Little Blue Shoes

Little Blue Shoes
by Amanda Robertson

All I saw looking into Hitler’s fiery eyes was a burning passion for death. He brainwashed his army so they knew only what their ears heard. Hearing about a little blue pamphlet, shoes, and pictures, from students who have previously visited the Holocaust Museum, I turn ghostly white thinking about the museum.

The senior, the junior, and the sophomore classes from Elk Horn-Kimballton Community School entered the enormous white building. As soon as all the classes enter the museum, we split into groups of about eight to ten people. The administrators of the museum hand out the pamphlets that remind me of a blue passport. My group was packed shoulder to shoulder, back to back, and front to front into an elevator. The crowding was to make us feel like we were in the cars that took us to Auschwitz. I opened my pamphlet as best I could with elbows surrounding me. Running my fingers across the lady’s wrinkled face, I was told to feel like the person in your pamphlet throughout the museum. As soon as I realize my lady was killed in Auschwitz, the shiny silver elevator doors slowly creep open.

I step into the first room. Glancing around the dim cold room, I see all the people, young and old, each with a different expression upon their face, looking at pictures. I spot in the distance a barrel about ten feet wide and about eight feet deep. My curiosity getting the best of me, I start toward the black object. I peer over the edge and the sight takes my breath away. I see small blue shoes, big black shoes, all gathered together. How could all those shoes belong to the poor, innocent people who were carelessly tossed into the crematoriums? I close my eyes and imagine what it would be like to have all my belongings ripped from my arms and wearing nothing. I open my eyes and have to walk away from those shoes because I can’t imagine what that would feel like.

As I walk away, I come upon walls and walls covered from the floor to the ceiling with photographs of families and kids, some even drawn. I take about ten minutes to look longingly at these photographs. One catches my eyes. This black-and-white photograph contains in it a little blond-haired girl playing with her little brown fluffy dog on the beach. A tear rolls down my cheek as I close my eyes to think of her crying on her mother’s shoulder while standing in line at Auschwitz. I wonder to how anybody could not care about people.

Exiting from the building, I have to take a brief moment and sit to think about what I just experienced. I think about all those scared people being tortured in ways our minds won’t even grasp, the shoes and photographs sticking out in my mind as a memory I’ll never be able to forget. If people think their life is bad they should visit the Holocaust museum and their minds will change. The little baby shoes will forever be engraved in my mind. I pray someday every individual will be able to see those little shoes with their own eyes.