not, and yet people do it all the time. I was also amazed to learn that there are still Nazi communities and active anti-Semitic groups in America today, just like there are still active KKK clans. It's incredible to think that people deny that this happened, and deny that it was wrong.

Like I said, visiting the museum was a humbling experience. I gained a better understanding of how important it is to always stand up for what it is right. If one person can gain such a following for something so evil, imagine the following a person or group can assemble for a purpose that is good.

1 cake down, 249 to go! Let the adventures begin!