United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.[2]
Established
April 22, 1993
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, Southwest, Washington, D.C.
Holocaust museum
1.6 million (2016)[1]
Steven Luckert
In 2008, the museum had an operating budget of $120.6 million.[3] a staff of about 400 employees, 125 contractors, 650 volunteers, 91 Holocaust survivors, and 175,000 members. It had local offices in New York City, Boston, Boca Raton, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas.[4]
Since its dedication on April 22, 1993, the museum has had nearly 40 million visitors, including more than 10 million school children, 99 heads of state, and more than 3,500 foreign officials from over 211 countries and territories. The museum's visitors came from all over the world, and less than 10 percent are Jewish. In 2008, its website had 25 million visits, from an average of 100 countries daily. Thirty-five percent of these visits were from outside the United States.[2]
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. It also has teacher fellows in every state in the United States and, since 1994, almost 400 university fellows from 26 countries.[4]
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.[5]
The museum is located geographically in the same cluster as the Smithsonian museums.
Bridges in the USHMM. Blue glass etched with names and places lost during the Holocaust.
Glass bridge over the Hall of Witness.
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.[12] 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.[13]
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.[14]
(Interior) An A2 railcar, one of several types used as Holocaust trains by Nazi Germany to transport victims.
Tower of Faces
This uniform on display was worn by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
(Exterior) A2 railcar owned by Deutsche Reichsbahn and donated by the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in 1991.[25][26]
![(Exterior) A2 railcar owned by Deutsche Reichsbahn and donated by the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in 1991.[25][26]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Railroad_Car.jpg/320px-Railroad_Car.jpg)
Photo Wall at the Holocaust Memorial Museum
Financial administration[edit]
The USHMM operates on a mixed federal and private revenue budget. For the 2014–2015 fiscal year, the museum reported total revenues of $133.4 million; $81.9 million and $51.4 million from private and public sources, respectively. Nearly the entirety of private funds come from donations. Expenses totaled of $104.6 million, with a total of $53.5 million used to pay 421 employees.[27] Net assets tallied $436.1 million as of September 30, 2015, of which $319.1 million is classified as long-term investments, including the museum's endowment.[28]
Committee on Conscience[edit]
The Museum contains the offices of the Committee on Conscience (CoC), a joint United States government and privately funded think tank, which by presidential mandate engages in global human rights research. Using the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, approved by the United Nations in 1948 and ratified by the United States in 1988, the CoC has established itself as a leading non-partisan commenter on the Darfur Genocide, as well as the war-torn region of Chechnya in Russia, a zone that the CoC believes could produce genocidal atrocities. The CoC does not have policy-making powers and serves solely as an advisory institution to the American and other governments.[30]
In addition to coordinating the National Civic Commemoration, ceremonies and educational programs during the week of the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) were regularly held throughout the country, sponsored by Governors, Mayors, veterans groups, religious groups, and military ships and stations throughout the world. Each year, the USHMM designated a special theme for DRVH observances, and prepares materials available at no charge to support observances and programs throughout the nation, and in the United States military. Days of Remembrance themes have included:
National Institute for Holocaust Education[edit]
The USHMM conducted several programs devoted to improving Holocaust education. The Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Conference for Teachers, conducted in Washington, D.C., attracted around 200 middle school and secondary teachers from around the United States each year. The Education Division offered workshops around the United States for teachers to learn about the Holocaust, to participate in the Museum Teacher Fellowship Program (MTFP), and to join a national corps of educators who served as leaders in Holocaust education in their schools, communities, and professional organizations. Some MTFP participants also participated in the Regional Education Corps, an initiative to implement Holocaust education on a national level.[31]
Since 1999, the USHMM also provided public service professionals, including law enforcement officers, military personnel, civil servants, and federal judges with ethics lessons based in Holocaust history. In partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, more than 21,000 law enforcement officers from worldwide and local law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and local police departments have been trained to act in a professional and democratic manner.[32]
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Award, established in 2011, "recognizes internationally prominent individuals whose actions have advanced the Museum’s vision of a world where people confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity."[44] It has been renamed the Elie Wiesel Award in honor of its first recipient. Winners include:
2018 Holocaust awareness survey[edit]
In 2018, a survey organized by the Claims Conference, USHMM, and others found that 41% of 1,350 American adults surveyed, and 66% of millennials, did not know what Auschwitz was. 41% of millennials incorrectly claimed that 2 million Jews or less were murdered during the Holocaust, while 22% said they had never heard of the Holocaust. Over 95% of all Americans surveyed were unaware that the Holocaust occurred in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. 45% of adults and 49% of millennials weren't able to name a single Nazi concentration camp or ghetto in German-occupied Europe during the Holocaust.[48]
The museum is overseen by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, which includes 55 private citizens appointed by the President of the United States, five members of the United States Senate, and five members of the House of Representatives, and three ex-officio members from the Departments of State, Education, and the Interior.[49]
Since the museum opened, the council has been led by the following officers:[49]
The council has appointed the following as directors of the museum:[49]
Controversy[edit]
The museum was criticized for refusal to address alleged incidents of genocide in non-Jewish contexts, such as the Syrian civil war.[55][56] In June 2019, the USHMM took part in a public debate about the inappropriate use of Holocaust-related terminology after U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the detention camps along the southern U.S. border "concentration camps", and used the phrase "Never Again".[57] The USHMM published a statement declaring that it "unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary."[58] A group of historians and scholars responded with an open letter portraying the stance of the museum as "a radical position that is far removed from mainstream scholarship on the Holocaust and genocide." They claimed it "made learning from the past almost impossible."[59]