Halabajah

I have no idea where yesterday's blog went. Let's try again. :)

We have been so busy it's been hard to keep up with everything. On Wednesday we visited Halabajah. Halabajah lost 5,000 people in 5 minutes to the chemicals of Sadames regime. We visited a monument housing hundreds of photos of the aftermath and a three dimensional exhibit depicting the scene on a street just after the attacks. There were several Kurdish men and women walking with us explaining what we were seeing. One man pointed out a large photo on the wall and encouraged us to have a closer look. It was a truck with a bed full of dead Kurds, men, women, boys and girls. Beside the back of the truck stood a little boy looking completely lost. Through an interpeter and more hand signals he explained that the truck was filled with members of his family and he was the little boy.

For the majority of people I know, it's hard to imagine this kind of loss. You can read about it in the history books, but being here and seeing it first hand was sobering. I just kept thinking that 1988 was a good year. It was the year Myron and I got married. I felt guilty for having had such a happy year when I was oblivious to the horrors these people were suffering.

For the Gold Star moms, I think it was difficult to see, but it gave them comfort knowing their children died trying to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. For all of us, it made the horror of Saddam Hussein real. After visiting the monument we went to one of the cemetery's and laid flowers on a monument there.

Standing on the hill in the cemetery it was quiet and still. As you turned in a 360 degree circle you could see all the little houses or huts these people live in but before your eyes get to the houses, you see hundreds and thousands of headstones.

This is the saddest place I have ever visited.

ch