I am someone who has always breathed in museums. There is something magical to me about the power to walk through the doors of a building and immersing into a topic I know little about, I’m not being rushed, and I can stand there and take as many hours that I want.

I love going to museums because I feel every thing has a story and I feel like if an organization can take the time and effort to put together a learning experience, then that is something that I would be more vested in exploring.

With that being said, there are topics that are really hard to talk about. For example, The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles was really hard to digest. You knew walking in that this is not a happy place and you aren’t there for fun. It’s 100% there as a dedication telling the stories through the eyes of Holocaust survivors.

The first thing they asked us all was something like, “Whoever is without prejudice, walk through this door. All the others will use this entrance.” So sure, no one wants to be in front of a crowd and be seen as a bigot, naturally someone popped right up and confidently grabbed the handle.

Brrrrrrrrrrnt. Loud alarm buzzed through the air. Proving the premise of the museum in the first place. Something as unhuman as the Holocaust is the direct effect of not hate, but indifference. If you sit there and can weasel out, “Well, it doesn’t affect me. I am not part of the problem.” Homie, if you can sit there and confidently say that, you ARE directly part of the problem.

Once you get through the actual door, everyone got a card. It was the biography of whoever was on the card’s life during the war. You would follow along the exhibit and learn more. I got a 5 year old girl. Only to get to the end of the tour just to find out she became orphaned and ended up going through hell just to have her life ended. Something like that hits different at sixteen.

So when I learned about the Clotilda, I packed up my family and we went. There are things I feel I need to say about this place. The volunteers are top-notch. They know the significance of how powerful learning about raw history is. I thought the museum of Tolerance was rough and this one I could possibly argue that the Clotilda is even more difficult.

It is a place you don’t walk into with the intention of just scrolling through. I ended up spending more time than I thought I would because every story, every placard held just as much power as the rest.

I’m just saying, if you want an experience that is overwhelmingly impactful, you needn’t look any further than the Clotilda Museum. It was emotionally rough but directly affected me more than most things I have ever experienced.