I love World War 2. I enjoy reading about the Holocaust and the war. Weird, huh? I have been told a number of times how strange, "interesting", weird, gruesome.... you get the point :) I have never really been able to understand my own intrigue with this topic. It is something that I have always been really interested in it. I remember being mad about at my parents when they went to see Schindler's List and did not allow me to go. I was eleven. After I saw the movie in 1997, on TV, I understood my parent's decision. I visit the history section first when I go to a bookstore. I look to see if there are any new books. I have one bookcase in my room completely devoted to books on WW2, the Holocaust and Germany during that time. I have seen as many documentaries that I can on it and am probably one of the only people that has been to the Houston Holocaust Museum more than once. i ask for movies and books on that time for Christmas. I want to learn about all aspects of it. My dream vacation is to take a tour of the different camps around Germany and Poland... I know, I know.
I was thinking the other day about why I like this subject. What, in my sick brain, is attracted to all of this. After watching Defiance yesterday, I figured it out.

It is the fact that through the severest adversity, this group of people stayed faithful to God, and survived. They survived the brutality and grief. They endured the unthinkable and at the end, got up, and started walking forward. I think that reading the stories of winning against all odds gives me inspiration. I could not imagine being sent from my house with nothing to a camp. Or being called names and being spat at by people that were my "friends". I can't imagine what it must be to see family members shot for walking on the wrong side of the street or because a soldier was doing target practice. Although many did not survive... their stories of what they went through have. Every year, biographers and historians shed a little more light on the heroic tales.
Many of the heroes in these stories refuse their famous status. They simply did what was necessary. Many deny the fame and choose to live their life humbly in the warmth and love of their families and friends. Defeat was not an option for them.

“Our hope is that the archive will be a resource so enduring that 10, or 50, or even 100 years from now, people around the world will learn directly from survivors and witnesses about the atrocities of the Holocaust.” Steven Spielberg