After walking back to the parking garage for my bag and coat, and an embarrassing realization that I was in the wrong garage, and then lunch at Chef Geoff's (excellent), I walked west along Pennsylvania Avenue to 14th Street and then south to Independence Avenue to the Holocaust Museum.
The museum provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy. Since its dedication in 1993, the museum has welcomed over 30 million visitors.
The museum's collection contains over 12,750 artifacts, 49 million pages of archival documents, 80,000 historical photographs, 1,000 hours of archival footage, and 9,000 oral history testimonies.
Upon entering the museum, visitors are given identification cards, each of which tells the story of a random survivor or victim of the Holocaust. Visitors then walk through a history of the Holocaust, starting with the Nazi rise to power, the American response to Nazi Germany, Aryan ideology and the Final Solution, and finally the liberation of the concentration camps by Allied forces.
The Hall of Remembrance is the museum's official memorial to the eleven million victims and survivors of the Holocaust. (3rd photo)
One fascinating exhibit was on the debate of why Auschwitz was never bombed even though the Allied Forces knew what was happening there as early as 1944. In fact, a plastics plant was bombed just five miles away. Secretary of War John McCloy was said to have "killed" the requests to bomb the Auschwitz concentration camp, instead concentrating on only military targets.
