Thread by @RVAdirt

I want to tell you all stories about two historic places I visited last year: Devil’s Half Acre in Richmond, VA and Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. (1/24) #RVA 🧜🏻‍♀️

Near the end of April 2017 was the first time I went to the Devil’s Half Acre. Some may also know this site by the name Lumpkin’s Jail. Most don’t know about it at all but it is in Shockoe Bottom. (2/24) #RVA

I had a day date planned with my boyfriend at the time that involved walking all over #RVA. We had just left Church Hill Lookout and were walking down Broad Street. We were trying to decide at what point we would catch a Lyft home. (3/24)

I looked to my left and saw a green space in the midst of an abandoned parking lot. I stopped walking and looked around to figure out where we were. Right by I-95 and Main Street Station. #RVA (4/24)

We decided to go down and find out what it was. Turns out... this is the Devil’s Half Acre which was a slave jail. Please keep in mind, Richmond was the 2nd largest slave trading center. We were second only to New Orleans. (5/24) #RVA

There were 3 plaques with information about the site. About the atrocities committed there and the horrible conditions. Some things I have read about the site likened the jail to a chicken coop with people packed in without bathrooms and only 1 window. (6/24) #RVA

There is a house on a trailer there that didn’t have much information. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was supposed to represent. I literally asked my boyfriend “what is that?” We both shrugged. (7/24) #RVA

I clearly remember us observing the nails and construction of the house to determine if it was a replica or a restoration. While the plaques did a great job providing some information, the buildings that stood there were destroyed by 1876. (8/24) #RVA

Richmond Iron Works was built over the location and since then it has been covered by I-95 and a VCU parking lot. Excavation started on the site didn’t start until the mid-2000s. (9/24) #RVA

While it was painful to go there and see a place where humans were treated so horrendously, a lot of the pain and sorrow I felt was because of how covered and buried this history has been. To think of how people’s history of their families has been literally (10/24) #RVA

paved over by development time and time again hurt. The level of disrespect it takes to not recognize a meaningful historical site in the years after the way speaks volumes to the prevalence of white supremacy and racism that prevailed after the Civil War. (11/24) #RVA

Remember, after the fall of Nazi Germany, American soldiers forced Germans to visit the concentration camps. Dachau concentration camp was 3 mile from Dachau city center and 17 miles from Munich. People lived in houses across the street from Dachau. (12/24) #RVA

In contrast, the Devil’s Half Acre is 1 mile from the Virginia State Capitol that was built in the 1780s and used as the Capitol of the Confederacy. The history of slavery was torn down and paved over. (13/24) #RVA

In May 2017, I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. When I arrived, I was part of a tour group and we started at the entrance that looks exactly like our history books taught us with a sign above that said “work shall set you free.” (14/24) #RVA

Our guide reminded us over and over and over again that we needed to be respectful because the entire grounds are a cemetery. The Nazis ran out of places to put the cremains of the people they killed so they used them to fill potholes and dumped them out in rivers. (15/24) #RVA

Our guide told countless stories about how prisoners at these camps did not have the RIGHT to LIVE. If they weren’t able to work, they lost their RIGHT to breathe and were killed. (16/24) #RVA

Where there weren’t buildings still standing, we saw the vast expanse of the foundations that have been preserved. Knowing there were hundreds of people crammed into each place where there is a chimney gives the sense of magnitude. (17/24) #RVA

We were shown belongings that were taken from people. There was an entire case of HUMAN HAIR piled high. Nazis bused human hair to line their uniforms in winter. (18/24) #RVA

We saw where people slept 5+ to each bunk. Even the last one on the floor. It was May and I was wearing a coat. Can you imagine being so weak you can’t fight for a higher bunk so you’re resigned to sleep on the ground in the middle of winter in Poland? (19/24) #RVA

We were told about the experimentation with Zyklon B in gas chambers to kill people. Zyklon B’s original purpose was sanitation of clothes and surfaces. We saw standing cells only a few feet wide up to 4 people were held in for days as punishment. (20/24) #RVA

We saw ovens where people were burned. We saw the train tracks that brought people in. We were told multiple times of the horrific intentional extermination of minorities. The Nazis didn’t see them as people. They were less than animals. (21/24) #RVA

There was one place the Nazis tried to get rid of: the main death chamber. The ruins have been preserved and a monument depicting the systemic assembly line of murder was placed nearby. (22/24) #RVA

After visiting Auschwitz, I didn’t speak for 2 days. It took weeks before I told my friends and family what I saw. Over a year later, recalling the experience makes me nauseas and brings me to tears. When people try to correlate the preservation of history of (23/24) #RVA

the Holocaust to slavery... they are wrong. The South decided to intentionally hide the reality and replace it it with a palatable revisionist version so white people could feel comfortable and at ease. Germany did the opposite. (24/24) #RVA

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