United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

This was the one museum I really wanted to visit...The Holocaust was one of the few things that captured my interest in history class when I was younger.

When we first got into the museum, we went to the information desk to get our tickets....we were going to have to wait about 30 minutes before it was our turn, according to our ticket time, but as soon as I turned around a man and his wife gave us 2 tickets that we could use right then! So we checked in and got in the elevator to begin the tour.

Now, we are in D.C. and a lot of high schools and middle schools are here right now....when we got into the elevator, we were in there with about ten 8th graders and their chaperone...the elevator lady began telling us all about how the tour works and what not, and the girls were saying things like "Is this going to be fun" and "Is this going to be depressing?" and giggling....just being super annoying, and in my opinion, very disrespectful. When we got out of the elevator, the chaperone pulled them outside and scolded them for their disrespectful behavior...I was glad..If it had been my child (which I know they weren't his kids) I would be very upset with them.

Anyhow, we walked around the museum and it made me both sad and pissed.....I really can't even describe what it is like to see all the pictures, articles, and artifacts...you have to go and visit and see for yourself....you weren't allowed to take pictures, so I of course, I don't have any.

The museum of was very touching and quite moving.

A couple of the exhibits really got to me....In one of the rooms you walk in there are piles and piles of shoes of those who died in the concentration camps...you wouldn't believe how many shoes there were. It was very sad. Another room had a picture of all the hair that was removed from the inmates....there were also pictures of inmates with tattoos on their arms indicating which prisoner they were... a glass display shelf of artifacts taken from the inmates; things like hair brushes, razors, scissors, and other things of that nature, and the wooden beds that the inmates were jammed packed into and the train cars they stuffed them into and starved them while taking them to the internment camps.

The one room that made me teary eyed was a room (Hall of Remembrance) that was built in memory of those who died in the concentration camps...in this room there was an eternal flame that burned above earth gathered from death camps, concentration camps, sites of mass execution, and Ghetto's in Nazi-occupied Europe, and from cemeteries of American soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany.

This is just one of those places that you have to visit yourself....