Holocaust Museum

Next the Holocaust Museum--this is an emotional experience and also gives you a sense of anger that it was allowed to happen.  As you enter, you take an Identification Card which tells the story of a Jewish person who either died or survived.  You read it as you go saving the last page to the end as to your person’s outcome.  Over 400 volunteers, 74 of whom are Holocaust survivors, are trained to answer questions, to offer context and stories.

 When you enter you choose and Identification Card which tells the story of someone who was taken by the Nazis.  As you read through during your walk thru the museum, you wait until the end to see if your person survived.  Of the four cards we had, 2 perished and 2 survived.

One of the most haunting displays is the area of the shoes. The 4,000 shoes on display are on loan from the State Museum of Majdanek in Lublin, Poland. The shoes of murdered Jews were piled in concentration camps to disempower those remaining in the camp and show Nazi success in reaching their “final solution” of eliminating Jews. 

Trains transported millions of Jews to the camps.  The cars had no food or water.

Very few Jews were given prison clothing and used as forced labor. Most were murdered.