On the walls of the holocaust museum in St. Louis, the black-and-white photographs of people stared at us. Their images were hollow-eyed, and they were alive, like the gap of time between past and present did not exist.

The exhibit was only several small rooms; there were no magnificent recreations of jubilant Allies or large hanging planes soaring with the hope of liberation across the ceiling tiles. There were only people.

Groups of children leaned on sepia-toned luggage, held the hands of their parents and looked up at the rail cars with such genuine unknowing that not even the uniformed men could enlighten their pale faces. Women stared from behind the gates of Dachau with the lead of colossal cannons on their hearts. Death tolls posted on the wall played to the images of countless bodies that were no different in substance from my own.

At some point, I peeked from under the umbrella of my own thoughts to gauge the reaction of my teacher, who led me and several classmates through the exhibit. I wanted to see how he handled such a grim history lesson. I noted his composure as he walked alongside these darkly imploring reminders of our past and stored this observation-I admired and trusted him, looked to him as a guide to demonstrate for me how to walk bravely and clearly forward through the incoming barrage of war statistics that were just meeting with my awareness in 2004.

I turned back to the photographs. Uniforms marched across the paper; I watched them form precision lines outside the death camps and felt nothing but incomprehension. The Nazis seemed infinitely removed from myself and my experience, their thoughts alien and overwhelmingly sinister; I felt, as others did, that they must be a different race, inhuman, deeply and inexorably flawed.

I left the exhibit with my class, and as I sat down for lunch, I felt the sharp pain of history but took some satisfaction in the idea that now, at least, we were better than it.

The museum docents, pounding us from every angle with the hammer of history and not seeing lunch as a reason to stop, had progressed to the point of human demonstrations. I wasn’t surprised to see the line of 20 or so students facing the far wall of the lunch room; their arms didn’t bear the gold Star of David, but their body language flaunted their isolation and deprivation. Several adults stood around them and warned others about making contact.

I watched my teacher for some indication of what we were supposed to do, but he was settled into his lunch and urged us to work on an assignment due at the end of the tour. I began to brainstorm with some of the other students, but their attentions were waning. People at tables closer to the simulated prisoners were trying to pass food to them. Some had left their seats entirely to go sit with them on the floor. Even my classmates were growing restless and sat on the edge of their seats, ready to leap up and join the mock protest.

I was ambivalent. While I always saw myself doing what was right, I felt assured that if this was some inclusive social demonstration, my teacher would want us to be a part of it. On the contrary: he urged us forward with the assignment. Though the boy sitting next to me was poised for action, I heeded my teacher’s advice and pulled my attention back to brainstorming.

My classmate turned to me, then. “Roberta, don’t you get it?” He looked at my teacher, and then he looked at me.

Then I got it.

The activity wasn’t about the prisoners along the wall. It was about us. It was about power and authority. With a deep and cold regret, I realized I had just played into the game, that in that one moment I had chosen to ignore the suffering of people sitting not 30 feet from me because somebody I trusted told me to. It wasn’t the right thing to do. It hadn’t even been a question of rightness; it had been a question of loyalty.

All my pacifist ideals quaked under the sickness of my action and the realization of the influence of human relationships and their ability to blind us to the reality of what is going on in the world around us. Morality became fluid, then, based not on perfect stone-cut commandments but in the imperfect bonds between teacher and student, general and soldier. In this new world, the decisions over the lives of people are made in a split-second of distraction.

We choose what we see. I chose to see only the person I trusted instead of the suffering of others. No longer could I so cleanly separate myself from the Germans who turned their eyes away from the lines of bodies streaming into concentration camps, or even the Nazis themselves.

We choose what we see. If we do not remain carefully and constantly aware, it is easy to imagine another Holocaust. It is easy to imagine it happening right now.

Distraction. Loyalty. Preoccupation. Ignorance.

This is how it happens.

Roberta Singer is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences.