“Never forget.” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM),located in Washington, DC, is dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. It is THE museum to visit to ensure that people will “never forget” the extermination of 6 million Jews, and other targeted groups persecuted under the regime of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.
But the Museum’s mission extends beyond the Jewish Holocaust. To that end, this interactive memorial, one of the largest in the world, has the stated mission of “helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.”
In a society where civil liberties are being stripped away and fake news, aka propaganda, is glaringly apparent, the phrase “worth a visit” certainly applies here. However, a visitor to the US Holocaust Museum should be in the right frame of mind. A trip here is not a family vacation to Disneyland, nor, for that matter, a pilgrimage to a more traditional biblical holy site, but rather a day of somber remembrance with vivid lessons and warnings for today.
Upon entering the museum, visitors are given an identification card with the name and personal information of an actual person who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust. They become “your person” as a visitor moves through the exhibits—presentations that include Hitler’s rise to power, anti-Semitic propaganda, the horrors of the Final Solution, et al. With each event, visitors are given updates on their person’s well-being, though their “being” was usually far from well. Relatively few of the persecuted survived the atrocities, though a few of those still living today can be found at the Museum where they share their gripping stories, up close and personal.
Exhibits include a mix of text, videos, photos, artifacts, and video footage so real that one feels as if they are there on the spot as a Jewish family is forced off to a camp, or an SS guard with German Shepherd in tow, is glaring right at you. The third floor focuses on the concentration camps (that includes a room-sized scale model of Auschwitz) where there are artifacts such as a replica of the metal banner over the entrance of Auschwitz, a bunk where prisoners slept in a concentration camp, heartrending pictures drawn by children and dozens of worn-out shoes. In contrast, visitors walk through displays that are a vivid reminder of the vibrancy of Jewish life in Europe pre-Holocaust. It could be anywhere, and even more chilling, it could be today.
“Fun for the whole family!” is not a slogan that can be ascribed to visiting this museum. Instead, leave the little ones at home and be prepared for a sobering, yet life-altering, experience—a 3-hour tour through history that leaves many visitors visibly sickened and sad, but also inspired by the many heroic people, including Christians, who did whatever they could to save their Jewish neighbors. Understanding and perspective comes with time on what people did and didn’t do that allowed this atrocity to happen, and the US Holocaust Museum will certainly give visitors that.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum serves as a clear and present reminder of the dark spiritual forces at play that oppose God’s covenant people as well as their Jewish homeland, the state of Israel. For that reason alone, it makes a trip to this nontraditional “holy site” a life-changing experience that will leave sober-minded visitors acutely aware of how easily any human can capitulate to the twin evils of self-preservation and fear.
Experience a chilling, but necessary, interactive multimedia presentation of the Holocaust, while learning sobering lessons of history applicable to today and which must never be repeated.
Email Cindy at cindy@signaturetouchtours.com or
visit www.signaturetouchtours.com to make a life-changing “living history” pilgrimage to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
