Illinois Holocaust Museum, Skokie, IL

 

Pinchas Gutter

The Illinois Holocaust Museum is in Skokie, Illinois. It was established after several marches were threatened in Skokie by neo-Nazis. The Chicagoland Holocaust Survivors created the museum. It moved to its present building in 2009. We have been to the Holocaust Museum in Israel, the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, and the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. So why go to another holocaust museum? We had seen on 60 Minutes showing how Holocaust stories were being preserved in a new way, week-long interviews that were captured by holograms. You can ask questions of a survivor and get their story. The Skokie museum is one of the places where you get to interact in this fascinating way. In our case, we heard from Pinchas Gutter, born in Poland in 1932, his family was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto and then sent to the Majdanek concentration camp. Here men and women were separated, and Pinchas saw his parents for the last time. He managed to survive three different camps and was liberated in April 1945. Even after liberation, he had to survive in a country devastated by war. He was eventually sent to a rehabilitation camp in Britain, and subsequently lived in France, Israel, South Africa, and now Canada. His story was fascinating, particularly how small kindnesses allowed him to survive the camps and their aftermath.

Another interesting special exhibit was “The Journey Back” where you accompany a survivor back to the camps he had been sent during the war. This is a virtual reality experience, my first ever, but was somewhat disappointing as they put black and white pictures of prisoners mixed in with the color picture of the prison camp today. Still, it was good.

Warsaw Ghetto - 20% of Warsaw's Population in 2% of land

The major exhibits go through the history of the rise of the Nazi Party, the targeting of Jews as the cause of Germany’s suffering after World War I, the elimination of Jewish businesses, the segregation of Jews, cripples, and other ‘undesirables’ into Ghettos and labor camps, and the “final solution” to exterminate the Jewish race. We were familiar with most of this material from other museums.

Jews Killed (red) vs. Pre-war Population

We finished off our trip by visiting our granddaughters in Minneapolis before heading home.

Cincinnati zoo

 

Manatee

We had planned to visit the Harriet Beacher Stowe house as part of our Civil War theme, but it was closed for renovations. Just a few blocks away was the Cincinnati Zoo, which has been rated as one of the best zoos in the country. I also would give it a high rating, because of the many unique animals we saw there. We spent most of four hours at the zoo and probably saw about half of the zoo. We decided to skip most of the Africa sections and spend our time elsewhere: Cat Canyon, Dragons (with a Komodo Dragon as well as a Blue Tree Monitor), Gibbon Islands, Gorilla World, Jungle Trails (with an Aye-Aye and Sifaka), Manatee Springs (with Manatees, Alligators and turtles), the Reptile House (with quite a few poisonous frogs and a Galapagos Tortoise)  

Black Footed Cat

There were a couple buildings where you could see nocturnal animals ( Aardvark, Aardwolf, Black Footed Cat, Sand Cat, Fennec Fox, Bushbabies, Ocelot and Ringtails). Also unique was the insect world with lots of tarantulas, beetles, and spiders. Well worth the visit.

Giant Dead Leaf Mantis

Harper's Ferry, West Virginia

 

It’s t

Field Hospital during Civil War

ime to start towards home. Our first stop was the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. This is a small, old museum, but still worthwhile. It emphasized the innovations made in medicine during the civil war. The first was the use of field hospitals which would be near the battlefield, where first aid was applied to control the damage from wounds or disease. The second was the use of ambulances, horse-drawn carriages to move the wounded, primarily from the field to a hospital. Third, was the use of chloroform or ether to reduce the pain of surgery – over 90% of operations used some form of anesthesia. There were quite a few stories about the doctors and nurses of the time, including Clara Barton founder of the American Red Cross. They also emphasized that 2/3^rd of the deaths during the civil war were not from battle, but from disease, especially dysentery. Another form of medicine I hadn’t considered was veterinary medicine because of all the horses and mules used to carry supplies and cannons. We spent about an hour here.

Surgical Kit

On to Harper’s Ferry, which is situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers where Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia join. George Washington established a munitions factory here because of the availability of water power. The National Park Service maintains the Lower Town as a historical park. 

Lower Town Harper's Ferry

This was also the site form John Brown’s Raid in October 1859. He led a group to take over the town with the goal of freeing the slaves here. He had raised money across the country over the preceding months from abolitionists and purchased rifles and pikes. He and his men took over the armory and took hostages, but the slaves in the area did not join his rebellion. The marines eventually take over the armory, leaving John Brown and his men in the fire house. The marines take over the fire house without any hostages being injured, but 16 people died, including 10 of Brown’s men. By the end of the month, Brown and his remaining men are tried and sentenced to death. He was hanged on December 2^nd. While he may have lost the battle, a newspaper account read: “The Harpers Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of disunion more than any other event since the formation of the Government.” Harper’s Ferry would change hands eight times during the Civil War.

John Brown's Raid

Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA

 

Franklin Institue

We remember going to the Franklin Institute when our girls were in Junior High. At the time, it was the one of the first museums to have interactive displays (first time we had seen computers used in a museum). We were interested in how the museum is today. They still rate as one of the best museums to bring your children. We started at the heart exhibit: they had a walk through heart, an exhibit that let you hear how fast hearts beat in different animals (a whale beats at 20 beats/min and a bird at 400 to 600). Then we watched the dissection of a goat heart, which is very similar to a human heart in size. The electrical activity in the brain was represented thus:

The section on electricity had comparison of the different types of light bulb, you could turn a crank to see how much effort it took to light an incandescent, LCD, and LED lights (quite impressive how little cranking it took to brightly light an LED). The section on machines was fascinating, showing you how various levers and configurations would translate one type of motion (circular motion to run your wind shield wipers) to another or how you gained leverage or moderated speed by the type of gears used. These types of demonstrations continued in different subject areas: trains, airplanes, the body, the brain, etc. It was fun to see a bunch of teen-age boys experimenting with the shape of wings or trying to create a helicopter.

Independence Hall, Philidelphia

 

Assembly Room

We headed to Philadelphia (about a hour and 20 minute drive). We started at Independence Hall, built in 1750 as the Pennsylvania State House with offices for the governor upstairs, a court on the West side and the legislature on the east side. The Assembly room was used by the Second Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. Here was debated the Declaration of Independence, which had to have the approval of all 13 Colonies. The vote was to be held on July 2^nd. And one of the 3 delegates, Caesar Rodney, from Delaware had to ride all night to Philadelphia (60 miles) to be there for the vote. On July 4^th, they approved the written document, and signed the document on August 6^th. This was also the room where the Constitution was debated and ultimately approved. The only original furniture in the room is Rising Sun Speaker’s chair.  

Rising Sun Chair

Next door is Congress Hall, originally the Philadelphia County Courthouse. This was where congress held their sessions from 1790 until 1800, when they moved to Washington, D.C.

Senate Chamber

Of course, we also visited the Liberty Bell with it's message of "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" which became a cry for the abolition of slavery as well as women's suffrage. 

The Liberty Bell

Hagley Museum and Gardens

 

Hagley House owned by Dupont family

We headed up the Eastern Seaboard, camping at Elk Neck State Park just a few miles south of the Delaware border. The campsites here are a challenge for trailers because of a narrow road and obstacles. We had to go about 6 feet on the grass to get our trailer in. In the afternoon we headed to Wilmington, DE to visit the Hagley Museum and Gardens. E.I. Dupont and his brother immigrated from France in 1800. They initially planned to settle in the Shenandoah Valley and had formulated nine different business opportunities. The Shenandoah Valley proved too expensive, so they ended up outside Wilmington along the Brandywine River. Their ninth business opportunity proved to be the winner – making gun powder. E.I. was a hunter and found the American-made powder to be of poor quality, so he began mixing his own. The local stone, a blue-colored gneiss was solid building material, and locally they could find the ingredients for the gun powder. The river provided waterpower for the refining and mixing of the powder. He built his house here in 1802, later adding a lean-to on the building to house his offices. Upon his death one of his sons became the owner of the house and the powder mill and modified the house to remove the lean-to and add two wings. That is the house we see today. The gun powder factory was down the hill from the house and continued to manufacture gun powder here until 1921. During that time there were 288 explosions, killing over 100 men. The city grew too close by 1921, so they shut the mill down. It was fascinating to see so much of the original equipment still there. Especially the two 8-ton wheels that were used for mixing the powder. There was a flood last May, and the sluice had been filled with over 50 dump trucks worth of mud. They are hoping to be able to reopen the sluice this summer to demonstrate the mill operating.

Wheels for mixing gun powder

Fort McHenry, Baltimore, MD

 

Diagram of the Battle

We woke up to our first day in almost a week without the threat of rain. (Last night there was 2” hail just west of us.) We also have done 3 days straight of museums, so instead of going to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, we decided to go to Fort McHenry. After watching the park movie, we listened to the ranger talk on the Battle for the Chesapeake during the War of 1812. He used red cones to represent the British Fleet or their 5000-man army and blue cones to represent American privateers and militia. The British were fighting the French in the Napoleonic Wars, but this had affected U.S. trade, since the British would sink any ship trading with France, and they often stopped American ships to search for “British deserters” impounding them to serve in the British Navy. After much debate, the U.S. declared war on Britain to begin the War of 1812. Congress sent the U.S. Army to Canada, intent on extending the U.S. borders North. They burnt down the city of Toronto as part of that attempt.

In 1814, the war with Napoleon ended, so Britain sent their fleet and army to the U.S. targeting the population centers and agriculture of the resource-rich Chesapeake Bay. With the army near Canada and no real Navy, only local militia and privateers were available to defend the Bay. The British declared that any town that shot at the British would be burned down. Indeed, they burned several towns. While the privateers had some success against the British Navy, they were eventually cornered up-river and burned their ships to avoid capture by the British. Then the British targeted Washington, D.C. When the 5000-man British army encountered the 7500 militia defending D.C., the ill-trained militia ran, and the British came in and burned D.C. However, here they only burned the government buildings, leaving homes alone. Their next target was Baltimore, the 3^rd largest city in America and the largest port. The army first tried attacking the city from the East, but the Americans had a large militia who were dug in East of the city with substantial earth works on a hill above the city. The British concluded that they couldn’t take the city that way, so the plan was to attack the city by sea. Meanwhile, Francis Scott Key was sent to the fleet under a white flag to negotiate the release of a U.S. Citizen who had been taken as a prisoner of war in Washington. He completed the negotiation but wasn’t allowed to return to Baltimore until after the battle. The American forces had sunk ships along the channel that led to the Baltimore harbor and stretched a chain across the remaining portion. This would force any invading ships to be within gun range of Fort McHenry which was on a peninsula near the harbor entrance. The problem was that the guns and rockets of the British fleet could bombard the fort from two miles, while the cannon of the fort could only fire about 1 ½ miles. At 7 AM on September 13^th, 1814, the British bombardment of the Fort began. 

Defense Batteries

Key watched “The rockets red-glare, the bombs bursting in air” all day and night. The bombardment lasted 24 hours, and through the smoke, Key searched to see which flag was flying above the Fort. As we all know… he saw the Stars and Stripes still flying. The British concluded that there was no way, they would be able to destroy the Fort from the sea. They left the area, and the peace treaty of Ghent was signed about 3 months later.

Star Spangled Banner above the Fort