united states holocaust memorial museum

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a national institution situated in a prominent location adjacent to The National Mall in Washington, DC (in between 14th and 15th streets SW); however, it is not a constituent institution of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum is dedicated to documenting, studying, and interpreting the history of the Holocaust. It also serves as the United States' official memorial to the millions of European Jews and others killed during the Holocaust under directives of Nazi Germany. While the United States government provided some funding for both the building and continued operations of the museum, a majority of the funding comes from private sources, Jewish movie director Steven Spielberg being amongst the most notable donors. The street that the museum is located on is named Raoul Wallenberg Place, after the Swedish diplomat who is believed to have saved 100,000 Jews in Hungary during the Second World War. The museum building sits on land that previously belonged to the United States Department of Agriculture. Two of the three annex buildings that sat on this property were demolished to build a museum whose design would be wholly about the Holocaust.

The US Congress authorized the creation of the museum in 1980. The building was designed by James Ingo Freed, of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Though the building on the outside is rather monumental with clean lines, in keeping with the large governmental buildings in the immediate context, the interior was meant to provoke more intimate and visceral responses.

The facilities house a number of exhibitions, artworks, publications, and artifacts relating to the Holocaust. The museum collects and preserves material evidence, distributes educational materials, and produces public programming. The Holocaust Museum also holds annual Holocaust commemorations and remembrances.

The Permanent Exhibition at the museum is a chronological history of the Holocaust. It begins in 1933 with Adolf Hitler's rise to power, and ends with the liberation of the Camps, and the opening of Israel. The exhibition is broken up into three floors covering different years. The fourth floor (the beginning of the exhibition) covers the years 1933 to 1940 focusing on the exclusion of Jews from society and the buildup to the Second World War ending with the invasion of Poland by Germany. The third floor covers the years 1940 to 1945 focusing on the Concentration Camps, Killing Centers, and Ghettos. The second floor focuses on resistance, rescue, and liberation, and the post-war years. At the end of the exhibition there is a testimony film of Holocaust survivors that runs continuously.

To enter the Permanent Exhibition, visitors must acquire a free timed pass. The passes are available from the museum on the day of your visit.

Additionally, the museum houses the offices of the Committee on Conscience[1], a joint governmentally and privately funded think tank, which by Presidential mandate engages in genocide research in all areas of the world. Recently, it has established itself as a leading non-partisan commenter on the Darfur Genocide in the nation of Sudan, as well as on the war-torn region of Chechnya in Russia, a zone which the Committee believes has the capacity to produce genocidal atrocities. However, the committee does not have policy-making powers, and serves solely as an advisorial institution to the United States government and those of other nations who seek its services.