A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stimulates leaders and citizens to confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy. A public-private partnership, federal support guarantees the Museum's permanence, and donors nationwide make possible its educational activities and global outreach.
Recommended for those 11 years or older, the permanent exhibit is the main body of the museum and is filled with artifacts, displays, and visual presentations. Since the permanent exhibit requires a timed pass (see below), try to be timely. Before entering the elevator to go to the exhibit, each person is given a small "Identification Card." This I.D. card helps personalize the events and artifacts that you are soon to see. Inside, there is information about a person who lived during the Holocaust - some are Jewish, some are not; some are adults, some are children; some survived, some did not.
After reading the first page of the booklet, you are not supposed to turn the page until you are done with the first floor of the exhibit (which is actually the fourth floor since you start on the fourth floor then work your way down). In the elevator, you are greeted with the voice of a liberator who describes what he saw when finding the camps. When the elevator opens, you are on the fourth floor of the museum. You are allowed to go at your own pace but are on a particular path.
The fourth floor covers the years before the beginning of World War II. There are photographs, video displays, films, and artifacts that explain the increase of terror during 1933 to 1939. The displays describe the book burnings, the Nuremberg Laws, Nazi propaganda, the "science" of race, the Evian Conference, and Kristallnacht. To me, one of the most powerful exhibits was an unscrolled, torn Torah scroll which the Nazis had pulled from its arc during Kristallnacht.
An exhibit that continues to all three levels of the permanent exhibit are the pictures from the Eishishok shtetl. These pictures are another way of making the Holocaust real to the visitors of the museum. There are pictures of a mother and son in a hammock, a family with ice skates in the snow, a father holding up his small daughter, mother and son holding hands in the street, three sisters posed together, a man riding a bike, a child on a swing, and many, many more. These represent the 3,500 Jewish people who lived in the Eishishok shtetl.
The third floor covers the Final Solution, 1940 to 1945. The first section of this floor is about the ghettos. Notice the stones you are walking on (there's a small sign but hardly noticeable). These originally paved a section of Chlodna Street in the Warsaw Ghetto. The next section covers the mobile killing squads, deportation, and camp life. I found two exhibits on this floor to be very powerful. The first, is one of the cattle cars that carried the victims to the camps. There is a path which goes through the train car. As you walk into it, even though you can see both in front of you and behind you, the light and smells change (you do have the option to walk around the car). It is a very powerful experience. The other exhibit that is not for the squeamish, is the one on medical experiments. With video displays in which you have to look over a concrete wall and down into (most likely to protect children from seeing it), shows very gruesome pictures of the experiments, including air pressure, seawater, and skeleton collection.
Again we come to the pictures of the Eishishok shtetl. It is to remember that these people, real people, were the victims of all the horrible things we had just seen. Two men shaking hands; ten people sitting around a dinner table; a young child holding a teddy bear posing with his mother and father.
The second floor is the "Last Chapter" which covers the rescuers, resistance, and liberation. There are a lot of visual pictures documenting what was found in the camps. For most of the victims, liberation had come to late.
The special exhibits change frequently but are certainly worth going through. Ask at the information booth in the central floor of the museum for information (and maybe a brochure?) on the exhibits. Some recent and past exhibits include the Kovno Ghetto, the Nazi Olympics, and the St. Louis.
Daniel's Story is an exhibit for children. It usually has a line to go in and is crowded throughout the exhibit's path. You start the exhibit with a short film (you remain standing) in which you are introduced to Daniel, a young Jewish boy. The premise of the exhibit is that you are walking through Daniel's house looking at things that Daniel used everyday. It is through touch that the children learn about Daniel. For instance you can flip through an enlarged copy of Daniel's diary in which he has written a few short descriptions; look in a the drawer of Daniel's desk; move windows up and down to see before and after scenes. The children see how Daniel's life changed. In the very end, leaving me also with tears in my eyes, you are asked by the voice of Daniel, "Remember my story. Remember the children."
Since you need tickets for the museum which are free but given out on a first come first serve basis, it is highly recommended that you get to the museum early. The tickets are not necessarily important to get you into the museum itself, but are very important as to when you will be able to get into the permanent exhibit (the main feature of the museum). The tickets have times on them, scheduled every 15 minutes from 10:00 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Those people farther down the line or those who don't arrive until later in the day may receive a very late time to enter the permanent exhibit.
Please note that two lines are formed in the front before the museum opens - one for museum members and one for non-members. Members need to bring their membership cards and are given tickets before non-members (note: members are given tickets first even if they arrive after the non-members). The member line is rarely long, thus if you are a member you can arrive anytime before 10 a.m. Since joining the museum is relatively inexpensive and supports the museum, you might want to consider joining (for more information, call 202-488-0400). For non-members, get there early. Though the museum doesn't open until 10 a.m. every day (except on Yom Kippur and Christmas when it's closed), there are people standing in line as early as 9 a.m. (perhaps even earlier on weekends); by 10 a.m. the line goes around the building. Though there are a few benches in the front, you will most likely be standing while waiting in line. |
