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In April of nineteen-ninety-three, an unusual museum inWashington, D.C., opened its doors. Since then, almostnineteen-million people have visited. I’m Steve Ember with DougJohnson.
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The tenth anniversary of theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum is our report this week onthe VOA Special English program THIS IS AMERICA.
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Some museums in America’s capital are filled with artworks.Others teach about the history of the nation, the planet, even theskies. More than nine-million people a year make the Air and SpaceMuseum the most visited museum in the world.
Down the street, the Holocaust Museum serves a different purpose.Its job is to keep terrible memories alive.
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The museum honors the six-million Jews killed in what NaziGermany called the “Final Solution.” The museum also honors themillions of other people murdered by the Nazis before and duringWorld War Two. Religious and political dissidents, Gypsies,homosexuals, prisoners of war. The mentally and physically disabled.The list goes on.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party came to power innineteen-thirty-three. Anger remained over Germany’s loss in WorldWar One. The economy was bad. There was social unrest. Hitler gainedsupport as he blamed the problems on Jews and others. Germany, hesaid, needed “racial purity.”
Hate grew into a system of murder. This spread as Germanyoccupied other countries in Europe. The Nazis built camps where theykilled people with poison gas and burned the bodies. A holocaust isa great fire.
The fires burned until Hitler killed himself and Germany lost thewar in nineteen-forty-five.
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In nineteen-seventy-eight, American President Jimmy Carterestablished a Holocaust Memorial Commission. The next year, thisgroup proposed to create a permanent memorial in Washington. Thefederal government provided land across from the WashingtonMonument.
Planners had to decide the best way to remember the Holocaust andits victims. The work was difficult and emotional. It took years.
The museum opened on April twenty-sixth, nineteen-ninety-three.It operates through the cooperation of the government and a privateorganization.
A number of events are planned to observe the tenth anniversary.These include a special exhibit to open in June. It will showoriginal notebooks, journals and other writings of Anne Frank. Somewill be shown outside The Netherlands for the first time.
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Anne Frank was a young German girl. She and her family fled toThe Netherlands in nineteen-thirty-three. Until she was eleven yearsold, she lived a normal life. But then Germany occupied TheNetherlands. Jews lost all rights. After awhile, the Frank familywent into hiding.
For two years, Anne recorded in her diary the events of her lifein hiding. Then her family was discovered. Anne died of typhus feverin a Nazi camp. Only her father survived. In nineteen-forty-seven,Otto Frank had his daughter’s writings published as a book.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” has been translated into manylanguages. It is one of the most widely read pieces of literature inthe world.
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The Holocaust Museum has a permanent collection of eight-thousandobjects and a library with millions of documents.
The museum has also recorded the stories of more thanseven-thousand people who lived through the Holocaust.
Plus, there is a list with the names ofone-hundred-seventy-two-thousand survivors and their families. Thesepeople come from all fifty states and seventy-four countries. Manyhave visited the museum.
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As we take a tour along three floors of the building, we travelback in time. We see how the Nazis began to mistreat Jewish peopleand other minorities. Movie images show how this grew and grew.
We pass by uniforms that prisoners wore in the concentrationcamps.
A railroad car brings to mind the trains that the Germans used tocarry innocent people to slave labor or death.
In another area, shoes lie one on top of another, on top ofanother. Shoes of victims.
A milk container recovered in Warsaw, Poland, after the war looksas it must have sixty years ago.
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But what it held were personal stories, documents and othermaterials about the Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto. The Germanscrowded thousands together into an area of the Polish capital. Manystarved to death or died of disease. Others lived only long enoughto be sent to death camps.
Later this month, the Holocaust Museum will hold a “Days ofRemembrance” observance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This eventwill honor those who rebelled against the Nazis. The rebellion begansixty years ago. Although they faced a powerful army, some survived.
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An exhibit called “The Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto ” tellsabout Jews in Kaunas, Lithuania. Their story was partlyreconstructed from objects they, too, hid. They secretly wrote oftheir treatment under the German occupation. They left drawings,pictures and other artifacts. More than a half-century later, we canstill hear their voices. We can still see their belongings.
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Some things in the museum are not for children to see. But thereare special exhibits for children.
People can also see exhibits online. Each month,three-hundred-thousand people visit the museum’s Web site. Theaddress is u-s-h-m-m dot o-r-g (www.ushmm.org).
You can learn, for example, about the German-owned passenger shipcalled the Saint Louis. It left Hamburg on May thirteenth,nineteen-thirty-nine. It carried more than nine-hundred people. Butthese were not the usual passengers on a German ship of those days.Almost all were German Jews. They were trying to escape from theircountry.
At first, no nation would accept them, including the UnitedStates. Later, several European nations admitted some of therefugees. But about two-hundred people were captured and died incamps after Germany invaded those countries.
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The Holocaust Museum lends some of its exhibits to other museumsand to libraries, colleges and community centers around the country.One of these exhibits tells about a businessman with close ties tothe Nazis. Oskar Schindler got permission to use Jewish prisoners aslaborers in his factory in Poland. This saved them from the hands ofthe Nazis.
American director Steven Spielberg made a movie about OskarSchindler. “Schindler’s List” came out in nineteen-ninety-three.
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Many people use the Holocaust Museum for study. John Wiernicki[WERE-nick-kee] is a historian who lives in the Washington area.Mister Wiernicki wrote a book called “War in the Shadow ofAuschwitz.” The Nazis used that camp, built in the Polish village ofOswiecim, to kill more than one-million people from across Europe.
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John Wiernicki was a teen-ager in Poland when the Nazis arrivedin his homeland in nineteen-thirty-nine. He joined the Polish HomeArmy, a resistance group. In nineteen-forty-three, Mister Wiernicki– who is not Jewish — was arrested and sent to Auschwitz.
Later the Germans moved him to Buchenwald-Ohrdruf, another camp.He escaped while on work duty in the forest. Today, a museumphotograph of that camp shows Allied soldiers who freed thesurviving prisoners. The soldiers are looking at the many bodies ofthe dead.
John Wiernicki says he could not have written his book withouthis research at the museum. He says the United States HolocaustMemorial Museum helps people learn about a time that nobody shouldever forget.
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VOICE ONE:
Our program was written by Jerilyn Watson. It was produced byCaty Weaver. I’m Steve Ember.
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And I’m Doug Johnson. Join us again next week for another reportabout life in the United States on the VOA Special English program,THIS IS AMERICA