Our last day in Washington D.C. had to be a short one. Our flight back to Fairbanks was at 5am, meaning we had to get up at what I like to call the “unfunctioning” hour to catch our flight. Accordingly, we decided to make our last day a shorter day and get back to the hotel a little earlier than usual.
Our first stop was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a living memorial to the Holocaust. On its website, the USHMM states that it “provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, and the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values.” The museum was organized perfectly, in a historical interactive timeline, taking visitors throughout the entire history of the Holocaust, focusing particularly on the fields of law enforcement, judiciary, military, diplomacy, medicine eduction, and religion. The layout was sophisticated and easy to follow. The message was powerful, yet simple: it is our responsibility as citizens to ensure genocide does not happen again.
The museum is open from 10:00 am to 5:20 pm with extended hours in the spring, which you can check beforehand here. During March – August, timed passes are required to enter the Permanent Exhibition; you can go to the museum to get them or you can get them online.
Janice and Martha and I got our tickets, and had about a half hour before we were allowed into the main exhibit area. We noticed that there was a special exhibition going on at the time called Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story. As we learned throughout the main exhibit, the Nazi’s spared no one – including children. Children who came from “unwanted” or “dangerous” groups (Jews, Gypsies, children with mental and physical disabilities, Polish children, etc) were exterminated at alarming rates. Roughly 1.5 million children were murdered in the Holocaust.
Daniel’s Story tells a story of one family’s experience during the Holocaust told from the view of a young German boy. The exhibit starts with a short video followed by a walkthrough of Daniel’s house, ghetto, and eventual concentration camp. Visitors can interact with the scenes in Daniel’s story, including touching Daniel’s toys, peering into Daniel’s hidden closet, and reading his diary.
At the end of the walkthrough, there was a long paneled area with a glassed-in cork board. People could write things on index cards and submit them to the museum, some of which were hung on the cork board. People wrote all kinds of things; what they were feeling, messages to Daniel, and apologies from humankind.
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| In French, “Remember history so you do not repeat history.” |
Prior to entering the main area of the museum, we walked through the flags of the twenty US Army Divisions that liberated Nazi Concentration Camps.
Before heading into the main exhibit, each visitor was instructed to take an Identification Card. Each identification card was a couple pages long and illustrated a story of a real person who lived during the Holocaust. The idea was that you would read each page at the end of each floor of the exhibit, and follow along with what happened to your person during each part of history. At the end of the entire exhibit, you would learn whether your person survived or not.
The main exhibit actually started at the 4th floor; you took an elevator all the way up and made your way down.
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| My ID card |
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| Susanne Ledermann. Here is the intro to Susanne’s life. I liked the fact that her father was a lawyer. |
I don’t intend to turn this particular post into a historical lecture on the Holocaust; indeed, if I did, it would be the longest blog post in history. Instead, I will simply post the pictures here and give brief descriptions of the pictures. They are taken in chronological order, and you should be able to follow it pretty well.
Fourth Floor: Start of the Nazi Regime and Hitler’s Power, Nazi society, burning of books, and the science of race
At the end of each floor, the hallway leading to the next area had different things etched into them. From the 4th to the 3rd floor were names of “Lost Communities”; names of towns and cities which were wholly or partially lost as a result of the “Final Solution.”
At the end of the 4th floor, I turned to the next page of Susanne’s story, as instructed. It read:
“1933 – 1939: After the Nazi’s came to power in January 1933, it became illegal for Jewish lawyers to have non-Jewish clients. When Susanne was 4, her father’s law practice closed down and the Ledermanns moved to the Netherlands. Susanne began attending school in Amsterdam when she was 6. She was a good student, and she quickly made friends in the neighborhood. Some of her friends were also Jewish refugees from Germany.”
Third Floor: Media during the Holocaust, branding of Jews and other undesirable members of society, Anne Frank, start of Ghettos
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| St. Louis newspaper |
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| New York City newspaper |
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| Philadelphia newspaper |
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| Los Angeles newspaper |
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| The Ejsyszki Shtetl Collection |
From the 3rd to the 2nd floor were names of victims of the Holocaust.
At the end of the 3rd floor, I turned to the next page of Susanne’s story, as instructed. It read:
“1940-1944: On May 14, 1940, Susanne heard the roar of German planes bombing Rotterdam 35 miles away. Amsterdam was soon occupied by the Germans. When Susanne was 13, the Germans forced the Jews out of public schools and Susanne enrolled in a Jewish school. By June 1942 the Germans were deporting Jews, ostensibly to work camps in the ‘East.’ Susanne’s father, who worked as a translator for the Jewish council, believed that the family would not be harmed as long as they obeyed the law and followed German instructions.”
Second Floor: “Shoes,” the White Rose Group, liberation, trials
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| Artwork from children |
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| Israel’s Declaration of Independence |
This was the end of the main exhibit, so I turned to the last page to see what happened to Susanne. I read the following:
“On June 20, 1943, Susanne and her parents were deported to the Westerbork camp in Holland. In 1944 they were sent to Auschwitz, where Susanne perished. She was 15 years old.”
I had hoped throughout the entire exhibit that Susanne had lived, but her fate was not uncommon. It was very sad. I enjoyed following her story throughout the exhibit and kept wondering if she made it out.
Later, when I got home, I googled Susanne and learned that she was more important than her card let on. Apparently she was very good friends with Anne Frank and Anne’s sister Margot. Anne and Susanne had gone to school together in a Montessori School in Amsterdam. Even later when Susanne moved schools, she kept in touch with Anne; they were on the same pingpong club called the “Little Dippers Minus Two.” Learn more about Susanne here and here (in Anne’s dairy).
The last part of the museum was the Hall of Remembrance. It is designed for individual reflection. In the center is an eternal flame; the walls are inscribed with the names of concentration and death camp victims. The flame burns before a inscription from Deuteronomy: “Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, an lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children, and to your children’s children.”
The Holocaust Museum is highly, highly recommended. Do not leave D.C. without seeing it. It’s a humbling and important experience.
After we left the Holocaust Museum, we made our way back to the White House Visitor Center. We had attempted to see it the day before but they closed pretty early (4:30pm), and we had just missed it. Janice collects the yearly White House Christmas ornaments, so she wanted to try again today to see if she could find it. We meandered back over and were in luck that it was open. It ended up being a really interesting visitors center, filled with awesome history about the White House.
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| White House in Winter |
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| White House in Spring |
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| White House in Summer |
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| White House in Fall |
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| The Gipper’s jelly beans! |
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| Don and Donna checking out the White House replica |
We made a brief stop at Ford’s Theater, the site of Lincoln’s assassination. We didn’t go on the tour, as the line was horrendous, but it was pretty cool to see nonetheless.
After leaving Ford’s Theater, we got on the subway to go to dinner. Andy went to law school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and had a favorite restaurant there, Guapo’s, while he was going to school. He insisted he live vicariously through us, so we went to Guapo’s for dinner.
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| Andy made me get a margarita. I got mango. |
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| Don and Donna got a bit crazy |
Janice is a teacher here in Fairbanks (a phenomenal one!!) and runs her own school, Northern Lights Academy. During our trip, she collected games, presents, and other educational items for her students. One of the things she got was White House Bingo, which we then proceeded to play at Guapo’s.
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| The donkeys won. Of course. |
We made it back to the hotel and we all fell asleep. We woke up super early the next morning and took a cab to the airport. Janice and I said goodbye to Martha and embarked on our multiple flights back. The donkeys were behaved and cooperative.
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| Reading the safety instructions |
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| They made Janice buy them breakfast |
Our trip to D.C. was amazing and incredible. We got to see Angela Lansbury and visit all of the awesome sites in our nation’s capitol. We felt incredibly blessed.