A Life Lesson on Tour

I want to share a lesson I learned on December 21. 2016. 

I had 30 people on my tour of the Concentration Camp of Terezin. Typically, for this tour, I have smaller groups of 5-15 people but today, things were moving slower in general.  Terezín is made up of two fortress sections, one big and one small and, even though we take a private bus there, we often still don't have enough time to visit all of the museums and sites thoroughly! 

So, with this group I was pushing all day to make sure we saw as much as possible, yet I had 4 middle eastern- English guys, around my age, continuously asking questions, many of them were of things I had just explained. 

I was getting a bit annoyed because they were also the slowest people in the group, lagging behind chatting away...

In one of the museums I run through the rise of the Nazi party, how it came to be so popular, and how it managed to spread across borders.  I list the four main steps it took to complete the "Final Solution" and I compare these steps the Nazis took back then to the stage(s) our world is taking today.  It's looking quite familiar to me...

This moment was silent from the tourists' end but these four had my undivided attention and began to nod in agreement. 

Ending the tour around the camp, we were rushing back to the bus and these four friends had asked if they could have an extra 5 minutes. I said, 'sure' and proceeded to wait outside the bus for them. At that moment, all four of them went into the parking lot of Terezin, searched for the direction of the sunset, stood beside the huge Jewish memorial stone and began to kneel, bow, and pray. I watched this ritual and began to appreciate the moment. 

I stood corrected. I was learning my lesson. 

Sometimes it's about tolerance, sometimes it's about understanding, but most of all it's about love. We celebrate, we pray, but we also heal and suffer together through love.

  🔹Practice what you preach !  🔹