Rememberance: the Imperial War Museum

Typically war museums aren’t how I would want to spend my day, but I was really surprised by the Imperial War Museum. I really enjoyed wondering around the ground floor right inside the door. There were so many tanks, atom bombs, and missiles to look at. My favorite was the submarines. I spent a lot of time in the make shift submarine they had. It was probably more targeted at young kids but I had plenty of fun making my way through the submarine, listening to message, looking at pictures, and solving problems on the sub. I really wanted to climb up in the submarine but they put an age limit on who could climb.  

submarine

While walking through the rest of the museum I got lost plenty of times. I never knew which way to turn to get out of the area I was in. I thought it was really interesting seeing the different wars and seeing how it affected each country involved. I really liked how it displayed what gear and uniforms the countries each had at the time as well.  After finally finding my way out I found the Blitz experience. This was one of my favorite things about the museum. It was kind of creepy just sitting on the bench in the dark and listening to the audio but I liked it. I wasn’t a fan of the way it was supposed to smell. I would not have liked having to be in a bomb shelter. The trench experience was neat as well. Seeing things like the trench and the bomb shelter put it into perspective on how things were back then and what people and soldiers had to endure in World War I and World War II.

Ashley with an atom bomb

My favorite part of the whole museum was the Holocaust exhibition. The Holocaust has always been something I was interested. It was the only thing in history class that I didn’t mind learning about. I like reading about everything that happened and I liked seeing letters that people wrote back home to loved ones before they were killed in the concentration camps. In elementary school during the Holocaust unit my teacher had us live like Anne Frank for a week. We had black paper on the windows and for part of the day we would sit in the classroom with only one light bulb. While walking through the exhibition it reminded me a lot of that. I can’t even begin to imagine or even think about what all of those innocent people had to go through. I have always wanted to go to Auschwitz so it was interesting to see the model they had sent up and labeled of what everything was. Although it was interesting and had my attention the whole time it was definitely overwhelming. It is a huge exhibit and could take hours to get through but an hour was enough for me.