The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
This museum and memorial is not for young children. A thoughtful permanent exhibit on the life of a young Jewish boy in Germany (“Daniel's Story: Remember the Children”) is, however, suitable for slightly older children (8 to 12 years old). The museum has a sign posted recommending that children under 12 not view the material, but even teenagers need to be prepared for this museum.
Daniel's Story
This walk-through exhibit attempts to explain the events leading up to the Holocaust to children over eight years old. This exhibit is a Jewish child's personal account of life in Germany during the Holocaust. Daniel takes viewers through his town, his home, the streets of his town in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the ghetto he was sent to, the cattle-car ride to a concentration camp, and what happened to his family after the war.
Each room of the exhibit has sample diary entries in Daniel's own words. Daniel's diary entries chronicle the confiscation of his parents' store, the burning of their synagogue, being able to buy food and other merchandise only from Jewish merchants, being taunted in school, and being forced to wear the yellow star of David.
When his family is forced from their middle-class home and herded into a ghetto, both Daniel and his sister are forced to start working. His family is sent by cattle car to a concentration camp, and a film ends the exhibit explaining what happened to the family after the cattle-car journey, where Daniel was separated from his mother and sister, who were killed in the camps.
For the young and those who have never read The Diary of Anne Frank, this is as close to an interactive experience of what happened to those who were children during the Holocaust as one can come.
Other Exhibits
There are a handful of changing and permanent exhibits that you can view, including the Wall of Remembrance, tiles painted by schoolchildren to remember the 1.5 million children killed during the Holocaust, as well as a brief orientation film on the history of the Holocaust and the museum itself that is played every 15 minutes.
When you get in line to enter the elevator to the fourth floor, where the chronological history of the persecution and elimination of European Jews under Hitler begins, you are given a reproduction of an identity card from one of the Holocaust's victims, two-thirds of whom were killed during this time. An estimated 12 million people were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, a number that includes 6 million Jews as well as gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, the disabled, and political dissidents.
The fourth floor tells the story of the Nazi rise to power, with examples of their propaganda against the Jews. The third floor continues the story of the increasing ghettoization of Europe's Jews and includes an authentic cattle car that was once used to transport victims to the camps. This will make the hair on your neck stand as you pass through it. There is also a replica of the wrought-iron sign that hung over the entrance to Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work Will Make You Free”). Here you will also see a disturbing documentation of the Nazi scientific experiments on the camp prisoners.
On the second floor, the story of the liberation of the camps and the end of the war is told. There are relics and a graphic display of the cost of human lives as evidenced by a room full of the shoes of victims and pictures of piles and piles of removed wedding rings and human hair that was used to stuff upholstery. Here, too, are actual pieces of the crematoriums and camps.
The final exhibit is a 30-minute film called Testimony, in which survivors tell their own stories. This leads to the solemn Hall of Remembrance, where an eternal flame burns to remember the victims of the Holocaust.
The museum is also a research center and Holocaust registry. There is a museum store that has a unique collection of books about the Holocaust and its survivors, as well as a museum café that serves both kosher and non-kosher meals.
Location and Hours
The museum is located off the Mall, and it is accessible from the Smithsonian Metro station (Blue or Orange Line). You can visit the museum from 10
You need tickets to see the permanent exhibitions — not because it costs money to view them but because there's a need to control the number of people walking through the exhibits at one time. (The memorial receives 2 million visitors a year, and the gallery spaces of the museum itself are small.) You can pick up the tickets at the museum's information desk, or you can order them ahead of time.
