United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through permanent and traveling exhibitions, educational programs, survivor testimonies and archival collections. The USHMM was created to help leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.
Overview
In 2008, the museum had an operating budget of $120.6 million, a staff of about 400 employees, 125 contractors, 650 volunteers, 91 Holocaust survivors, and 175,000 members. It has local offices in New York City, Boston, Boca Raton, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas.Since its dedication on April 22, 1993, the museum has had nearly 40 million visitors, including more than 10 million school children, 120 heads of state, and more than 3,500 foreign officials from over 132 countries and territories. The museum's visitors came from all over the world, and less than 10 percent are Jewish. In 2024, its website had 33.9 million visits from 243 countries and territories. Fifty-seven percent of these visits were from outside the United States.
The USHMM's collections contain more than 12,750 artifacts, 49 million pages of archival documents, 85,000 historical photographs, a list of over 200,000 registered survivors and their families, 1,000 hours of archival footage, 93,000 library items, and 9,000 oral history testimonies. Currently, USHMM's Teacher Fellowship Program has 268 fellows representing 49 states in the United States, the District of Colombia, and 11 countries. Since 1994, the museum has had almost 400 university fellows from 26 countries.
Researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have documented 42,500 ghettos and concentration camps created by the Nazis throughout German-controlled areas of Europe from 1933 to 1945.
The museum is located geographically in the same cluster as the Smithsonian museums.
History
On November 1, 1978, President Jimmy Carter established the President's Commission on the Holocaust, chaired by Elie Wiesel, a prominent author, activist, and Holocaust survivor. Its mandate was to investigate the creation and maintenance of a memorial to victims of the Holocaust and an appropriate annual commemoration to them. The mandate was a joint effort of Wiesel and Richard Krieger. On September 27, 1979, the commission presented its report to the President, recommending the establishment of a national Holocaust memorial museum in Washington, D.C., with three main components: a national museum/memorial, an educational foundation, and a Committee on Conscience.After a unanimous vote by the United States Congress in 1980 to establish the museum, the federal government made available of land adjacent to the Washington Monument for construction. Under the founding director Richard Krieger, subsequent director Jeshajahu Weinberg and Chairman Miles Lerman, nearly $190 million was raised from private sources for building design, artifact acquisition, and exhibition creation. In October 1988, President Ronald Reagan helped lay the cornerstone of the building, designed by architect James Ingo Freed. Dedication ceremonies on April 22, 1993, included speeches by American president Bill Clinton, Israeli president Chaim Herzog, Chairman Harvey Meyerhoff, and Elie Wiesel. On April 26, 1993, the museum opened to the general public. Its first visitor was the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Attacks
In 2002, a federal jury convicted white supremacists Leo Felton and Erica Chase of planning to bomb a series of institutions associated with American Black and Jewish communities, including the USHMM.On June 10, 2009, 88-year-old James von Brunn, an antisemite, shot Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. Special Police Officer Johns and von Brunn were seriously wounded and transported by ambulance to the George Washington University Hospital. Special Police Officer Johns later died of his injuries; he is permanently honored in an official memorial at the USHMM. Von Brunn, who had a previous criminal record, died before the conclusion of his federal criminal trial, in Butner federal prison in North Carolina.
Exhibitions
The USHMM houses two exhibitions open continuously since 1993 as well as rotating exhibitions on topics related to the Holocaust and human rights.Hall of Remembrance
The Hall of Remembrance is the USHMM's official memorial to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Visitors can light candles and view the eternal flame in the hexagonal hall.Permanent Exhibition
Using more than 900 artifacts, 70 video monitors, and four theaters showing historic film footage and eyewitness testimonies, the USHMM's Permanent Exhibition is the most visited exhibit at the Museum. Upon entering large industrial elevators on the first floor, visitors are given identification cards, each of which tells the story of a person such as a random victim or survivor of the Holocaust. Upon exiting these elevators on the fourth floor, visitors walk through a chronological history of the Holocaust, starting with the Nazi rise to power led by Adolf Hitler during 1933 to 1939. Topics dealt with include Aryan ideology, Kristallnacht, antisemitism, and the American response to Nazi Germany. Visitors continue walking to the third floor, where they learn about ghettos and the Final Solutionthe Nazis's plan for the genocide of the Jews of Europeduring which the Nazis murdered six million Jews, many in gas chambers. The Permanent Exhibition ends on the second floor with the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by Allied forces; it includes a continuously looped film of Holocaust survivor testimony. First-time visitors spend an average of two to three hours in this self-guided exhibition. Due to certain images and subject matter, it is recommended for visitors 11 years of age and older.Remember the Children: Daniel's Story
Remember the Children: Daniel's Story is an exhibition designed to explain the Holocaust to elementary and middle school children. Opened in 1993, it follows true stories about children during the Holocaust. Daniel is named after the son of Isaiah Kuperstein, who was the original curator of the exhibit. He worked together with Ann Lewin and Stan Woodward to create the exhibit. Because of its popularity with families, it is still open to the public today.Stephen Tyrone Johns Memorial
In October 2009, the USHMM unveiled a memorial plaque in honor of Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. In response to the outpouring of grief and support after the shooting on June 10, 2009, it has also established the Stephen Tyrone Johns Summer Youth Leadership Program. Each year, 50 outstanding young people from the Washington, D.C. area will be invited to the USHMM to learn about the Holocaust in honor of Johns' memory.A Dangerous Lie (2006)
A Dangerous Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a special exhibition about the 1903 Russian antisemitic canard, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The exhibit was curated by Daniel Greene.The exhibit explained that in the early 20th century and during Hitler's rise to power in Germany, it was widely accepted that the Protocols documented an actual conspiracy by a small cabal of Jews to control the world for nefarious purposes, and that government and media in some countries continue to promote the Protocols as proof that such a Jewish conspiracy to control the world exists. It details the manner in which Henry Ford was responsible for popularizing the fake Protocols in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.
Permanent collection
The Museum's holdings included art, books, pamphlets, advertisements, maps, film and video historical footage, audio and video oral testimonies, music and sound recordings, furnishings, architectural fragments, models, machinery, tools, microfilm and microfiche of government documents and other official records, personal effects, personal papers, photographs, photo albums, and textiles. This information can be accessed through online databases or by visiting the USHMM. Researchers from all over the world come to the USHMM Library and Archives and the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors. In March 2024, the museum announced that it acquired the Centropa collection, a collection that contains rare testimonies of Holocaust survivors living in post-war communist countries.Museum gallery
Architecture
Designed by the architect James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in association with Finegold Alexander & Associates, the USHMM is created to be a "resonator of memory." Born to a Jewish family in Germany, Freed came to the United States at the age of nine in 1939 with his parents, who fled the Nazi regime. The outside of the building disappears into the neoclassical, Georgian, and modern architecture of Washington, D.C. Upon entering, each architectural feature becomes a new element of allusion to the Holocaust. In designing the building, Freed researched post-World War II German architecture and visited Holocaust sites throughout Europe. The Museum building and the exhibitions within are intended to evoke deception, fear, and solemnity, in contrast to the comfort and grandiosity usually associated with Washington, D.C., public buildings.Other partners in the construction of the USHMM included Weiskopf & Pickworth, Cosentini Associates LLP, Jules Fisher, and Paul Marantz, all from New York City. The structural engineering firm was Severud Associates. The Museum's Meyerhoff Theatre and Rubenstein Auditorium were constructed by Jules Fisher Associates of New York City. The Permanent Exhibition was designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates.