How do you tell the kids?

I'm watching a documentary about a Holocaust survivor, who was a twin and one of the research subjects of Dr. Mengele. She's (obviously) a tough broad type, and very interesting. She's all about forgiving the nazis, and brought a nazi concentration camp doctor to the 50th anniversary ceremony of Auschwitz's liberation to sign a witness document. Holy shit. It's fascinating to me that she wants to purge all of these feelings and forgive, even at the expense of all of the other survivors present who had no interest in such forgiveness.

I'm seeing these terrible images on the screen, images I've seen before. I think we learned about the Holocaust in middle school or junior high, but I didn't see these graphic images until probably high school. And I was devastated. We read Elie Weisel's "Night" and I couldn't comprehend the incredible inhumanity.

I've considered these ideas before, but it wasn't until I started watching this documentary that it occurred to me: if I have children, I have to explain this to them. We have to talk about it. And their sweet trusting minds will have to learn and try to understand that our predecessors let this happen. For some reason, this devastates me even more. How is that possible? I'm ashamed to pass on this history to them. Ashamed of the human race.

And at the same time, this woman in the documentary is incredible. Aside from her survival, her forgiveness, her work to educate today's youth, her full-time work as a real-estate agent . . . they just showed her running on a treadmill.

Unbelievable.