4 Jan

Finally a somewhat early start! We made a quick breakfast of sandwiches then headed for the Imperial War Museum. The place is incredible! It’s free except for special exhibits (the current one features Lawrence of Arabia) and wonderfully done. Nearly every exhibit is worth looking at and it's incredible how many actual relics they have from all kinds of wars. The D-Day and 2^nd World War exhibits are marvelous. They have the handwritten draft of the letter the British general Montgomery wrote to his troops before they embarked on the D-Day mission. They also have the signed typed copy. Sachi and I split ways between the World Wars exhibits and I wandered up to the Holocaust one at the top floor of the museum. Seeing the images and reading the captions by the displays momentarily woke the fiery hatred I feel at all who participated or in any way aided the process that led to the Holocaust. I was surprised to read a caption explaining how for centuries Christians have been anti-Semitic because of a belief that Jesus Christ was essentially killed by other Jews. I only wonder at their anti-Semitism because last I heard, he also called himself, or at least acknowledged the title “King of the Jews” and was in fact Jewish. I mean, he couldn’t be a Christian because obviously that faith wasn’t invented until after he died…I also didn’t know that many Jews were the targets of the early Crusades. I thought those were against the “heathen” and “heretical” Muslims of southwest Asia. Apparently, there’s a lot of religious history that I don’t know. It really upsets me how people can possibly justify murder and atrocity in the name of religion. I don’t understand the Crusades. It’s evil to kill people just because they don’t believe something that you believe in. It’s one thing if people are nasty and senselessly slaughter and hurt other people. You don’t need a god to know that’s wrong. Yet it’s another to kill people just because they believe something different. Beliefs and actions are two different yet necessarily related things. You can believe in horrible things but as long as you don’t act on them or make manifest the cruelty, then it’s okay because at least no one gets hurt. You just have a sick mind. If a group of people run around and kill and hurt people, they deserve to be punished. No one deserves punishment just for thinking. Could someone please explain why Christians could have endorsed anti-Semitism? Obviously not all of them did or do, but I would like to know how they could find justification for it in their faith. I was very angry, moved, and upset as I walked through the Holocaust exhibit. The pictures were as pain as the words and every time I see a similar exhibit, I always ask, “why?” I have yet to find a reasonable explanation. I endured the Nazi propaganda section as well as the formation of Jewish ghettos, but I couldn’t make it to the concentration camp area. I was feeling too physically sick to continue, and the museum organizers were kind enough to leave an early exit from the exhibit for people like me. NEVER AGAIN should such an atrocity take place in the world. NO BELIEF OR RELIGION could possibly justify such inhumanity. If so many religions claim that men are better than their animal relatives are, then why do they often endorse such beastly and primal horrors? I thought our reason was supposed to let us avoid such things…I met Sachi at the entrance and then we headed to Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms by Westminster Abbey. It was pricey! £8.50 for a student ticket! It was really neat though to see rooms preserved exactly as they were in 1945 after the cabinet members turned off the lights and locked the doors one last time. We saw something interesting at the stop by Westminster. A group of cops and transit authority figures in their wonderfully fluorescent waistcoats were standing by the stop and apparently interviewing some of the people there. We wondered what we had just apparently missed but as to not arouse suspicion, we moved on to the War Rooms. After the WR we picked up some sandwiches and drinks at a nearby Tesco and ate in a little park by the Abbey. It was freezing but nice at the same time to see the sun finally out. It was lighting up Big Ben marvelously and of course I took shots of that. After lunch we walked over to Covent Garden to take in the sights there. It’s a pretty place and of course we just had to stop in a couple of bookstores while there. We walked through the market and sampled some delicious “dreamtime” tea that a woman was handing out. It was getting dark and rather late so we caught buses from there back to King’s Hall. We had dinner of vegetable soup (which might as well have been tomato soup) and PB+jam sandwiches in the pantry. Boring, I know, but cheap! After dinner I saw Yvonne, the senior student from south Ireland who’s the RA of my floor, who told me that she and her friends were watching a movie in the common room and so I decided to join them. The film was “American Psycho” with Christian Bale and was BIZARRE. Sachi worked on some final packing and around 11 when I came back and we both went to sleep.