From its opening and dedication in 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has opened its doors to over 36 million visitors from all over the world. I have visited the museum five times now, and I can personally testify the museum's popularity (the crowds were always so dense!). More importantly, I find the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to be one of the best museums in the world, for it not only explores the past, but also aids visitors in contemplating what the Holocaust means for the present.
Upon entering the museum, the visitors are handed an ID card with the name and life summary of someone who lived during the Holocaust. Visitors are encouraged to read various entries on their ID card at various checkpoints throughout the museum. Soon after receiving their ID cards, visitors enter an elevator with a small tv screen inside which plays a short clip of US soldiers describing their thoughts upon first encountering the concentration camps across Europe. "We couldn't imagine what we found....we just...we've never seen anything like it" as a picture of a pile corpses flashes across the screen. This solemnity dominates the visitors' experiences for the remainder of their time at the museum; it gently yet firmly urges them forward into deeper understanding of this great tragedy.
The museum begins with an overview of the Nazi Party's rise to power, and how antisemitism took root in Germany and other parts of Europe. The museum guides the visitors to examine how the Nazi party utilized propaganda, education, religion, politics, nationalism, and violence to convince the German people (and much of Europe) to participate, ignore, or be somewhat complicit in implementing the horrors of the Holocaust. The Museum covers everything imaginable pertaining to the holocaust from how the Nazi party rose to power to how everyday German citizens could possibly allow their government enact systematic genocide.
What is most remarkable about this museum is that it is not content to simply report facts, it discerns how those facts impact and illuminate the present and future.
Specifically, the museum has exhibits about preventing genocide and how to address contemporary genocidal movements happening now in places like Syria and Darfur. The museum does a fantastic job at providing a riveting and educational public history experience, and I hope I can make my sixth visit soon enough.
I think you did a really great job summing up what it is about the USHMM that brings people back. I went with my mother to visit for the first time two summers ago, and it still haunts my memory, especially the displays of shoes and ovens. Whenever someone mentions the Holocaust to me now, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, or any of the concentration camps, I cannot help but smell the stench of shoe leather and feel sick to my stomach.
ReplyDeleteRight before I went, I also read a book about the American Ambassador to Germany's family, who were in Germany just before the start of World War II, called In the Garden of Evil. One of the things that the book mentioned was that, although they didn't learn until later, the Nazis' earliest death experiments, on the mentally and physically handicapped, were taking place across the street from them in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Berlin. That display also really hit me, especially because of what I had just read.
Thank you for focusing on this museum. I think that, of the many museums in DC, this one deserves recognition for the work it does.