Holocaust Museum

Witness wall in the Holocaust Museum. We are their witnesses. A very powerful statement.

We visited the United States Holocaust Museum on Monday. This was a very hard and emotional museum to visit. This museum was very informative, thought-provoking, sobering and sometimes quite sad, but a must see. I think if you ever have the chance to visit here, you should. Even though it is heart-breaking to see man's inhumanity to man. I think we can honor the victims and survivors of the holocaust by visiting here, letting them tell their stories, and then remembering; especially at a time when some in our world think that it never happened.

I don't have many pictures. They don't allow picture taking inside the museum, but I did find a couple off the internet that I'll post.

Right when you walk in the museum, you can feel the 'spirit' of the victims. It was overwhelming at times and brought me to tears. We spent almost 4 hours here-- it is a 4-floor museum and very, very dedicated to detail. I will never forget the things I saw and learned there. One thing that was really interesting to me is that most of the 'regular' German folks did not even know what Hitler was doing. They had never heard of Auschwitz or any of the other concentration camps. Hitler had lied about what he was doing with the Jews. When the U.S. and Britain invaded, they made regular citizens of Germany come and tour the concentration camps and see what had really been done. They had video of this. It showed people running from the camps and crying sobbing and shaking their heads. They were sick. They were shocked and ashamed and angry.
They had a real box car inside the museum that was used to transport Jews to the camps. They actually let you go inside. It was very eerie to imagine being stuffed in there for days with 100 other people...not being able to sit or lay down.
This is a picture of the actual box car being lowered down into the museum before the museum was even built.

They told a story of Jews that were hiding in someone's house in Germany. The Gestapo were coming. One woman had a little baby and the baby would not stop crying. She put her hand over the baby's mouth to try to get him to be quiet. She accidentally suffocated him, by trying to save his life (and the life of others who were hiding with them.)
Another story that breaks my heart: One Jewish mother and father knew that the only way their daughter had a chance of surviving was to send her away to live with some friends in another country. They knew that this would be heart-breaking and traumatic for them and for their daughter. They began to distance themselves from her. They didn't hug or kiss her anymore. They talked to her like she was an acquaintance. They told her that some of their friends wanted her to go visit them to see where they lived. The last time they saw here, they put her in the car and just waved. No hug, or kiss.

Can you imagine?

Ok. I think that's enough of remembering. It is painful. But I encourage any who have the chance to go.

Hall of Remembrance. Pictures of Jews and their families in the 1940's.

Outside the Museum. The view from the front is very aesthetically pleasing; curved and round. Behind you can see the red brick- square and straight and very cold-looking. This information about the building was taken from their website: "The curved portico of the 14th Street entrance — with its squared arches, window grating, and cubed lights — is a mere facade, a fake screen that actually opens to the sky, deliberately hiding the disturbing architecture of skewed lines and hard surfaces of the real entrance that lies behind it. In Freed's (the architect's) words, "Visitors must pass through the limestone partition to enter a concrete world." This motif of contrasting appearance and reality is repeated throughout."