The Holocaust Museum

Spencer and I went to the Holocaust Museum. We actually went on Martin Luther King Day, and it was completely packed. It turns out that that is the busiest day of the year there. So, we went back the next day. It was much, much better. Just a handful of people rather than buses and buses of people.


This is probably one of my favorite museums that I have ever been to. I think that I like it because of how significant it is. I like the message that it gives and what it represents. These are some of the things that the museum is supposed to portray:



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.

Located 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, 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. Today we face an alarming rise in Holocaust denial and antisemitism—even in the very lands where the Holocaust happened—as well as genocide and threats of genocide in other parts of the world. All of this when we are soon approaching a time when Holocaust survivors and other eyewitnesses will no longer be alive.

The museum was very effective in conveying a humility and solemness about the Holocaust. It was truly unbelievable. I recommend this museum to everyone.

This is Spencer outside.





It starts out by giving you a passport with a real person's identity and what happened to them. Most of them end up with the person dying in the concentration camps. You go up in an elevator to the fourth floor and you begin to go through the museum. I goes one direction level by level back to the beginning.

It has videos and artifacts and educational phones about every aspect of the Holocaust. The whole thing was just...unbelievable. Spencer told me that there are some people that are trying to say that the Holocaust never happened or that it wasn't as bad as people say. I was completely repulsed by this information. I couldn't believe that someone would deny this horror. I think that those people and the people involved in the Holocaust are going to hell. I don't think that they can come up with any excuse good enough.

The hardest part was the actual voices of survivors describing what happened to them. The other hardest part was watching the video footage of when the soldiers came to the camps to set them free. It was very graphic to see bodies being bulldozed and people that look like skeletons walking around. It is probably the most disturbing thing that I have ever seen.






The whole thing really made me think, though. What if this were to happen again? Would I be brave and strong enough to fight it? My greatest fear would to be a bystander. How weak and cowardly would that be?


There were poems on some of the walls. This is one that really reiterated this point to me:


First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a socialist.
Then the came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

By Pastor Martin Niemoeller

There was a picture of all of the hair that they made the prisoners shave off. They sold the hair for wigs and to stuff pillows, etc. The voices of the actual survivors talked about how they had to get naked and shave their heads and turn over their clothes was just horrible.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seen times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreathes of smoke beneath a silent blue sky."

"Never Shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever."

"Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself, never."

Elie Wiesel

Most of the prisoners never even made it into the camp. They were killed with Zyklon B gas in fake showers. There is a sculpture by Mieczyslaw Stoierski that depicts the Crematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau to scale. It is amazingly detailed and very moving.

Spencer told me that not all of the people were killed by the gas alone, but that they would be trampled and suffocated underneath the people in a state of chaos brought on by sudden fear.

All of the children were killed upon arrival. Most of the women were killed on arrival as well. Only the men strong and able to do work were kept alive and tattooed with numbers.



Others were taken to have scientific experiments done on them. To see how long the could go without food, or how long they could live in cold water, or if they could survive on strange foods. It was to experiment to teach their soldiers survival methods. They performed all sorts of cruel experimentation on these people.

This is a pile of the shoes that the Nazi's kept when sending the prisoners to be killed.




"We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers,
from Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam,
and because we are only made of fabric and leather
and not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire."


Moses Schulstein





This is a three-story tower display of photographs taken of the people in Eishishok, Lithuania. It was a Jewish community that existed for 900 years. In 1941, an SS mobile killing squad entered the village and within two days massacred the entire Jewish population. The photographs are some of the people killed.





There were artifacts from the concentration camps. There were two actual bunk beds. One of the most solemn artifacts was an actual rail car that was used to transport the prisoners to the camps. 100 people were forced to fit inside. And it was tiny. Like the size of a very small room. Most of the prisoners died on the way to the camps. They were starved or suffocated or dehydrated or froze to death or died of heat stroke, etc. Some died of disease because they had to urinate and defecate in the places that they were standing. I cannot imagine the smell of those rail cars. With dead bodies and bodily fluids...I just cannot comprehend it.






My favorite part of the whole museum was the Hall of Remembrance. This room is in the shape of a hexagon. And I liked that idea because a hexagon fits inside of the Star of David. And by connecting the points on the hexagon, you can make another Star of David. And you can keep putting one inside the other forever and ever.




The floor had triangle tiles and there were triangle windows. This reminds me of the triangle registration patches that the people had to wear in the Holocaust.

This one was for gay people. They had some for Poles, gays, gypsies, Jews, etc.



The hall is at the end of the walk-through. It is quiet and serene and invites you to pause and contemplate and honor those that died (as well as those that survived) in this great tragedy. The hall itself is very bright. Almost too bright for mourning. Perhaps it is supposed to convey a sense of hope. On the walls are the names of the twenty most important concentration/death camps. It has in the front an Eternal Flame, designed to serve as a formal memorial space. People go there to say Kaddish, which is the Jewish prayer of commemoration. You can light candles that are all along the walls in memory of relatives and friends to perished in the Holocaust. This room is just beautiful and sacred. It almost feels like the celestial room at the temple. I found myself wondering if the spirits of those who died in the Holocaust were there in the room, helping to convey the message and spiritual feeling.




These are the candles that are lit in honor of those victims.






Before leaving the museum, there is a book where you can write your name and a message or whatever you want. I wrote that our trip there was dedicated to Spencer's teacher, who was an Italian survivor of the Holocaust. She has taught Spencer a lot over his years at BYU and has been a great teacher and mentor to him. I also wrote "Let us never forget." Spencer wrote the same message in Italian. Then Spencer and I signed it. This was in the Hall of Witnesses that is full of windows and light.

The whole museum was beautiful and very spiritual.



MISSION STATEMENT
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America's national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country's memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims — six million were murdered; Gypsies, the handicapped and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.
The Museum's primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.
Chartered by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1980 and located adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Museum strives to broaden public understanding of the history of the Holocaust through multifaceted programs: exhibitions; research and publication; collecting and preserving material evidence, art and artifacts related to the Holocaust; annual Holocaust commemorations known as Days of Remembrance; distribution of education materials and teacher resources; and a variety of public programming designed to enhance understanding of the Holocaust and related issues, including those of contemporary significance.