United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

More than 30 million people from 132 countries have visited this museum since it opened in 1993, and the museum continues to be a top draw. In the busiest months, March through August, if you arrive without a reserved ticket specifying an admission time, you may have to wait in a lengthy line.

Before you visit the museum, you might want to access its website, www.ushmm.org, and download copies of the Visitors Guide and the Permanent Exhibition Guide. These are also available at the museum, of course.

From its collection of more than 15,350 artifacts, the museum has organized some 900 items and 70 video monitors to reveal the Jewish experience in three parts: Nazi Assault, Final Solution, and Last Chapter. Before you board the elevator that takes you to the fourth floor, where the tour begins, you select the identity card of an actual victim of the Holocaust; at several points in the tour, you can find out the location and status of the person on your card -- by 1945, 66% of those whose lives are documented on these cards were dead.

Fourth-floor exhibits portray the events of 1933 to 1939, the years of Hitler's and the Nazi party's seemingly inexorable rise to power. A 14-minute film clarifies the long history of anti-Semitism. Newsreels show Hitler speaking commandingly to huge crowds of rapt listeners. Displays of newspaper clippings, billboard ads, signs, and other artifacts reveal Hitler's insidious use of propaganda to sway Germans into believing that Jews -- and homosexuals, and the mentally ill, and gypsies, and the disabled, and other non-Aryans -- were inferior and not worthy of life.

Third-floor exhibits cover the years 1940-44 and illustrate the narrowing choices of people caught up in the Nazi machine. You board a Polish freight car of the type used to transport Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka and hear recordings of survivors telling what life in the camps was like.

The second floor recounts a more heartening story: It depicts how non-Jews throughout Europe, by exercising individual action and responsibility, saved Jews at great personal risk. Denmark -- led by a king who swore that if any of his subjects wore a yellow star, so would he -- managed to hide and save 90% of its Jews. Exhibits follow on the liberation of the camps, life in Displaced Persons camps, emigration to Israel and America, and the Nuremberg trials. At the end of the permanent exhibition is a most compelling and heartbreaking hourlong film called Testimonies, in which Holocaust survivors tell their stories. The tour concludes in the hexagonal Hall of Remembrance, where you can meditate and light a candle for the victims. The museum notes that most people take 2 to 3 hours on their first visit; many people take longer.

In addition to its permanent and temporary exhibitions, the museum has a Resource Center for educators, which provides materials and services to Holocaust educators and students; an interactive computer learning center; and a registry of Holocaust survivors, a library, and archives, which researchers may use to retrieve historical documents, photographs, oral histories, films, and videos.

The museum recommends not bringing children 11 and under; for older children, it's advisable to prepare them for what they'll see. You can see some parts of the museum without tickets, including two special areas on the first floor and concourse: "Daniel's Story: Remember the Children" and the Wall of Remembrance (Children's Tile Wall), which commemorates the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust, and the Wexner Learning Center. There's a cafeteria and museum shop on the premises.

Holocaust Museum Touring Tips

Because so many people want to visit the museum (it has hosted as many as 10,000 visitors in a single day), tickets specifying a visit time (in 15-min. intervals) are required during the busiest months, March through August. Reserve as many as 40 tickets in advance via Extremetix Inc., by ordering online at https://tix.cnptix.com/tix/ushmm?eventid=21322, for $1 per pass (you print your own tickets), or by calling tel. 877/808-7466, for an additional charge of $3 per pass. If you call well in advance, you can have tickets mailed to you at home. You can also get as many as 20 same-day tickets (if available) at the museum beginning daily at 10am (lines form earlier, usually around 8am).

Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.

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