Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 27, 1993 TAG: 9306290074
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
"Look, Dad," my 9-year-old said, pointing to a spot near the front of the exhibit. There was the little shoe. Brown. High-topped. About the size for a child who had just learned to walk.
Although we'd already spent hours of revisiting the atrocities recorded in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum - many of them quite graphic - it was the shoe that forced a gasp, choked out a breath.
The reality of a single child's murder seemed more powerful than all the videos of mass graves and executions.
A visit to the museum, which opened in April, is a powerful experience, maybe an overpowering experience. And it is one that is not without its critics.
There are some nagging questions about it that are not easily answered. Why a museum about a distinctly European event on American soil - particularly the premium soil of the Mall in Washington? Is its attempted extinction the only reason to commemorate Judaism? Is it necessary to present such luridly graphic displays?
One critic, a Jewish newspaper editor, described it in Harper's Magazine this month as just "one more American theme park."
I would disagree, though I have to concede he makes some valid points about the museum's necessary quest to draw visitors by making exhibits visually exciting. There are places where one sees replicas of the ovens and a sign from the entrance to a death camp. The knowledge that these are molded replicas does tend to shatter the sense of reality the museum generally instills so powerfully.
But, a museum that no one is attracted to visit might as well not have been built.
Some caveats are in order for those planning to see the museum.
You must get tickets in advance. Technically, they are free, but you have to pay a $2.50-per-ticket service charge to Ticketmaster to get them mailed to you in advance. You must get them in advance, since the few tickets that are reserved to be given out to same-day visitors are gone early in the morning.
Tickets allow visitors to enter at a specific time, with a new group of 100 or so moved in every 15 minutes. The place is impossibly crowded. The fourth floor, where the museum experience begins, has two small theaters where films on the rise of Nazism and the history of anti-Semitism are shown. Getting a seat is practically impossible.
Visitors are supposed to move down a narrow hallway with exhibits on both sides, but the exhibits require a fair amount of reading and often include a short video. By the time you get to read or see one, you are trapped in a human gridlock of new visitors.
My advice would be to wait until next spring or summer to visit. If you feel compelled to go now, be warned that it will be crowded. It will take at least four hours to get through, and at that you won't have seen everything.
Those who have studied the Holocaust at all are unlikely to be surprised by any revelations in the museum. The history is well-documented, despite the efforts of some revisionists to get us to believe it never happened.
Perhaps it is to counter that attempted rewriting of history that the museum feels obliged to include several video exhibits of executions and humiliations.
In several places, video exhibits are partially hidden behind walls that are chest-high on adults. Signs - if you could see them through the two- or three-deep crowd around the walls - warn that the exhibit is graphic.
They are the most crowded spots in the museum.
Peering down over the walls you see undeniable evidence of the atrocities some would like to write off as myth or fantasy. Trenches full of dead bodies, mass executions of naked men and women, naked women being run through the streets and killed, bulldozers pushing piles of bodies into mass graves, the grisly human remains found inside the ovens.
I'm not sure what the appeal is. A fascination with violence and death? A need to be convinced again that something that seems impossible to believe was real? The continuing struggle to put human faces on the cold, statistical figure of 6 million Jews dead? To try to figure out how those who killed and those who stood by and watched could have done it?
Probably all these things and with every individual who watches, some peculiarly individual reasons.
The museum presents some other problems, I think. One of the persistent myths about the Holocaust is that practically no one - at least no one outside of government - knew about the death camps and the Nazi plan for extermination.
It seems quite plain from the newspaper headlines and stories reproduced in one hallway, and the clips from old newsreels, that Hitler made no secret of his intentions. American officials and the public knew - or could have known - what was happening. The United States - and Britain and numerous other nations - declined to allow more Jews to immigrate.
A friend of mine pointed out that not everyone read the major dailies represented on the museum's walls and that in the avalanche of stories about the Nazi juggernaut moving across Europe, a single story about one more instance of Nazi inhumanity might not have had much of an impact on the memory of Americans who still hoped to avoid war.
While that is a reasonable explanation, I don't think that it will ever be a satisfactory excuse for the toleration of the Holocaust.
This is undeniably a museum of death, yet its designers have managed to allow visitors to overcome some of the depression, anger and hurt they feel before they leave.
One leaves the exhibit after hearing the stories of some of the rescuers - those who risked their own lives to save the lives of others. A wall lists the names of thousands who individually helped hide others, to whole towns that conspired to save their Jews and others threatened by the Nazis, to the nation of Denmark that defied Nazi orders to turn over its Jews and saved nearly all of them.
There are legitimate, valid arguments against the museum and its exhibits. But I believe, having seen it, that its existence is justified.
Admission to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum can be made by calling Ticketmaster at (202) 432-SEAT for a $2.50 service charge per ticket. Groups of more than 10 people should call the museum scheduler at (202) 488-0400.
The Smithsonian Metro station (Orange and Blue lines) is one block from the museum's 14th Street entrance. Public transportation is recommended.
Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. every day; closed Christmas Day.
Cody Lowe reports on issues of religion and ethics for this newspaper.
by CNB