holocaust memorial center
my mom and i went the holocaust memorial center today. it was a perfect today to go since it reached about 95 degrees here in the detroit area. my mother had been to the older museum about 10 years ago and my dad had been to this one about 5 years ago.
my mom thought it was much bigger and better laid out than the older version. the museum is quite sequential and it was easy to follow and complete in order.
i think the best part of the entire museum was this HUGE time line. it went from almost the beginning of the jewish faith through present day on the top of the time line. below the time line were other events occurring throughout the world (i.e when the wall of china was built, mozart's messiah was written, etc.). then there is a pretty full description about the jewish faith, beliefs, rituals and ceremonies. we did a good skim of this section, since most of this was familiar to us.
next we learned about jewish cultural and contributions to society leading up to world war I and II. interesting factoid: about one quarter of all nobel prizes have been awards to jewish people even though they only constitute about 0.25% of the population. very impressive!
the rest of the museum was devoated to hitler's rise of power, world war II, the concentration camps and the aftermath of world war II. this section did have a lot of reading as well as most of the world war II artifacts including many different forms of the jewish star arm band. as you were reading about hitler's rise of power, you realized that many people believed that he would not be in power very long. it turned out that it was just the writing on the wall for the eventual actions against the jewish people. i had not realized the number of jewish people though that did leave germany, but just ended up in neighboring countries that hilter ended up conquering. it also emphasized other international failures to recognize what was going on to the jewish people by the hitler regime.
overall, i'll admit i was a little surprised at the emphasis on the jewish faith at the beginning given the name of the museum, but it did fit in with the larger bigger picture. i'd like to try to go back and take a guided tour. the museum had quite a bit of reading and i feel that a guided tour would highlight the important details. we also missed the survivor talk which took place later in the afternoon. i think this would have really made this trip more meaningful.
very well done and impressive.
times visited: 1
time in museum: 1 1/2 hrs
overall: B+
my mom thought it was much bigger and better laid out than the older version. the museum is quite sequential and it was easy to follow and complete in order.
i think the best part of the entire museum was this HUGE time line. it went from almost the beginning of the jewish faith through present day on the top of the time line. below the time line were other events occurring throughout the world (i.e when the wall of china was built, mozart's messiah was written, etc.). then there is a pretty full description about the jewish faith, beliefs, rituals and ceremonies. we did a good skim of this section, since most of this was familiar to us.
next we learned about jewish cultural and contributions to society leading up to world war I and II. interesting factoid: about one quarter of all nobel prizes have been awards to jewish people even though they only constitute about 0.25% of the population. very impressive!
the rest of the museum was devoated to hitler's rise of power, world war II, the concentration camps and the aftermath of world war II. this section did have a lot of reading as well as most of the world war II artifacts including many different forms of the jewish star arm band. as you were reading about hitler's rise of power, you realized that many people believed that he would not be in power very long. it turned out that it was just the writing on the wall for the eventual actions against the jewish people. i had not realized the number of jewish people though that did leave germany, but just ended up in neighboring countries that hilter ended up conquering. it also emphasized other international failures to recognize what was going on to the jewish people by the hitler regime.
overall, i'll admit i was a little surprised at the emphasis on the jewish faith at the beginning given the name of the museum, but it did fit in with the larger bigger picture. i'd like to try to go back and take a guided tour. the museum had quite a bit of reading and i feel that a guided tour would highlight the important details. we also missed the survivor talk which took place later in the afternoon. i think this would have really made this trip more meaningful.
very well done and impressive.
times visited: 1
time in museum: 1 1/2 hrs
overall: B+
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