Footprints of genocide

During my tour of the Holocaust Museum, it was the one moment that really made my stomach seize. Others came close--instants when I had the urge to turn away but forced myself to stay and watch. If they endured it, you can bear witness. Photos of women, their clothes torn off, humiliated and beaten in the streets. Videos of men being shot point-blank, then falling, dirt shoveled over them with stunning immediacy. Mountains of emaciated, naked bodies bulldozed into ditches, anonymous corpses shoveled into oblivion like so many worms into compost.