So finding directions for this museum was a little tough but I finally found it after so many turns. Wow thank God I don’t live in Houston. It’s too big for my lifestyle; visits like this are what make it worthwhile to visit. So before entering, I looked at everything there is to possibly read outside of the museum. It started when I came upon an engraved squared, marble stone that read, “The names inscribed on these stones represent only a fraction of the Jewish communities destroyed during the Nazis attempt to annihilate the Jews of Europe. These communities were the ancestral homes of Holocaust survivors.” When I walked in, the museum didn’t look that big but once I walked into the actual museum itself, then that’s when I realized, boy I am going to be here for a while. Before I walked in to see all the artifacts, I noticed to my left, various photos of men and women in a frame that had a little story with each one. These were the stories of Holocaust survivors, who fled before anything could happen to them or them being one of the innocent people at the concentration camps. These survivors that were presented, all currently reside in Houston. I read every single story and there were about a good twenty of them. One story I recall a man and a wife who were newlyweds when the war began and they were both sent to concentration camps. The sad thing about this though is how they had a 5-year-old month baby and who was killed once they both entered concentration camps. Hitler viewed babies in a way that there was no need for them. They can’t do anything so, kill them. Since then they both have had children whom are off to college and reside in the United States. Another story was a little girl who was forced to help out in the camps and bother her parents were also sent off to help but they were all separated from one other. None of them ended up at the same camp so they never knew what had happened to one another. Then finally the mother and little girl were able to make it to the end to survive but they found out their father was killed by the German soldiers. It tears me to know how so much of this happened like if it was a walk at the park. Killings were so brutal that Soviet Jews were forced to dig their own grave before being shot. The German soldiers would have women undress themselves in 23-degree weather then they were shot in groups of 10 by firing squads. For sport, while the Jews were working by carrying blocks of stone up a steep stairway, the SS guards would push them off a cliff for fun. Seriously, what evil minds these people had. It really makes you think, how one man could control so much. There was also a wall that I recall that had many high numbers along with a country next to it. That is when I realized; it was the number of people that were killed in that country. Some examples of these are:
-Soviet Union- 1,050,000
-Hungary- 559,000
-Poland-2,950,000
-Romania- 279,000
-Czechoslovakia-147,650
-Austria-50,000
Remember when I said here’s to keeping my fingers crossed, I was hoping I could get a tour even though it was just my brother, son, and myself. Well didn’t really get a tour but behind us there was a private group and so I listened to the gentlemen giving the tour as much as I could. I didn’t want them to think I was eavesdropping. As I was looking around, I noticed a section with about 10 very old books. Above it, it had the title, “Book Burning and Nazi Propaganda.” Basically the Nazi controlled any type of communication in Germany. Any idea that threatened their authority was censored or eliminated. So on May 10, 1933, university students burned more than 25,000 volumes of unGerman books. Among the authors whose books student leaders burned that night numbered well-known socialists such Bertolt Brecht and August Bebel. A few others were American author Ernest Hemingway and founder of the concept of communism, Karl Marx.
Some of the things that really caught my eye were various quotes from people in the Holocaust. A few that involved babies that I can recall were:
As I came off the train, they grabbed my baby from my hand and said, “If you don’t have the baby, you have a chance to live” Rose Fogiel
“The woman we were with was holding onto her child…she didn’t want to let go of her child, and he just turned her to the left. Those who went to the left were going to the gas chambers.”
I was also able to visit the library room named, “The Laurie and Milton Boniuk Resource Center.” The room was a good size especially for it being a resource room that included books of the Holocaust in some way or another. That is when I met Marilyn who introduced herself as a retired reference librarian. Marilyn was very helpful, kind, and informative. She mentioned how I was able to check out these books as needed. She showed me a glass case that was filled with past exhibits located at the Holocaust Museum. She explained how they were currently working on a new exhibit, which is why we would see a construction area where we weren’t allowed through. She was also very helpful in that she gave me such a great idea to use in my classroom. Then is when she told me how they have a project in the works called, “Holocaust Museum Houston Butterfly Project.” This is an effort to memorialize the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust by the Nazis. The museum is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies for a special exhibit in 2013. I am definitely going to do this with my classes for the next three years.
For help and ideas, review the lesson plan available on their website at www.hmh.org
Technology
There were televisions EVERYWHERE. Each television showed authentic clips of the Holocaust before, during, and after.
