Holocaust Museum

Fourth Floor

The Nazi Assult

1. The first exhibit that I experienced was a film on Hitlers' rise to power. It showed how he played on the fears of the people by using propaganda to promote himself to becoming Chancellor of Germany. Ever though he lost the election, Hindenburg on January 30, 1933 appointed Hitler Chancellor.

2. The next thing that caught my interest was a film on anti-Semitism. This film showed the roots for people's natural fear of the Jews from the times of Christianity through the middle ages and up to WWII.

3. The more traditional type of exhibit they had was about how the Germans tried to separate Aryans from what they considered inferior races that did not deserve to exist. They tried to do this very scientifically by measurements, facial features, eye color comparisons, and other features.

4. In a different part of the exhibit, was the listing of all of the Jewish towns that were totally or partially whipped out because of the Holocaust. The names of the towns were engraved on the glass windows of a corridor there were so many of them that they filled up the entire wall.

Personal Response

1. This movie was very informative, for example before this movie I thought that Hitler was voted into power, but really he was appointed by Hindenburg. I thought that it was kind of scary that a government system could fall apart that easily.

2. I was amazed at how long of a history anti-Semitism had. It went all the way back to the beginning of Christianity. I also learned that one of Martin Lutherans, of the Lutheran Church, goals was to convert Jews to Christianity.

3. I was astonished of how in depth the Germans went in measuring the body parts, such as the different parts of the head, the position of the nose, and so on.

4. I just stood there for a little bit, just looking at the names of the towns, and I saw people pointing out different towns of there ancestors, but I could not relate to it at all.

Third Floor

"Final Solution"

1. The actual start of the German plan for the Final Solution (1940-1945), was to isolate the Jews into Ghettos, and then to send them off to Concentration camps to be used for slave labor, or gassed.

2. The archway to Auschwitz was incorporated into the museum by having it as the archway to the part of the floor that describes the things that went on inside concentration camps. The Translation of the...

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... drawers and closets. This is an interactive, hands-on exhibit.

3. The Quote "You are my witnesses" from Isaiah 43:10 is reminding people who visit the museum that the Holocaust really did happen, and that such an event should never ever happen again.

4. The middles of the museum from the first floor up is designed to look like a ghetto, and it gives sort of an eerie feeling to the place, that you are in the place of the Jews during the Holocaust in the ghettos, before the concentration camps.

Personal Response

1. It is hard not to notice the architecture, because it was such a part of the museum. It had a lot of emotion in it, like it self endured the holocaust.

2. I thought that this was really nest, all of the hands on stuff, and the little bits of the diary everywhere. It was a lot different to see the holocaust through the eyes of a child.

3. This is a well known quote, and I thought about it a little bit, and I started to think about all of the bystanders of the Holocaust, not, Jewish, not Aryan, just there. They too must have been scared by it.

4. While I was standing there I felt like I was actually inside of a ghetto. It was a sort of eerie feeling that I got.