Today we spent about 3 hours in the U.S. Holocaust Museum. After visiting the holocaust museum in Jerusalem, and the documentation museum in Nuremberg; we were quite amazed at how much we learned here. The top floor of the museum provides a lot of background on how the Nazi party blamed all of Germany’s problems on the Jews and Communists. When Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, the Nazi’s quickly took power, outlawing all the other parties, and began their crusade against Jews, Gypsy’s, homosexuals, and the mentally retarded. What was sad was hearing how countries refused to accept the Jews - they didn’t want to import a problem. This background was better done than other museums, we’ve been to. The next floor was on the war years – all of the Jewish ghettos and death camps. They had many artifacts from the piles of shoes, to a table where gold fillings were removed. The final floor told the story after the war, and how many Eastern European Jews were fearful to return to their homes because of discrimination, thus began the move to Palestine. Again, most countries refused to accept the many people who were displaced and lost everything during the war. We finished our day by going to the World War II Memorial and a special exhibit in the Smithsonian about Jim Henson and the Muppets.
World War II Memorial
