The train system was easy peasy to use. We usually used the Archives/Navy Memorial stop to and from the College Park, Maryland Metro Station.
There is a red Circulator bus that routinely runs a “loop route” (one direction only) around the National Mall and out to the monument areas and Union Station. Cost $1, although the first day or two were free when we activated our Senior Metro cards on the ride into DC. We used the Circulator several times, but it was usually faster to walk to the various museums.
SMITHSONIAN HOLOCAUST MUSEUM – A MUST EXPERIENCE!
We were immersed here for a little over FOUR hours! This museum was amazingly well done. It provided an incredible and thought-provoking experience while adding a lot more to my personal knowledge. I didn’t realize the extent of persecution that occurred to such an insane number of people who weren’t Jews. I can’t understand how there are people who deny this piece of history. It DID happen. I wish there was a way for EVERYONE to come experience this Smithsonian. It certainly enriched my knowledge of the Holocaust and the Nazi invasions and occupations of so many countries, but especially Poland as it initiated World War II.
The beginning portion sounded like what we are seeing happening today. Increased racism, violence… Scary. Are we not learning from the past??? Only fools think they know better and ignore lessons from the past. We MUST keep history from repeating itself. ALL human beings should be treated humanely with respect.
WARNING: This blog has more to read than most, but it was the only way to do the Holocaust and this memorial museum justice. The information written in italics throughout this section is from the many, many information boards in the museum.
In 1933, more than nine million Jews lived in continental Europe. Within less than a decade, most of the countries in which they lived would be invaded, occupied or annexed by Nazi Germany. Within a dozen years, two out of three European Jews would be dead, and European Jewish life changed forever.
FOUNDATIONS OF A DICTATORSHIP
Adolf Hitler was appointed as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. He assumed power under a guise of lawfulness that concealed his true intentions. Conservative politicians underestimated him; left-wing politicians were equally naive. Neither took Hitler seriously until it was too late.
At first, the new government included only three Nazis: Hitler as Chancellor, Hermann Goring and Wilhelm Frick in ministerial posts. Once in power, they quickly laid the legal foundations for a Nazi dictatorship.
On February 27, 1933, a fire destroyed parts of the German parliament building, the Reichstag. Hitler immediately accused the Communists, an opposition party, of setting the blaze, and he issued an emergency decree that allowed him to crush political opposition. This decree became the basis of the Nazi police state, and would remain in effect until 1945.
On March 23, a Nazi-dominated parliament voted to transfer all legislative powers to Hitler’s cabinet. After this Enabling Act, the parliament would serve merely as a rubber stamp. All political organizations except the Nazi party were banned on July 14. The one-party state was thus established within SIX MONTHS of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor!”
VIOLENCE AND BRUTALITY
Hitler had long relied on the use of terror. His main tool was the Nazi party’s paramilitary organization, the SA. When Hitler became Chancellor, he inaugurated his regime with a rash of SA violence against his political opponents.
Street battle on “Bloody Sunday,” February 12, 1933 left one Communist dead and hundreds wounded. About two weeks later, on the night of the Reichstag fire, 4,000 Communists and Social Democrats were arrested. In June, during the “Week of Blood,” Nazi thugs killed 91 Communists in Berlin alone.
“Shoot to kill” orders were given to quell demonstrators. In April, the Gestapo (an acronym of Geheime Staatspolizei, or Secret State Police) was formed. Simultaneously, Nazi officials and SA leaders set up dozens of make shift concentration camps all over Germany. These so-called wild camps were sites of great cruelty. By the end of July 1933, almost 27,000 people—virtually all of them political prisoners—were incarcerated in wild camps.
In March, 1933, LESS THAN two months after Hitler became Chancellor, Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS (elite guard of the Nazi party) founded Dachau, the first SS-operated concentration camp. It was the precursor of a vast system of camps.
Targeting the Jews
At 10:00am on April 1, 1933, the Nazis stage a massive, nationwide boycott against Jewish businesses and professional offices. In cities, towns, and villages throughout Germany, storm troopers and SS men blocked entrances of Jewish shops. The Star of David had been painted in yellow and black across thousands of shop doors and windows. Signs read: “Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!” “The Jews Are Our Misfortune!,” and simply – “Jew.”
In the first 60 days of the Nazi regime, antisemitic violence had been directed against individuals. This boycott was the first public, nationwide attack by the Nazi party agains the entire German Jewish community. In many places, spontaneous violence erupted against Jews. Some Germans, however, made it a point of honor to enter Jewish shops or to call on Jewish friends.
PROPAGANDA AND TERROR
The Nazis used propaganda, along with terror, to manipulate the German population. In the hands of Hitler’s’ Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda was simplistic, emotional,, repetitive, and uncompromising! (Sound familiar!?!) The propaganda indoctrinated Germans to the Nazi ideology. Among these was the “Leader Principle,” which promoted Hitler as the ultimate source of power and “justice”. The public perception of Hitler was that of a national savior! (WAKE UP, USA!!)
Even elementary schools became forums of political indoctrination and racial hatred. Nazi propaganda taught Germans to think in racist terms. Political reliability was measured by a person’s adherence to racist ideas, especially antisemitism. These messages helped to realize another aim of propaganda: the public’s total obedience to the unlimited power of the regime.
Below is a group of elementary children with the antisemitic picture book, The Poisonous Mushroom.
Freedom of speech was ruthlessly suppressed. Beginning on September 1, 1939, Germans who listened to uncensored information on foreign radio broadcasts risked serve punishment. Endless rallies, parades, speeches, rituals and sham elections were tools of public persuasion. Every year, Germans were expected to participate in Nazi events.
HIERARCHY of “SUPERIOR’ AND ‘INFERIOR’ RACES
All human beings were grouped into a hierarchy of “superior” and “inferior” races. The Nazis regarded Germans and other “Nordic” people as racially superior, and Slavs, Roma (Gypsies), and blacks as inferior. At the bottom of this scale were the Jews, considered also to be the most dangerous race, in part because in the Nazis’ view, Jews lived parasitically off other races and weakened them.”Superior” races must prevail over “inferior” races in order not to be corrupted by them. “Superior” races must be encouraged to reproduce, but procreation by “inferior” races should be discouraged.
As part of an overall effort to “purify” the German population, a program of forced sterilization was announced on July 14, 1933.
The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring required that certain categories of persons be sterilized; anyone suffering from “congenital feeblemindedness,” schizophrenia or manic depression, epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, congenital blindness or deafness, a severe physical deformity, or severe alcoholism. So-called Genetic health Courts administered this program.
Sterilizations began in January 1934. Within a decade, between 250,000 and 300,000 people—most of them Germans—had been forcibly sterilized. Only the Roman Catholic Church opposed the program consistently. Protestant churches accepted it and often cooperated with it.
Before Hitler, the USA had led the world in polices of compulsory sterilization. But no nation carried sterilization as far as Nazi Germany.
HITLER CLAIMS MORE LAND
Hitler was in open violation of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War I, when he sent German troops to remilitarize the Rhineland—part of Germany west of the Rhine, on March 7, 1936.
Next On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria. Austria was incorporated into German the following day. A rigged plebiscite in April gave 99.7% Austrian approval to the annexation (Anschluss).
Hitler then threatened war unless Czechoslovakia ceded the Sudetenland, a border area. September 29, 1938, he convened a conference of European leader in Munich to resolve the crisis he had provoked. Czechoslovakia was not represented! In hopes to prevent a possible war, Great Britain, France and Italy allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland.
THE PLIGHT of AUSTRIAN JEWS
The Anschluss was disastrous for the Austrian Jews. About 185,00 Jews lived there with 90% of them in Vienna. The Nazi authorities immediately initiated a program of anti-Jewish persecution. They were attacked and humiliated on Vienna’s street. Next, Jewish businesses were taken over by non-Jews or were closed down. Austrian Jews were then removed from their homes to segregated dwellings called “Jewish houses” and were pressured to emigrate.
By the summer of 1939, 21,000 Jewish businesses had been closed, and 5,000 taken over. By the outbreak of the war, 75% of the Austrian Jews had left the country. Within a year, the Nazis achieved here what had taken five years to carry out in Germany: the economic exclusion and large-scale emigration of the country’s Jews. This became a model for the territories that Germany would later conquer during the war.
WHERE CAN THE JEWS GO?
Country after country acknowledged the Jewish refugees’ plight, yet offered little more than excuses.
The United States FINALLY agreed to admit—for the first time—the full legal quota for immigrants from Germany and Austria. The Dominican Republic alone offered to receive a substantial number, 100,000 Jews!
“NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS”– November 9, 1938
The ‘Night of Broken Glass” makes a turning point in the Nazi persecution of Jews. A series of new anti-Jewish decrees ensued resulting in the complete isolation of the Jews in Germany, which included Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. More than 1000 synagogues were set on fire, over 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, hospitals, schools and homes were damaged. More than 25,000 Jews were arrested without cause and sent to concentration camps. At least 91 were killed.
In the wake of the November pogroms (violent riots incited with the aim of massacring or expelling the Jews), the Nazis imposed a penalty equal to $400 million on the entire German Jewish community. Jews were held liable for the repair of their damaged, homes, shops, and synagogues. The government also confiscated all the insurance payments owed to the Jewish victims of the destruction.
Meanwhile the Nazis filled the concentration camps of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen with thousands of Jewish inmates. They were only released if they agreed to emigrate quickly.
Hitler and his Nazi regime were quite successful at ridding Germany of political opposition. They considered any display of opposition as a political crime. By the eve of the war, of the 25,000 in concentration camps, the majority were political prisoners.
HOMOSEXUALS
As part of the Nazis attempt to “purify” German society and propagate a “master race,” the Nazis condemned homosexuality as “socially aberrant.” Storm troopers raided places of homosexual/lesbian community.
In 1934, the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, created a special police bureaucracy to combat male homosexuality. Homosexual men were then subjected to systematic criminal prosecution. Imprisoned in concentration camps, their uniforms sometimes were marked with a black dot which later was replaced with a pink triangle. Lesbians were persecuted to a far lesser extent.
JEHOVAH WITNESSES IMPRISONED
Because Jehovah Witnesses refused military service and would not pledge allegiance to the regime, they were accused of espionage and conspiracy.
Nevertheless, the Witnesses continued to meet, preach and distribute literature. They lost their jobs, pensions, and all civil rights. Beginning in 1937 they were sent to concentration camps. The Nazis designated them as “voluntary prisoners”: Jehovah’s Witnesses who renounced their belief could be freed. Not one of them recanted.
FREEMASONS
Freemasons were also considered ideologic foes. In 1935 all Mason lodges were abolished.
Hitler’s dictatorship demanded the public’s unconditional obedience, and it tolerated no criticism or dissent. Most German organizations were quickly placed under Nazi control which included farmers and labor unions. Soldiers did not pledge allegiance to the constitution or the state, but personally to Hitler!
NO SANCTUARY IN AMERICA
Between 1933 and 1938, about 40,000 German Jews found sanctuary in America. The United States could have absorbed many more, but it did not. Bound by immigration quotas influence by anti-immigration sentiment, and hampered by the anti-semitism at the State Department, the United States remained callous in its unwillingness to help.
I am bewildered at this callous attitude, both then and now, considering everyone in the United States (other than Native Americans) has come from a family who immigrated to the US! How soon we forget our own humble beginnings (unless you are a Rockefeller or Vanderbilt). Fear is the biggest tactic used on the general public to create uneducated support for such restrictive policies that don’t allow for humane treatment and emergency assistance to others.
Hamburg-America Line’s Ship St. Louis
In May, 1939, 936 passengers set sail from Hamburg, Germany to Cuba. All but 6 were Jews. Holding Cuban landing certificates, they seemed to be among the lucky ones seeking to leave after “The Night of Broken Glass”. The Cuban President had been pressured to invalidate their certificates even before they left Germany! The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a relief organization, offered to post a $500 bond per passenger, but that proposal was rejected.
Sailing so close to Florida and able to see the lights of Miami, the German sea captain appealed in vain to the US for permission to dock. The passengers sent a desperate telegram to President Roosevelt requesting asylum, but it went unanswered. The St. Louis had no choice but to sail back to Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain, and France each accepted the refugees, but hundreds of them were killed later in the Holocaust.
A REAL family who was on the St. Louis...
Following the invasion of Poland, the Nazis unleashed a brutal campaign of terror against the population. Tens of thousands of Polish citizens were killed or sent to concentration camps and prisons in order to deprive the nation of its political and intellectual leaders and to destroy resistance. By late 1940, more than 300,000 people had been forcibly evicted from their homes and transported to Generalgouvernment, the German-administered territory of Poland not annexed to the Reich. The Poles were considered racially inferior and useful only as labor for the Reich. The Nazis did not want the Poles educated beyond fourth grade. They closed Polish universities and many secondary schools, and killed or imprisoned thousands of teachers, professors, and priests.The invasion of Poland initiated WWII.
Hitler issued the command for anyone who uttered even one word of criticism to be executed by a firing squad.
Hitler’s Euthanasia Program
The Nazis targeted people with disabilities for mass murder. The were seen as a genetic threat and an economic burden. In spring of 1939, they planned a secret operation to kill children with disabilities. That fall, Hitler authorized “Operation T4,” which expanded the program to adults.
Six “euthanasia” gassing facilities were established. The program continued till the end of the war in 1945. An estimated 250,000 people died in the “euthanasia” program. At least 10,000 children were murdered.
A SHTETL – a Jewish community
The photographs in the tower below were taken between 1890 and 1941 in Eishishok, a small town near Vilna, in what is now Lithuania. Jews had lived here for almost 900 years.
ANNE FRANK – I hope students today still read The Diary of Anne Frank! Anne’s family was hidden from the Nazis via a secret stairway behind a bookcase.
(Zoom in on each portion of the collage below to read the details.)
JEWISH GHETTOS TO CONCENTRATION/DEATH CAMPS
Throughout the conquered territories of eastern Europe, the German authorities segregated Jews in ghettos, or restricted zones, where they were compelled to wear Star of David badges. Originally these ghettos were to keep Jews separated from the non-Jewish population. Later, they served as staging grounds for the extermination of Jews. The Germans gradually removed more than 2 million Jews from ghettos to concentration camps and death camps. First to be deported were the elderly, the sick, and the children. By the autumn of 1944, no ghettos remained.
Closed Ghettos
The few smaller ghettos had only a fence surrounding it to keep the Jews confined, but larger ghettos such as the one in Warsaw had a high wall with barbed wire around the them. There was an armed guard at entrances/exits. In all ghettos severe crowding, terrible sanitary conditions, and starvation were the norm. Jews isolated in the smaller closed ghettos were often moved to a larger, more secure ghetto, or were simply taken away from the town and shot.
EXTERMINATION OPERATIONS
As German troops invaded Soviet territory, they were accompanied by special trained mobile squads assigned to kill all Jews, Communist party officials, and Roma (Gypsies) in the conquered areas. The extermination operations followed a standard procedure. The unit rounded up the victims, drove them by foot or in trucks to a secluded site, made them remove their clothes, and shot them. Their corpses were buried in large pits, which the victims themselves had often been forced to dig. They had collaborators and police in the areas that volunteered their services as well as the German army.
More than 1.2 million Jews were killed by these squads in the occupied Soviet territories. These mass shootings initiated the “Final Solution.”
A few days after the Germans captured Kiev, in September 1941, Soviet saboteurs blew up several buildings occupied by German authorities. The Nazis decided that in retaliation, the Jews of Kiev would be killed. On September 28, signs were posted ordering all Jews to appear the next morning at the Jewish cemetery. They were to be “resettled”. Failure to appear was punishable by death.
Thousands of Jews showed up. They were taken to Babi War, a ravine two miles from the Kiev city center, forced to hand over their valuables and remove their clothes. Groups were herded in the ravine, where members of the killing unit shot them. More than 33,000 Jews were killed within two days.
In August 1943, as the Red Army advanced, the Nazis returned to Babi War to remove evidence of the mass murders. Bulldozers unearthed the thousands of corpses, which were then incinerated.
Soviet reports after the war estimated the number of victims at 100,000, but the true number will never be know.
DEPORTATIONS TO KILLING CENTERS
Beginning in 1942, the Nazis began deporting Jews and Roma (Gypsies) from camps and ghettos to killing centers, all in Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chetmno, Treblink, Betzec, and Sobibor. Freight trains were the primary means of transportation. Of course the Nazis camouflaged their intentions, referring to deportation as “resettlement in the East” and telling the victims that they were being transferred to labor camps where they would be treated well. Most Jews did not suspect the existence of the death camps, and believed what the Nazis told them. Even as late as 1944, many Hungarians Jews had never heard of Auschwitz.
During the summer of 1942, about 250,000 Warsaw Jews were transported in freight cars to Treblinka, where they were killed with carbon monoxide gas. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, more than 437,000 Jews from Hungarian ghettos and camps were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 147 trains. Most of them were gassed soon after their arrival.
The railroads were integral to the mass murder plans. The death camps were situated near major rail lines in occupied Poland. The Nazis constructed special railway spurs to bring the transports directly into the interiors of the camps.
Most deported Jews endured a torturous train journey to the death camps in bare freight cars, under conditions of hunger and thirst, extreme over-crowding, and horrible sanitation. In winter they were exposed to freezing cold temperatures, and in the summer they were enveloped in suffocating heat and stench. Many, especially elderly and young children, died during the journey.
We walked through a “Karlsruhe” freight car, one of several types that were used to deport Jews. It was a sobering experience being in one of these bare bones railcars like this.
As many as 100 victims were loaded into a single car! The trains usually carried between 1,000 and 2,000 people, and sometimes as many as 5,000. Their weight slowed the speed of travel to about 30 mph, greatly prolonging the journey. Frequently, the trains halted for hours or days at a time on side tracks or in stations along the way.
Statistical data provides us the needed information to grasp the degree of unprovoked, murderous acts, but when specific names, pictures, and comments from those enduring these horrific conditions and events are also included, it reaches a more important tangible level of awareness and human emotion. Since most of us don’t personally know any victims or survivors of the Holocaust, it is important to read these personal comments from those who lived this hell. The scale of the Nazis brutal treatment and termination of innocent human beings must always be part of our education. This museum is quite intense – as it should be.
There was an area called “Voices from Auschwitz”. I was able go in sit quietly, and listen. It was heart breaking, but I felt compelled to sit and listen to these victims’ experiences. Fear, confusion, pain, shame, determination, hope and inner strength can be heard in these voices. Booklets of the printed transcript were available to follow along. This is a MUST DO.
Soviet troops discovered over 15,000 pounds of human hair at Auschwitz!
“FINAL SOLUTION” – STOLEN GOODS
When we arrived, Barry and I were each handed an “Identification Card”. Inside each card were a couple of pages that told the story of a real person who lived during the Holocaust.
Mine was for Rachel Salechutz. Born in Kolbuszowa, Poland on March 4, 1917. (One year older than my mom!)
Rachel was 8th child born to Hasidic Jewish parents. She spoke English, Hebrew and German in addition to Polish and Yiddish. At school, Rachel’s beautiful singing voice earned her leading role in plays even though Jewish children were rarely given parts. Rachel and her brother were active in a Zionist scout organization.
1933039: In 1933 Rachel started writing weekly postcards to her brother in Palestine. When the cards arrived, immigrants from Kolbuszowa would come to hear about their families and friends. In August 1939 Rachel’s boyfriend obtained a visa to emigrate to America, and after an engagement ceremony, Rachel parted from her fiancé. A week later, Germany invaded Poland. Rachel could not join her fiancé, and no more postcards reached Palestine.
1940-42: The Germans established a Jewish ghetto in Kolbuszowa in 1941. Rachel was fortunate to find work as a secretary for a German ghetto official, but in the summer of 1942, all of Kolbuszowa’s Jews were transferred to the larger Rzeszow ghetto. There, Rachel met the German she had worked for in Kolbuszowa. He offered to hire her back, but Rachel said she would take the job only if the German could obtain papers that would spare her remaining family from deportation.
In July 1942, Rachel, her mother, and her four sisters, their husbands and children were deported to the Belize extermination camp, they all perished. (from card #7672)
Identification Card that Barry got was #6178
Bernhard Liebster was born in Oswiecim, Poland in 1882.
Bernhard, who was from a religious Jewish family in Oswiecim, emigrated as a young man to Frankfurt, Germany, There he married Bertha Oppenheimer from the nearby town of Reichenbach. They settled in Reichenbach where they were one of 13 Jewish families. Bernhard worked as a shoemaker, and the couple raised three children.
1933-39: In a corner of his living room, Bernhard ran a small shop specializing in orthopedic shoes. Antisemitism was growing in Germany, but the townspeople of Reichenbach lived contentedly with their Jewish neighbors, even after nationwide pogrom in November 1938. But when Germany went to war in September 1939, Bernhard’s son, Max was arrested while on an outing in Baden.
1940: The Gestapo arrested Bernhard in the winter of 1940 during a campaign to “cleanse” Reichenbach of its Jewish inhabitants. Bernhard was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin in northern Germany. By chance, his son, Max was sent there as a prisoner a few weeks later. Max found Bernhard in the barracks lying behind a pile of straw. With swollen and infected legs and fluid in his lungs, Bernhard was close to death. Bernhard died in Sachsenhausen in March 1940. He was 58 years old.
I think these Identification Cards are a great idea. It gives every visitor a personal connection that they take with them no matter how long they chose to stay at the museum
WORLD AT WAR: THE GERMAN COLLAPSE
SPRINKLING OF HUMAN DECENCY
Luckily, there were some individuals and a few communities who risked their lives to help Jews hide from the Nazis or even escape to a safe haven like Sweden because it was the right thing to do.
Factors, such as the intensity of German occupation policies, local antisemitism, and proximity to a safe refuge often influenced the success of rescue efforts. In Denmark, 9 out of 10 Jews were saved; in Norway and Belgium about 1 out of 2; in the Netherlands, 1 out of 4;; and in Lithuania and Poland fewer than 2 in 10 survived. When ordinary citizens became rescuers, Jews had a chance of survival.
DANISH RESCUE BOAT
The clandestine rescue of Danish Jews was undertaken at great risk. The boat below and others like it were used in one of the earliest reuse operations, organized by a group of Danes code-named the “Helsingor Sewing Club.” They called their escape route the “Kiaer Line,” after Erling Kaiser, the group’s founder. In October 1943, the Helsingor Club enabled several hundred Jews to escape across a narrow strait to the Swedish coast. On each trip, this boat carried 12 to 14 Jewish refugees. Kiaer was arrested by German authorities in 1944 and imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp.
THE LIBERATION OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS
PERPETRATORS OF THE HOLOCAUST WERE MANY
Perpetrators of the Holocaust came from all walks of life and all levels of society. Few thought of themselves as criminals, but most were aware of the results of their actions.
First of course was Hitler, who set in motion the program of physically destroying entire groups of people. Some perpetrators had been well-established officials before Hitler’s rise to power; others were newcomers seeking to establish themselves. Some were zealots motivated by Naziracial ideology; others merely followed orders. Most performed small roles in what became a vast undertaking.
They included the high-ranking bureaucrats who helped formulate and implement the “Final Solution,” and those who identified and located the victims. Lawyers who handled “Aryanization” of property owned by Jews, industrialists who profited from the slave labor of concentration camp inmates and contractors who built the gas chambers and supplied Zyklon B-all contributed to genocide. So, too, did the physicians who managed the extermination centers of “Operation T4”, the SS men who operated the death camps in Poland, and the ordinary soldiers who executed Jews and Roma by firing squad.
German citizens watched in silence as their Jewish neighbors were isolated, dispossessed, and deported for “resettlement in the East”. Some bystanders sought to exploit the situation of the Jews for personal gain, but most merely stood by, neither collaborating nor coming to the aid of the victims. This passivity amounted to acquiescence, and the planners and executors of the “Final Solution” counted on bystanders’ not intervening in the process of genocide.
US EXTREMELY SLOW TO CHANGE IMMIGRATION QUOTAS
HALL OF REMEMBRANCE
This was where we completed our Holocaust experience. The Hall of Remembrance is in a hexagonal structure that overlooks Eisenhower Plaza. The openings in the wall give views of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. Around the perimeter of the room are alcoves representing the many concentration and death camps. Visitors are welcome to light candles a a symbol of renewed life and an act of remembrance.
The hexagonal skylight permits soft natural light to illuminate the entire room.
An eternal flame burns before an inscription from Deuteronomy reminding everyone the responsibility of memory and to pass it on to our future generations.
Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children, and to your children’s children.
This seemed a fitting close for us. We were mentally and emotionally drained.
From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website:
The Smithsonian Holocaust Museum is among our national monuments to freedom on the National Mall. The Museum provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, and the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values. With unique power and authenticity, the Museum teaches millions of people each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide. And we encourage them to act, cultivating a sense of moral responsibility among our citizens so that they will respond to the monumental challenges that confront our world.
Will you stand up for others when injustice is aimed at them?
After we get a bite to eat…Barry and I are heading to the Smithsonian American History Museum. We look forward to it’s many nostalgic displays.