Saturday I went to into the city, since I didn't have to work. The hotel I was staying at was only 3 miles from D.C. So I put on my walking shoes and took a little journey. It was a fun walk. I contacted one of my friends and she decided to meet me at the Holocaust Museum. I got there early, so I waited in line and chatted with the group in front of me. There was a couple of college students there and we talked. (what about? why bring them up? If it isn't really relate-able to what you are trying to say delete it) I met this really nice girl from Chicago, she was going to the University of Illinois.
My friend came right on time, just before I reached the entrance. We went in and got a card. This card described a person who went through the Holocaust.
First to explain what the Holocaust Museum is:
"In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million people. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews, as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.
"Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered.
"As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions.
"From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment. "
(https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143)
Hitler wanted a perfect person of blue eyes and blond hair, the Aryan race. So everyone else was sent to a camp. Family that had children of the perfect person hid their kids.
During the tour of the museum there was over 12 hours of material, my friend and I spend around 2 hours in there.
During a section of the museum there was lots of shoes. The Nazis took all of the shoes of the people they would burn. and that is were the quotes comes from.
"We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses. We are the shoes from grandfathers from Prague, and Amsterdam, and because we are the only made of fabric and leather and not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire." -Yiddish Poet Moses Schulstein
After I walked through the tower of pictures, shown below. It's three-stories tall, displaying photographs from the Yaffa Eliach Shtetl Collection. These photos, taken between 1890 and 1941 in Eishishok, a small town in what is now Lithuania, depict a vibrant Jewish community that existed for 900 years. In 1941, an SS mobile killing squad entered the village and within two days massacred the Jewish population
At the end there was this quote. Speak out!
After the Holocaust Museum we went to the National Museum of American History and show Dorothy Slippers. We also the hall of The First Ladies. This was a hall all about the first ladies. First Ladies explores the unofficial but important position of first lady and the ways that different women have shaped the role to make their own contributions to the presidential administrations and the nation. The exhibition features more than two dozen gowns from the Smithsonian’s almost 100-year old First Ladies Collection, including those worn by Frances Cleveland, Lou Hoover, Jacqueline Kennedy, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama. A section titled “Changing Times, Changing First Ladies” highlights the roles played by Dolley Madison, Mary Lincoln, Edith Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson and their contributions to their husband’s administrations.
