Sonya's Blog - Day 152 - The Holocaust Memorial Museum

Sonya’s Blog - Day 152 - November 21st - The Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum

Today we are going to the Holocaust Museum. I wanted to get out a little earlier because the Museum can get quite busy later in the day. Admission is free, but if you are in Washington during high season you have to reserve your time to go to the museum. That was not necessary for us because it is no longer high season.

When we got to the museum all our bags had to go through the x-ray scanner and we had to be scanned as well (like at the airport). All of the Smithsonian we have been in thus far have had bag checks and a security scanner, but this was the highest security yet. We all cleared. Natasha had to take a sip from her water bottle to prove that it was water, since she had already opened it. They had a bag check, which was nice. It is nice to be able to drop off our lunch kits and jackets when we tour a museum.

The first step of the museum is to go to the elevators where you take identification papers and then get in the elevator. Your identification papers are for a person that lived during WWII and was affected by the Holocaust. My papers were for a very young girl. I took photos of the card and they are below:

The elevator takes you to the fourth floor where you start you tour. This floor covers the rise of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Worker’s Party) in Germany and what events lead to them taking power. It also covers anti-semitism and the history of it in Europe. It also covers what happened after Hitler took power and the events that lead to the start of WWII. It also talks about the erosion of rights and freedoms for Jewish people in Germany and how this was enforced and carried out. Hitler originally just wanted the Jewish people out of Germany and didn’t care where they went, they were welcome to emigrate. This was very difficult, however, because there was nowhere for them to emigrate to and even as their situation became more dire in Germany (which was well known) countries would not relax their immigration laws. The Voyage of the St. Louis highlights these difficulties. 937 passengers on the St. Louis held landing certificates for Cuba. When the boat docked in Cuba, the Cuban government had already invalidated their landing certificates and would not let the passengers disembark. They sailed close to Florida and the Captain of the ship appealed for help, but instead they were patrolled by the US Coast Guard so that nobody could jump to freedom and to ensure they returned to Europe. They had to return to Europe where eventually France, Belgium, the Netherlands and England took the refugees. Germany overran western Europe and many of the passengers ended up in Concentration Camps and fell victim to the final solution.

Between 1933 and 1938 the Jewish in Germany went from citizens to outcasts. It was a gradual, but increasingly violent exclusion of Jewish people from public life and the demonizing of them. In November of 1938 the Nazi Party organized the vandalizing of Jewish shops and the torching of Synagogues. It was carried out by the SS the SA and the Hitler Youth, but they tried to disguise it as random acts of violence. This event came to be know as the Night of Broken Glass. Over 7000 Jewish businesses were targeted and 250 synagogues torched. The German police put thousands of Jewish inmates in Concentration Camps and they were only released if they had somewhere to emigrate too. The problem was that German bureaucracy was making it increasingly difficult for them to leave, even if they had somewhere to go. In December of 1938 the German government prevented the flight of capital from Germany and all Jewish property and assets were froze by the German Ministry. Germany was also starting to move it’s forces into neighbouring countries, first Austria and then Czechoslovakia without any response from Western Europe. Hitler banked on Britain and France not responding to try and prevent another World War. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 nobody could deny what Hitler’s intentions were and WWII broke out.

As Germany overran Europe Hitler and the Nazi Party started to put together a Final Solution (as it was called) for the “Jewish problem”. The third floor talks about the Final Solution and how this was implemented. Starting with the systematic separation of Jewish people from the rest of the population and sending them to Ghettos and then moving on to the horrific transportation in rail cars to the Concentration Camps. These journey’s would take days without water, food or toilets. Many died on the journey due to the horrific conditions. There was a rail car that you could walk through in the museum as well as an example bunker from Auschwitz (the largest concentration camp). The Germans called the transportation resettlement and promised that there would be better living conditions and opportunities to work. There we a lot of pictures and testimonials from survivors and details of the living conditions as well as of the gas chambers. How the Nazi’s dehumanized the inmates and made them suffer and then put them to death. As the war dragged on, they simply split the inmates into two lines and one line would go straight to death and the other line would be allowed to work until they were too weak and then they would be put to death. Hundreds of companies used slave labour from the camps, such as BMW and Daimler Benz. The conditions at these businesses were no better and the inmates were treated horrifically by the companies. Some camps were just death camps (such as Sobibor). Of course in some places, they didn’t even send them to a camp, but just took them out into a forest and made them dig a trench and then murdered them. Mass shooting operations killed over 2 million Jewish men, women and children. There was a section that talked about revolts and uprisings in the Ghettos and at the camps. There were also other stories of people that reached out to help Jews escape, hide or get false papers. The lies and the propaganda of the Nazi Party was well organized and well delivered, but rumours and reports of what was really happening started to filter back this lead to some revolts and uprisings.

The second floor talks about Liberation and what the Allied troops found when they started to liberate the camps. There was actually quite a lot of video footage that showed the liberation of the camps. They had a video recording by General Dwight D. Eisenhower visiting a camp. After hearing some of the stories he decided to go to a camp and see it first hand and record it so that nobody could dispute the facts of what he said and the horrific things that they had found. The reason for this is that when the Soviets first liberated camps and told of the horrors, they were not believed as it seemed “inconceivable”. When American troops first liberated camps they saw with their own eyes the indisputable truth of what had happened and the barbarism of the camps. The problems faced by the survivors of the camps who had nowhere to go as their whole life had been taken from them. Most could not return home as their homes no longer existed. It would take months to years to re-establish the displaced persons (DP’s) of WWII. This was not always handled well in the aftermath of WWII.

There are so many things that I haven’t talked about that are in the museum. It is very large. We were told to allow 2 1/2 to 3 hours, but we were there for almost 6. So important to learn about, no matter how awful. I liked that they covered the whole history, which started well before the war. The hatred, animosity, bitterness, embarrassment and anger of Germany after WWI is an integral part of why Hitler came to power and so many people thought he was Germany’s saviour. The Great Depression only fuelled the fire. Once Hitler gained power, how he quickly took control of the whole government and silenced his critics. Anyone who opposed him was sent to the first Concentration camp. Before the war this camp was populated with political prisoners. How things became more and more extreme in Germany, but you dare not oppose because you would be jailed or killed.

It was a powerful message to all of us and an emotionally draining day. Natasha and Isaac were surprised to hear that some people today still harbour deep racism against Jewish people and that some dispute that the Holocaust even happened (despite all the evidence). On our way out there was a memorial plaque for an officer that was killed at the museum in 2002 by a racist, holocaust denier. So sad and it certainly makes the intense security measures more understandable.

We did not have time to explore the galleries on the lower floor that talk about genocides that have happened since WWII, such as Cambodia and Rwanda. What can be done to prevent these genocide and mass atrocities remains a challenge that needs to be addressed. There have been many genocides since WWII, even in Europe in Bosnia-Herzegovnia (1992-1995). It remains a huge challenge for current government to address and the answers have still not been found considering the current debates that are raging around Syrian refugees.

“The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.”

Sonya