Chartered by a unanimous act of Congress in 1980 and located adjacent to the National Mall, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America’s national institution for documenting, studying, and interpreting the Holocaust. Open daily from 10am – 5:30pm (closed Yom Kippur and Christmas), I recently visited the museum (without kids) and was delighted to find that one of the exhibits, “Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story,” is an ideal way to expose young elementary age children to the horrors of the Holocaust.
Growing up in Los Angeles, I distinctly remember visiting the Museum of Tolerance shortly after its opening in February of 1993. As a child of approximately 10 years of age, I remember the weeks leading up to our visit that our curriculum focused on the Holocaust and the events leading up to and surrounding World War II. Coming from an immigrant family with busy parents, the Holocaust simply was not something that had ever been discussed as a family, and it was not something I had come across in my movies or books prior to learning about it in school.
Decades later and now a parent myself, the Holocaust is something that comes up frequently in our readings and even in popular cultural references. My son, who is not quite nine years of age, has asked questions about the Holocaust, but without any training in how to expose or introduce young children to such a sensitive topic, we’ve largely kept it to the basics. I quickly realized during my recent visit to the Holocaust Museum, that the Daniel’s Story was just the roadmap I needed to introduce my young son to the Holocaust.
Daniel’s Story allows visitors to experience the Holocaust from the perspective of Daniel, a young boy living in Germany during the Holocaust. The exhibit begins with a short film, narrated by Daniel, and then carriers visitors through Daniel’s world as it changes throughout the Holocaust. Daniel’s diary entries serve as the primary text of the exhibit and the story begins in Daniel’s home in Nazi Germany and takes visitors through their transition to the ghetto, the concentration camps, and finally, to the end of the War.
As depicted in the photos above, the exhibit allows children to actually touch and feel the environment. Here we are in located in the ghetto, and there are rules posted on the walls and objects littered throughout the room. Similarly, when in Daniel’s home or the later concentration camp rooms, visitors have the opportunity to sit at the tables or lay on the “beds.”
After touring Daniel’s Story, I quickly popped upstairs to the permanent exhibit. From March 1 to August 31, timed entry tickets to the permanent exhibit are required. Same day tickets are available online and in person, but it is also possible to request tickets in advance online. I requested an advance ticket (which cost $1), but free tickets were available in person on the day of my scheduled entry. Note that it is not possible to enter prior to your scheduled visit time.
The Museum recommends visitors allocate one to three hours to visiting the permanent exhibit and I concur. Even for my mid-day visit in early March, there was a heavy group of people and it took quite a bit of time to see everything. Moreover, the permanent exhibit is large – it winds throughout the building and presents a chronological narrative of the Holocaust using artifacts, film footage, and photographs. It is easily an exhibit that I could have devoted an entire day to exploring, and I was sad that I did not have as much time as I would have liked to have spent there. That said, I am glad that my first visit to the Holocaust Museum was unaccompanied by third grader as I believe the permanent exhibit would have been too much in terms of his first visual exposure to the Holocaust. I have already planned a return visit for Daniel’s Story, with my son soon, but will wait another year or so before visiting the permanent exhibit with my eight year old.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is located at 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW in Washington, DC.
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