The Holocaust Museum

Introduction

In this article, I'm going to tell you about one of the best museums I've ever visited, but also the saddest one - the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This museum is located in central Washington D. C. , a stone's throw away from the National Mall and the Washington Monument.

This memorial museum opened in 1993, and since then has welcomed over thirty million visitors, from tourists to celebrities, and from children to heads of state. As a whole, it is an official memorial dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, from the building itself to the exhibitions it houses. I found the museum's facade similar to the shape of a synagogue.

No sooner have you arrived at the museum's entrance than you are confronted with a large poster depicting two children and the text: 'How do we keep their memory alive? ' - 'Never again. ' You are hurtled straight into history, and straight away begin to feel a sadness which will accompany you throughout the whole of your visit.

The museum is thematically divided into the Ground, Fourth, Third, Second and First Floors (in the order you visit them).

Ground Floor

After passing through a metal detector, you enter into a large, brightly lit but empty room. Get your ticket from the desk unless you have reserved one online beforehand, and go to the lift on the left-hand side of the room, just next to the ticket booth.

Before you get in the lift, I recommend that you take one of the identification cards on the right. The lift will take you to the exhibition, which begins on the Fourth Floor, and from there you descend the stairs on your own account until you again reach the Ground Floor. In the lift, you're given some instructions and are shown a video under one minute long which introduces you to what you're about to see...

The identification card of course tells you the true story of a person who lived through the Holocaust, and you turn the pages at the end of each floor. Extremely sad, but the details on the card are also very moving. Mine was Zelda Piekarsa's card, a Polish girl from a Jewish family, who liked to dance...

Fourth Floor: The Nazi Attack

The exhibition is a dark and cold place, to be honest. This floor is dedicated to the story of the Nazis, detailing the phase after Hitler took power up until the start of the Second World War - the phase in which their terror activities were planned and the first attacks against Jews and other races the Nazis viewed as 'inferior' began.

The Nazis began with a Jewish boycott, meaning a day where people avoided Jewish shops, and soon moved on to book and synagogue burning before they began to completely discriminate against the Jews and other minorities, killing them or imprisoning them in concentration camps.

In addition to viewing documents of the time, photographs, Nazi uniforms and maps charting the evolution of Europe over these years, you can also see certain Nazi contraptions which are really horrifying. Some which really caught my attention were devices used to see if a person was of the superior race (or Aryan race) or of an inferior one. Among them was a table with different coloured eyes, a device for measuring the size of someone's head and nose, and a collection of different coloured locks of hair...it really shocked me.

There are also two projection rooms which show a fifteen minute documentary on loop, and there's a sign telling you the amount of minutes remaining until the documentary begins again.

In terms of Zelda, the Polish girl on my identification card, during this time period her house was seized, her possessions confiscated and her family and her sent to live in a ghetto...

Third Floor: The Final Solution

We move on to the Third Floor, which houses the exhibition dealing with the lives of Jews during the period in which they were persecuted and annihilated, known as the 'final solution'.

Here you can read information and see documents, objects, sketches and photographs of the concentration camps. I think this is the saddest and most horrible exhibition of them all, but simultaneously the most interesting.

Speaking from experience, it's a very complete collection that they have here - it really transports you to the era. It's even better than visiting a concentration camp (I really do speak from experience, since I've visited one: you can read all about it in my article 'Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp'). They even have the part of the wrought-iron gates at the camp entrances with the famous inscription 'Arbeit macht frei', meaning 'Work sets you free'.

One of the things which caught my eye in this exhibition was the train compartment which transported people to the camps: you can enter it, and it's such a small, dark space, where you can really imagine all these people crammed in there, without food or water and without knowing their destination...

Another thing which is really chilling is an area where thousands of burned shoes belonging to Jews are on display. The smell is unforgettable, and the image removes you from the present and transports you into the past.

An image I'll never forget was one of the heaps of hair they cut off the prisoners and later sold. Just horrible. Another one of course was one of the gas chambers, where they killed thousands of people.

A photo of Jewish people's arms with their identification number tattooed onto them really gave me the chills. This was a way of depersonalizing them, of stripping them of their identity and reducing them from a person to just a number. They remained marked with these tattoos until their deaths.

There's also a tower covered with Jewish family photos, the 'Tower of Faces'. I felt awful looking at it, but honestly, you can't really comprehend the reality that every one of these people had a life, a past, a family, and photos, and that all this was robbed from them.

Next, there's a room called 'Voices of Auschwitz', where you can sit down and listen to the voices of people who survived the concentration camps.

Returning to Zelda's story, she was separated from her family due to her hair colour, and taken to a work camp. There she was given the job of a mechanic. Since she had no experience of being a mechanic, they decided to kill her, but a German soldier intervened and ordered her to take on another job...

Second Floor: The Final Chapter and the Hall of Remembrance

On this floor, you learn about rescue attempts (some of them successful); there is information about people of all different countries who fought against the Holocaust and who saved or helped people to escape it. Among these names is the famous Oskar Schindler, who saved hundreds of Jews and whose great achievement is celebrated by the film Schindler's List. There is also information on the life of Jews after the Holocaust ended, but, above all, on the indifference of the majority of the world while the Holocaust was taking place.

According to the information that I read, one of the reasons why people didn't often attempt to rescue people from the concentration camps was because they feared that if the rescue attempt failed, conditions would worsen for those inside. This didn't entirely convince me, but I also don't know what I would have done myself had I been alive at the time.

On the other hand, the Hall of Remembrance on this floor is an official monument to the victims of the Holocaust. It's a bright, peaceful and silent place where you can pray for the victims, since this hall honours them. It felt like the end of the journey, entering into the sunlight with everything lit up after so much darkness and torment, though many of the victims never got to see the light at the end of the tunnel they longed for.

This floor also features the Information Centre on the survivors and victims of the Holocaust. There's a room where they project videos onto the wall showing testaments of the survivors, and if you haven't already cried during your visit here, you'll certainly do so now. One survivor told how while his house was being burned, another person stood beside it praying and giving thanks to God. They asked the man why on Earth he was doing this, and the man answered: 'I'm thanking God that I'm not like the people who are doing this. '

Zelda, the girl on my identification card, spent two more years in the concentration camp, and was still alive when it was liberated on May 8th by Soviet soldiers. She spent four more years living in Germany and then emigrated to America.

First Floor: The Story of Daniel (for children) and the Museum Shop

This floor is aimed at younger visitors to the museum, and explains the Holocaust through the story of Daniel, an imaginary boy whose life is based on true stories of children who lived through the Holocaust.

On one of the floors (I can't remember which), there are also Jewish children's possessions on show, such as their drawings and books with photographs - it's really horrible.

Aside from the permanent exhibition I've just described, there are other temporary exhibitions at the museum throughout the year. You can find out about them online before your visit, and you'll need to book a ticket for them in advance.

The museum shop is one of the worst shops I've ever seen. I understand that it makes sense to have one, and the books dealing with the Holocaust are super interesting, but in my opinion you really shouldn't be selling Holocaust souvenirs.

Opinion

As you can gather from everything I've already told you, this isn't a place you can avoid being moved by. In my opinion, it's the best and the worst museum I've ever visited in my life. It's the best museum because it's realistic, thorough, thought-provoking, educational and from the moment you enter until the moment you leave, you're entirely focused on the story it tells. In terms of it being the worst museum I've ever visited, I think only those who have also been there will understand this; from the moment I entered (really, from the moment I saw that first poster outside before I went in) my heart felt like it was continually breaking, I felt like crying the entire time and everything there is to see is devastating and horrible, so it's not really a place for people with a weak disposition when faced with harsh reality. However, it's a piece of our relatively recent past which the whole world should know and be educated about so that we never allow it to happen again, so that we don't allow history to repeat itself.

You'll feel all kinds of emotions during your visit: sadness, anger, nausea, compassion, empathy and even happiness when you hear just one story with a happy ending. It really makes you reconsider and reassess your life, your priorities and those of the rest of the world.

Additional information

The museum is entirely free to enter, like most of the museums and monuments in Washington D. C. I've always though it ridiculous having to pay to enter museums which in all honesty aren't that great, and the fact that this brilliant one offers free entry is amazing. I'm very grateful to this city for allowing me to enjoy and learn about so much without paying a penny.

A few things you may like to know are that the toilets are on the ground floor, and you aren't allowed to eat, drink or smoke within the museum. The mobile phone and photography policy is a bit ambiguous, but basically you're allowed to take photos as long as you don't use flash, and the best thing to do is to switch your mobile onto silent, since this helps to maintain the museum's atmosphere.

Incredibly, the museum has been attacked in the past (I'm just as gobsmacked as you are about this), including one instance where one of the security guards actually died.

The Holocaust Museum's opening hours are from 10am to 5. 30pm, Monday to Sunday. The museum is only closed on Christmas Day and on Yom Kippur (a Jewish festival celebrating Atonement Day, a day of repentance). To enjoy the museum properly, it's best to go when it's at its least busy so you don't have to wait for people to finish reading the boards - arriving just as the museum opens is the best time to get there.

How to get there

To get to the museum, the best thing to do is to get the metro to the stop 'Smithsonian' - the lines which stop there are the orange, the blue and the silver ones. Head towards the Washington Monument, and turn left onto Raoul Wallenberg Street. There you'll see a building with an orange tower, and the museum is right next door. You can't miss it.

Visit this museum, hear the victims' stories and help to spread their story further so that an event as terrible as this will never happen again. We owe them that at least, and not just them, but everyone on earth. We're all different, and just because we are doesn't mean we should be the object of or inferior to anyone else.