Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria's Great Merchant City

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I received this digital ARC via NetGalley from I.B. Tauris in exchange for an honest review.

I am forever fascinated by this region of the world and the splendor of old cities like Aleppo, Constantinople, etc. These cities managed to mix East and West and thrive for centuries. Unfortunately, nothing good can last and the latest civil war has all but destroyed one of the grandest old cities in the world.

My major complaint about this text is that it starts in the 1500s and I would have loved to read more about its existence before that. While we still get a vivid pictures of the city from that time up to now, there's so much more that could have been explored. This is an especially important point for me to make I feel, as only the first shorter portion was the history of the city as written by the author. The remaining bulk of the book was filled with eyewitness accounts of the city from different men and women who traveled there throughout the centuries, again from the 1500s, on. I feel like this was a missed opportunity, as there is so much more that could have been addressed. However, I must say that those eyewitness are invaluable. These accounts are incredibly thorough and paint a lively picture of a once-bustling city that no longer exists. This is a tragedy.

At one time Aleppo was one of the greatest cities in the world. Christians, Muslims, and Jews co-existed in relative peace. Despite different religions, traditions, and cultures, the city boomed. Even with the city changing rulers over the centuries, from Romans, Persians and Greeks to the Ottoman and French. It was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire that Aleppo found its place as one of the cosmopolitan cities of the world, where world-wide trade allowed it to flourish. Merchants came from all over to trade, and some ended up staying. In this first section we see Aleppo as a powerful city, even up until about ten years ago when the population was over two million inhabitants. Now, with the war have devastated the old city, the population is fewer than 500,000. It is such a shame that so much history has been lost and I truly hope that the city can recover and become what it once was.


The notes section is satisfactory, starting at 86% and ending at 92%. From there the bibliography went up to 96%

The lack of attention given to Aleppo prior to the 16th century is what really sunk this one to three stars for me. It seems like such a missed opportunity to have portrayed the city in all its glory, as one of the longest continually inhabited cities in history. I'm still interested in the subject and will seek out other texts on Aleppo.

Top Ten Tuesday!

In case you missed the news, starting with January 16th's post, Top Ten Tuesday will now be featured on Jana's blog, That Artsy Reader Girl. This also means that The Broke and the Bookish is shutting down, at least for now. It is a bummer, but inevitable. I am forever grateful to The Broke and the Bookish for introducing me to some great new blogger friends and for allowing me to show that non-fiction really is not as boring as some people thing.

This week's topic is the Top Ten Books I'm Looking Forward to in 2018. For my own personal spin on the topic, these will not be upcoming releases, but books I am either just excited to read in general, or books that I totally should have gotten to last year (Hey, US Presidents, I see you!). Here they are, in no particular order.

1. I must Must MUST get my hands on this book ASAP. I really like Lewis's work and am interested to see his ideas. I will say that if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it probably had its nephews murdered in the Tower. Buuuuuut I am always open to exploring the possibility of one or both princes surviving Richard III's reign and living on through Henry VII's.

2. Even though I pretty much hate living in Nebraska because it is not my home and all my family is in Minnesota, I have recently become interested in the history of Omaha. Apparently Omaha was pretty rowdy back in the day and I am going to read this one in 2018 to find out what kind of hi-jinx people were up to.

3. I can't even fathom such an election where all candidates would go on to be, or already had been, president.

4. I have to admit, I kind of like the fact that the Founding Fathers did not get along nearly as well as middle and high school history classes would have us believe.

5. So, "looking forward to" is a bit of a stretch. But Imma try real hard with this one because I want to accomplish the president goal in 2018. There was a time from January of 2001 to January of 2009 where I thought surely we had seen one of the worst presidents in modern history. No one could be worse, right? RIGHT? Except, fast-forward to January of 2016 and, oh wait, yes, someone actually CAN be. It was at that event in January of 2016 that I began to look at W a smidge differently. While we will never be on the same side politically (except when we are both opposing the giant Cheeto with tiny hands who can't string together a coherent sentence), you can't help but feel a connection to someone who battles a rain poncho and loses.

6. There are actually THREE McCullough books I want to read in 2018...

7. ...and...

8. While this one is not exclusively presidential, it has been on my TBR for ages and ages and ages. 2018 is the year I get it done.

9. Another that I must get to. I am determined to conquer this president goal once and for all.

 10. I love Erik Larson's books and can not for the life of me figure out why it has taken me so long to read this one - or Thuderstruck. I will be remedying this in 2018 by reading both.

BONUS!

11. The Colour of Time



My almost-BFF Dan Jones will be writing the text and Marina Amaral will be colorizing historical black and white photos and it will be beautiful. If you have not seen Amaral's work you MUST GO LOOK RIGHT NOW. She is amazing. Dan's not too bad either. I may have mentioned him once or twice.

Let me know what you think of my list and leave me a link so I can take a look at your 2018 must-reads.

Happy Reading!

Sarah

Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas

Rating: 5 Stars

I received a free copy of this digital ARC via NetGalley from Oxford University Press in exchange for an honest review.

I am way late to the party on this one, having received it in October of 2016. I got sidetracked by my own writing projects, but there's really no excuse. Nonetheless, I am so incredibly glad I finally got around to this one because it was, in short, fantastic. This review may be on the sparse side, as once I started reading I could hardly put the book down and as such, I only stopped maybe twice to make notes of items I wanted to include in my review.

I never realized how much I did not know about the Vikings, or Norsemen, or whatever other catch-all term can be used to describe the explorers, raiders, looters, etc. Perhaps because of my own singular focus on the history of the UK, and I never gave it much thought that they would travel to other lands as well, eventually assimilating much as they did in England as well.

I was unsure what to expect in terms of how much the book would simply be a translation of the Sagas. While I find them interesting, I am no really wanting to read them as a whole. I enjoy snippets, but I also like my history concrete and factual. The Sagas containing the other-worldly beings are not of much interest, despite my fascination with the Norse travelers. What I appreciated then, is that the author used both sets of information, the history that we do know, as well as how the Sagas portrayed events and travels. Often, weird creatures aside, the information lines up rather well, which was really cool to see. Kind of amazing too, considering that so many of the Sagas were written long after the fact. We get tons of background information in this text and it all meshes together so well, painting as complete a portrait as possible of the Norse warriors/travelers/etc. Seriously, I do not really even know what to call them. Excuse my laziness, but from here on out I will simply refer to them as Norsemen, despite the fact that it is not entirely accurate and also because there were of course Norse women too.

The only real issue I had with the book comes from it being in digital format and thus is not something the author had any control over. This is definitely a book meant to be read with a physical copy, as most of the maps were chopped up across three "pages" on my Kindle. This may also have just been a formatting error within the ARC itself, and could have been remedied in the final copy. Still, I'd like to see them in color as well, along with the photos included. I will likely seek out a physical copy in the future to get a better look.

Perhaps the most eye-opening thing about this book to me is the realization that the Norse travelers went nearly everywhere. Not just to England and across the expanse of northern Europe into Rus, or Russia as we now know it as, but to Byzantium. These dudes went all the way to Constantinople! And not always as rapey, pillagey hordes, but again, assimilating into the culture and society and becoming the Varangian Guard and fighting as mercenaries for the emperor. Even Harald Hardrada, my favorite berserker, makes a substantial appearance as one of the Guard, long before he becomes King of Norway and then sets out on the ill-fated journey that would see him meet death at Stamford Bridge.

Speaking of 1066, I absolutely loved this bit of information when I came across it at 57%, speaking of Queen Isabella of France, wife of King Edward II of England:

"...Isabella gave birth to several children, including a son who became King Edward III. This means that 261 years after Harold Godwinson was killed at Hastings, his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson via the Kievan Rus dynasty ascended the same throne that he had fought for and lost."

I've always been partial to Harold and while it was not really a comfort to him, being defeated in battle and all, his descendants would go on to sit on throne of England after all. I love finding out random tidbits like this. After all, most royal houses all over Europe are still related today.

I found the structure of the book appealing, as it greatly aided in the understanding of the various Norse and the reasons for their expeditions beyond the fjords. In each direction, as the book is broken up into North, South, East, and West, we are given historical background information of the culture of the Norse, as well as the geography, history, and even current archaeology of the lands they traveled to a millennium ago. As always, the author then goes back to the Sagas, weaving it all together. I was particularly interested in Greenland and Vinland, as well as the archaeological finds still being discovered. I would love to visit Greenland and see these places for myself at some point in the future, what a sight that would be. I also found myself becoming more interested in that of the Rus, as well as the idea of the Norse in Constantinople, Jerusalem, and even Africa. I do not know why my brain is having such a difficult time wrapping itself around the latter group, but I am hoping there is more material out there that I can follow up with.

In this ARC, the text itself ended at 84%, with the following 15% being given over to substantial end notes, in addition to the dearth of information found within the text in footnotes. At 99% the author offers up information about the full texts of many of the Sagas and complete translations. She makes note that the translations used in this book are her own, and may vary a bit from the same Sagas translated by others.

This is a great resource for those wanting to learn more about the Norse and their widespread travels. It is well-researched without being so overly academic that you feel like you are being talked down-to. Highly recommended.

How I Spent Christmas Eve

It is now officially Christmas and I am wide awake at 2:30 AM. This is mainly because:

1. My daughter is with her father for Christmas this year. Believe me, I would never be awake at this time if my girl was snuggled up in bed. She gets up early on vacation.

2. I fell asleep around 10 while reading and now I am wide awake four hours later.

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I put Christmas Eve to good use and did some bookshelf organizing.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Now I know most people will not notice much of a difference, except physically you can tell that books have been moved around when comparing one photo to the other. But to me it makes a world of difference!

One of the reasons for my total lack of completion of the presidential reading goal is literally because the books got buried underneath a ton of other books and were way down on the bottom shelves. I took this chance to not only move all the books around, but to organize them a bit better. At first they were basically all shoved willy-nilly, wherever there was room. It was kind of aggravating to this OCD/Type A personality that I let it get so bad. Now though, it is so much better.

The first shelf is reserved for books that I have read and want to keep. All other books going in my book bag to be sold at Half-Price Books for less than a fraction of their worth.

The second shelf is for books pertaining to my president goal. They are now front and center and I can see what I have to work with. There will be no excuses in 2018. I can not ignore them. The rest of the shelf is spill-over from the one below, containing my Amberley treasures.

The third shelf contains many Christian history and non-fiction books that I am stoked to read. I am absolutely in love with a nearby Christian store, Divine Truth. The book selection is top-notch and I never walk out with fewer than five books. The shelf also contains more Amberley treasures. At first I thought they would all fit on this shelf, thus saving room for me to add to my president shelf. Clearly I underestimated just how many books I have purchased from Amberley since August. Oops.

The fourth and fifth shelves are a bit more loosely arranged, though I tried to keep all the like-topic books together. The Tudor and Plantagenet books are all together, books about space travel, plagues, random US history, pirates, the Mafia, Prohibition, adult beverages, etc are all there.

Do you ever arrange and rearrange your shelves or do you just cram them into whatever space you can find?

Merry Christmas!

Sarah

I Basically Failed My Reading Goals For 2017

I had some majorly lofty goals this year. I failed most of them.

January 1st, 2017: I was so confident that I would accomplish what I set out to do. After all, I had 365 days to get them done. Totally easy when my first career is a full-time mom to a scary intelligent four year old, and my second career is an educator of multiple children in grades 3-4-5 with diagnosed emotional disturbances, usually accompanied by a myriad of learning disabilities and/or a secondary diagnosis of ADHD, OHI, ODD, etc.

Let's recap the goals:

1. Read one book about each US President

Seriously, I did not even come close. I will be carrying this goal over into 2018 and this time I will actually make the effort to get this one done. I got a little sidetracked, which will be more thoroughly explained below.

Result: Complete and utter FAILURE

2. Read 150 Books for my Goodreads Challenge

I kind of cheated at this one. I found this publisher called Charles River Editors who write these super short books on people, places, and events in (usually) history. Most are not very well-written, at least in terms of editing, which is kind of ironic, given the publisher. But I also kind of like them because they definitely help me determine my interest in various topics and whether or not I should even bother with more substantial texts. I also kind of like to read the ones where I know a lot about the topic, just so I can see if said topic is being portrayed accurately. Most of the books are incredibly short and take less than an hour to read. I've read a bunch of them and now my end-of-year reading goal has been upped to 385. I have vowed to not read another CRE until 2018 so that I can finish the year and this goal with some semblance of normalcy.

Result: Partial Success

3. Get One Children's Book Published

I have been working on a variety of projects in the realm of children's books for the last couple years. It was my goal to have one of those published, or en route to being published, before 2017 was over. This plan was completely derailed by the fact that I sort of stumbled onto a completely different project, the biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine that I am currently working on. I have been so immersed in 12th century England and France, I have hardly had time for anything else, even the project I initially started the year with. So, while this specific goal is a failure, and I won't have ANYTHING published in 2017, there will be something in the (hopefully) near-future to show for this time spent researching, reading, and writing.

Result: Failure, mostly

I am actually quite cheerful for being so unsuccessful this year. And while that may not seem possible, it is. Regardless of the unmet goals, I spent the year doing what I love: mothering my sweet girl and watching her grow, and reading so many wonderful and not-so-wonderful books about people and places both new to me, and ones I love so dearly.

So, can this year in reading REALLY be described as a failure for me? I think not.

What were your reading goals this year and how successful were you in reaching them?

Happy Reading and a very Merry Christmas,
Sarah

First Line Friday: Baby Jesus Edition

Happy Friday! 

I am happy to have a moment to breathe so I can actually participate in a First Line Friday - it's been a while. I am also excited because tomorrow is our last day before winter break and good Lord, do teachers love vacation time more than the students.

"Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year - at least according to Andy Williams's famous rendition of Edward Pola and George Wyle's Christmas song that can be heard in malls and on radio stations across America throughout the month of December."

(True, though I would argue it actually begins before Thanksgiving. Please, for the love of all that is holy, wait until the day after Thanksgiving to start with the Christmas music.)

I was first introduced to this author when I found his earlier book, The Final Days of Jesus, which takes readers through the Gospel in the final week of the human life of Jesus. I read it every year in the week leading up to Easter Sunday. I was doubly excited then to find this text, which chronicles the events surrounding the birth of Jesus and I highly recommend it.

Happy Reading!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyful Kwanzaa, and everything in between.

Sarah

Top Ten Tuesday!

Hello, Tuesday!

This week's topic from The Broke and the Bookish is "The Top Ten Books I Hope Santa Brings" and I have some that I am so so so hoping I get - or that I at least get gift cards to the places where I can buy them myself.

This. I must have this one NOW.

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#BlackLivesMatter does not mean they matter MORE, it means they matter ALSO. Let's start acting like it.

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Can't really go wrong with Chernow. Seems he's got another biography I still need of some semi-famous guy that Lin-Manuel Miranda raps about...

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Oh, right. This guy.

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Let's throw this one in for good measure.

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This author isn't too shabby either...

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I love Tom Hanks. LOVE him. Apollo 13 is one of my all-time favorite movies, along with a slew of author Tom Hanks' movies and when I found out he had a collection of stories out I knew I had to have it.

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I am thoroughly obsessed with city biographies and NYC in particular.

Leave a comment about my list and be sure to share a link to yours so I can check out what you are waiting for as Christmas (or the holiday you celebrate) is nearly upon us.

Happy Reading,

Sarah

Villisca

Rating: 3 Stars

This book deeply saddens me for two reasons:

1. Whatever the motive, six innocent children lost their lives through no fault of their own and to this day their horrific murders have not been solved.

2. The book is in terrible need of a good round or two of thorough editing, given the numerous punctuation errors alone in addition to missing words. The victims of this awful crime deserve better.

The story itself is compelling and is one of those that we can not look away from, given the sensationalism of it all and the fact that so many of the victims were children. We will, in all likelihood, never know who the perpetrator(s) was/(were). I wish that were not the case. They deserve justice and just about everyone involved in investigating the crime was kind of worthless at various times throughout. I understand, the technology needed to solve the crime did not exist yet and most wouldn't for decades. But come on, common sense here: why were so many damn people allowed to traipse through the house while the victims still lay in their beds? Why were so many lookie-lous allowed to HANDLE THE MURDER WEAPON? I mean seriously, FFS, this never stood a chance of being solved.

I purchased this book after embarking on an adventure to Villisca with a friend. We visited the home and spent  quite a while there, as well as the museum downtown owned by the Linns, and part of the tour took us out to the cemetery where the Moore family and Stillinger girls were buried.

I can state 100%, unequivocally, without a doubt, the home is haunted. This is not surprising, given the horrific trauma the home witnessed. As my friend and I explored the home with maybe a handful of other tourists, I snapped several pictures. I had no issues whatsoever with my camera on the first floor of the home where the kitchen, pantry, parlor, and bedroom were located. The first floor bedroom is where the Stillinger girls died.

As we moved up the stairs, I began to feel lightheaded and headachey. I began to feel this intense pressure as I stood on the landing at the top of the stairs where Josiah and Sarah Moore's bed had been, where they too died. There was a narrow passage that could barely be called a hallway, where to the left a door opened into the attic. Straight ahead was the bedroom where the Moore children had slept. I felt drawn to the attic and attempted multiple times to take photos of the space. My camera refused to cooperate. This problem did not occur at any other time during the entire tour. In the end, with dozens of pictures of every other room in the house, both upstairs and downstairs, I managed to finally get two or three of the attic. After heading back downstairs, I had to get out of the house. It was not until I stepped out into the bright October sunshine that the headache and lightheaded-ness went away. The pressure was different, it was more of an overwhelming sadness. I will not go back to the home ever again.

When one looks at the information in this book and the main suspects, it is easy to see that no a single one of the suspects fits perfectly. Kelly was quite insane I'm sure, but enough to murder 8 people on what he thought was a command from God? And Jones, if he was so furious about Moore's competing business or the rumored affair Joe was having with Jones' daughter-in-law, why have the children and Moore's wife killed also? Or was that something the hired killers decided on their own when they'd gone to kill Joe but someone else had woken and would have been able to identify them? And who on earth would ever think it be possible to sneak into a house full of 8 people and murder only one? None of it makes sense, and I don't think it ever will.

Please allow for one more side-note about the book. I purchased it several years ago on the aforementioned visit a friend and I made to Villisca. A couple years after that I began dating a guy who was also interested in paranormal events and I told him about my trip to the house. I had not begun the book at that point, and I am not sure why. Something about the cover really spooked me. I let him borrow it and for weeks it sat on his coffee table, face down. The cover kind of spooked him too. He'd begun reading it and one night as we were going to sleep, the book was sitting on his nightstand. In the middle of the night I woke up to use the rest room and noticed he was sleeping, on his back, with something clutched tightly to his chest. Using the light from my phone, I shrieked in my half-asleep state that woke both of us quickly. He looked down and saw the Villisca book on his chest and without thinking, threw it across the room, startled. He had no memory of waking at any point, nor had no idea why he would have been holding the book so tightly. He'd gone to sleep at the same time I had, turning out the light with no reading beforehand. In the morning he told me I could take the book home with me, he had no intention of ever reading it after the events during the middle of the night. I didn't blame him one bit. I took the book home, keeping it face-down always, but I could not get rid of it. I shoved it in a box and did not read it for years, until today. The cover spooks me still and I don't think that feeling will ever go away.

Top Ten Tuesday!

So this week The Broke and the Bookish made Top Ten Tuesday suuuuuper easy. The topic is Top Ten Favorite Books of 2017. I have read some really fantastic books this year and am happy to share them now. Here they are, in no particular order (except the first one because, duh.)

This was a given, right?

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The first book I read in 2017. Actually, I started it at the end of 2016 at about 11 PM on December 31st. I was falling short on my Goodreads Challenge last year, so I found a bunch of free chick lit and cozy mysteries for free via BookBub. With ten books to go and an hour left, I threw in the towel and decided to end the year with a book I was sure to love. And I did.

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I know, I know. It's a shocker any time something other than non-fiction appears on one of my lists.

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WHAT?! A book NOT non-fiction or even historical fiction?? I know. As mentioned above, last year I was behind on my Goodreads Challenge. I found the first book in the Mercy Watts series as a result and HATED it. Parts of it took place in Lincoln, Nebraska, ON CAMPUS even at UNL, and so much was wrong, I was furious. But then I found a box set that was also free and I kept plugging away and I am glad I did for two reasons. 1) The books got better as the series and novellas went on and 2) Mercy's hot cop "cousin". Cousin is in quotes because they are not actually cousins, Chuck was adopted by her uncle when he and Chuck's mom got married (and divorced a few years later). Mercy and Chuck are now dating, and I promise it is not as weird as it sounds.

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I have to stop here or the list will go on for a while. Let me know what you think of my list and leave a link to your own.

Happy Reading!

Sarah

Top Ten Tuesday!

Hey-o, it is Tuesday again and time for another TTT, brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's theme is an extra cool one for me because it involves travel and I LOVE to travel. The actual topic is "Ten Bookish Settings I'd Love to Visit" but since my reads are non-fiction, I'll actually get to visit the places I read about. Some of this can be considered part of my itinerary for when my daughter is old enough to appreciate and understand the importance of these beautiful places.

1. Fontevraud Abbey

Probably a no-brainer, if you know me at all. At Fontevraud Eleanor of Aquitaine was laid to rest, along with Henry II and Richard I. I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about the day I will set foot into the place Eleanor called home in her final years. I'll cry, and it will be amazing. This is one of the few places left connected to Eleanor, and I plan to see as many of them as possible. It makes me heart hurt to think of all the history that has been lost over the centuries in the name of 'progress'.

2. Le palais de justice de Poitiers

Today the palace is a government building, though the same could be said for it functioning as such in its prime. The palace at Poitiers is one of the two most likely places where Eleanor of Aquitaine was born, and/or spent much of her childhood. It was the seat of power for the counts of Poitiers (and dukes of Aquitaine). The original palace on this site was destroyed by a fire in the 1018. It was rebuilt and through the 12th century remained an important palace. During Eleanor's estrangement from Henry, it is believed that she held her own court there, though not the 'Courts of Love' that have been romanticized by earlier historians. 

3. The Louvre

Everyone else can see the Mona Lisa. I have eyes for one thing, and one thing only: the only known possession of Eleanor's to have survived. Known as the Eleanor crystal vase, it came into her possession either from her grandfather or father. She gifted it to her first husband, Louis VII. In time he then gifted it to Abbot Suger, who added mounting and a plaque.

4. Temple Church

A journey of this magnitude would not be complete without a visit to the final resting place of William Marshal, pretty much the most bad-ass knight in history. His life story is remarkable, even if only half of it were to be true.

5. The Tower of London

There are so many amazing places in London alone that I must see. The Tower is absolutely the first stop though, right off the plane. I'll make time for Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, all the places associated with my fave and least fave Plantagenets and Tudors, and all the other places Joey made Chandler go while they were in London for Ross and Emily's wedding. I just hope I won't need to go into the map.

6. All of Scotland

No, seriously. I love this country. In 2009 I surprised my mom with a trip to Scotland as her Mother's Day gift. I planned the trip for that November, so we would be there around her birthday (and see Wicked in London the night of her actual birthday). It was my mom's dream vacation, and became a place I fell in love with. The morning we arrived, we dropped our bags at our adorable guest house, The Ben Doran (I won't stay anywhere else, this place was wonderful. Carol was lovely, and assisted in any way she could.) and headed for the Royal Mile. The minute we stepped off the bus, onto the Mile, I had an overwhelming sense of peace. Edinburgh is where I belong. We did a lot of the tourist things and I am looking forward to a return trip where we can wander the city aimlessly and seek out the lesser-known spots - though, you can not beat the view from Edinburgh Castle.

While I love Edinburgh dearly, Stirling Castle is my most favorite of all the castles I have been to so far. The views from the castle are breathtaking, and I've a special place in my heart for Mary, Queen of Scots. There was a bit of restoration work going on when we visited, so I am anxious to go back and see it now, as it was where Mary was crowned. I also look forward to see Linlithgow, where Mary was born and Fotheringhay (in England) where she was unjustly executed by order of her jealous cousin. There are so many castles in general that I would love to see, and I am partial to the beauty and sadness of ruins. Ireland has some great castles as well, and I think Blarney is my favorite. Basically, #ALLTHECASTLES is my goal.

7. Vatican City

I'm not Catholic, but I do love Pope Francis. He's the pope the world needs, but doesn't deserve.

8. Auschwitz-Birkenau

Please allow me to end on a serious note. As horrific and traumatic as a visit to this notorious camp might be, it is something we owe the millions of victims. We owe it to them to keep these memories alive, to continue educating future generations, so that atrocities such as these never happen again. In 8th grade our class trip was to Washington D.C. We visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and I bawled my eyes out for most of the tour. When we came to the train car, and we had to pass through it to continue the tour, I could not move. I cried and cried, and my friend Martha had to push me through, while also guiding me because I could not see on account of all the tears. After seeing the display of the hundreds of pairs of shoes confiscated from prisoners on their arrival, I was done. I knew from that moment on, at age 14, I would do whatever I could to be part of that education. I would do whatever I could by myself or through various organizations, to ensure that this does not happen again. Maintaining these camps is crucial. The programs that bring people to view these camps and see firsthand the horrors of life inside must never stop. We can not let the Holocaust-deniers ever gain a solid foothold. This is our duty.

Please take a moment and let me know what you think of my choices. Feel free to leave a link to your blog so I can do the same.

Sarah