The Holocaust Museum is intense, horrifying, and imperative to see. My words can’t do it justice. To quote Martin Neimöller, Lutheran Minister and early Nazi supporter who was later imprisoned for opposing Hitler’s regime, “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”
- In Nazi Germany, racial specialists examined eye and hair color to determine whether people were “Aryan” or “Alien”.
- The Führer declared Jewish men together with German women “racial defilement” – a crime punishable by prison.
- The Nazi regime emulated racial segregation laws, modeled after the US.
- For many German firms, concentration camps were a source of cheap labor. The BMW aircraft engine factory was almost entirely staffed by prisoners.
- Most deported Jews endured a torturous ride in suffocating railcars on the way to death camps. Many elderly and children died during the journey.
- Tower of Faces is a three story stack of photos from a small town in what is now Lithuania, where a vibrant Jewish community lived for over 900 years.
- In 1941, an SS mobile killing squad entered the village and within two days massacred the entire Jewish population.
- The relief of release for a survivor.
- The Hall of Remembrance, for over six million Jews killed during the Holocaust.
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