The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States’ official memorial to the Holocaust. A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.

USHMM Located among our national monuments to freedom on the National Mall, the Museum provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values. With unique power and authenticity, the Museum teaches millions of people each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide.

The USHMM’s collections contain more than 12,750 artifacts, 49 million pages of archival documents, 80,000 historical photographs, 200,000 registered survivors, 1,000 hours of archival footage, 84,000 library items, and 9,000 oral history testimonies. It also has teacher fellows in every state in the United States and almost 400 university fellows from 26 countries since 1994.

Researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have documented 42,500 ghettos and concentration camps erected by the Nazis throughout German-controlled areas of Europe from 1933 to 1945.

On November 1, 1978, President Jimmy Carter established the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, chaired by Elie Wiesel, a prominent author and Holocaust survivor. Its mandate was to investigate the creation and maintenance of a memorial to victims of the Holocaust and an appropriate annual commemoration to them. The mandate was created in a joint effort by Elie Wiesel and Richard Krieger (the original papers are on display at the Jimmy Carter Museum). On September 27, 1979, the Commission presented its report to the President, recommending the establishment of a national Holocaust memorial museum in Washington, D.C. with three main components: a national museum/memorial, an educational foundation, and a Committee on Conscience.

After a unanimous vote by the United States Congress in 1980 to establish the museum, the federal government made available 1.9 acres (0.77 ha) of land adjacent to the Washington Monument for construction. Under the original Director Richard Krieger, and subsequent Director Jeshajahu Weinberg and Chairman Miles Lerman, nearly $190 million was raised from private sources for building design, artifact acquisition, and exhibition creation. In October 1988, President Ronald Reagan helped lay the cornerstone of the building, designed by the architect James Ingo Freed. Dedication ceremonies on April 22, 1993 included speeches by American President Bill Clinton, Israeli President Chaim Herzog, Chairman Harvey Meyerhoff, and Elie Wiesel. On April 26, 1993, the Museum opened to the general public. Its first visitor was the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.

Designed by the architect James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in association with Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc, the USHMM is created to be a “resonator of memory”. (Born to a Jewish family in Germany, Freed came to the United States at the age of nine in 1939 with his parents, who fled the Nazi regime.) The outside of the building disappears into the neoclassical, Georgian, and modern architecture of Washington, D.C. Upon entering, each architectural feature becomes a new element of allusion to the Holocaust. In designing the building, Freed researched post-World War II German architecture and visited Holocaust sites throughout Europe. The Museum building and the exhibitions within are intended to evoke deception, fear, and solemnity, in contrast to the comfort and grandiosity usually associated with Washington, D.C. public buildings.

Other partners in the construction of the USHMM included Weiskopf & Pickworth, Cosentini Associates LLP, Jules Fisher, and Paul Marantz, all from New York City. The structural engineering firm that was chosen for this project was Severud Associates. The Museum’s Meyerhoff Theatre and Rubenstein Auditorium were constructed by Jules Fisher Associates of New York City. The Permanent Exhibition was designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates.

Exhibitions:
The USHMM contains two exhibitions that have been open continuously since 1993 and numerous rotating exhibitions that deal with various topics related to the Holocaust and human rights.

The Hall of Remembrance is the USHMM’s official memorial to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Visitors can memorialize the event by lighting candles, visiting an eternal flame, and reflecting in silence in the hexagonal hall.

Using more than 900 artifacts, 70 video monitors, and four theaters showing historic film footage and eyewitness testimonies, the USHMM’s Permanent Exhibition is the most visited exhibit at the Museum. Upon entering large industrial elevators on the first floor, visitors are given identification cards, each of which tells the story of a random victim or survivor of the Holocaust. Upon exiting these elevators on the fourth floor, visitors walk through a chronological history of the Holocaust, starting with the Nazi rise to power led by Adolf Hitler, 1933-1939. Topics dealt with include Aryan ideology, Kristallnacht, Antisemitism, and the American response to Nazi Germany. Visitors continue walking to the third floor, where they learn about ghettos and the Final Solution, by which the Nazis tried to exterminate all the Jews of Europe, and they killed six million of them, many in gas chambers. The Permanent Exhibition ends on the second floor with the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by Allied forces; it includes a continuously looped film of Holocaust survivor testimony. First-time visitors spend an average of two to three hours in this self-guided exhibition. Due to certain images and subject matter, it is recommended for visitors 11 years of age and older.

To enter the Permanent Exhibition between March and August, visitors must acquire free timed passes from the Museum on the day of the visit, or online for a service fee.

Collections:
The Museum’s holdings included art, books, pamphlets, advertisements, maps, film and video historical footage, audio and video oral testimonies, music and sound recordings, furnishings, architectural fragments, models, machinery, tools, microfilm and microfiche of government documents and other official records, personal effects, personal papers, photographs, photo albums, and textiles. This information can be accessed through online databases or by visiting the USHMM. Researchers from all over the world come to the USHMM Library and Archives and the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors.

Programs:
The USHMM operates on a mixed federal and private revenue budget. For the 2014-2015 fiscal year, the museum reported total revenues of $133.4 million; $81.9 million and $51.4 million from private and public sources, respectively. Nearly the entirety of private funds come from donations. Expenses totaled of $104.6 million, with a total of $53.5 million used to pay 421 employees. Net assets tallied $436.1 million as of September 30, 2015, of which $319.1 million is classified as long-term investments, including the museum’s endowment.

Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies:
In 1998, the USHMM established the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (CAHS). Working with the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the CAHS supports research projects and publications about the Holocaust (including a partnership with Oxford University Press to publish the scholarly journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies), helps make accessible collections of Holocaust-related archival material, supports fellowship opportunities for pre- and post- doctoral researchers, and hosts seminars, summer research workshops for academics, conferences, lectures, and symposia. The CAHS’s Visiting Scholars Program and other events have made the USHMM one of the world’s principal venues for Holocaust scholarship.

Committee on Conscience:
The Museum contains the offices of the Committee on Conscience (CoC), a joint United States government and privately funded think tank, which by presidential mandate engages in global human rights research. Using the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, approved by the United Nations in 1948 and ratified by the United States in 1988, the CoC has established itself as a leading non-partisan commenter on the Darfur Genocide, as well as the war-torn region of Chechnya in Russia, a zone that the CoC believes could produce genocidal atrocities. The CoC does not have policy-making powers and serves solely as an advisory institution to the American and other governments.

National Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH):
In addition to coordinating the National Civic Commemoration, ceremonies and educational programs during the week of the DRVH were regularly held throughout the country, sponsored by Governors, Mayors, veterans groups, religious groups, and military ships and stations throughout the world.

Each year, the USHMM designated a special theme for DRVH observances, and prepares materials available at no charge to support observances and programs throughout the nation, and in the United States military.

National Institute for Holocaust Education:
The USHMM conducted several programs devoted to improving Holocaust education. The Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Conference for Teachers, conducted in Washington, D.C., attracted around 200 middle school and secondary teachers from around the United States each year. The Education Division offered workshops around the United States for teachers to learn about the Holocaust, to participate in the Museum Teacher Fellowship Program (MTFP), and to join a national corps of educators who served as leaders in Holocaust education in their schools, communities, and professional organizations. Some MTFP participants also participated in the Regional Education Corps, an initiative to implement Holocaust education on a national level.

Since 1999, the USHMM also provided public service professionals, including law enforcement officers, military personnel, civil servants, and federal judges with ethics lessons based in Holocaust history. In partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, more than 21,000 law enforcement officers from worldwide and local law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and local police departments have been trained to act in a professional and democratic manner.

Outreach technology:
A large component of the USHMM was directed towards its website and associated accounts. With a majority of interest coming from the virtual world, the USHMM provided a variety of research tools online.

On its website, online exhibitions, the Museum published the Holocaust Encyclopedia—an online, multilingual encyclopedia detailing the events surrounding the Holocaust. It was published in all six of the official languages of the United Nations—Arabic, Mandarin, English, French, Russian, and Spanish; as well as in Greek, Portuguese, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu. It contained thousands of entries and includes copies of the identification card profiles that visitors receive at the Permanent Exhibition.

The USHMM had partnered with Apple Inc. to publish free podcasts on iTunes about the Holocaust, anti-semitism, and genocide prevention. It also had its own channel on YouTube, an official account on Facebook, a Twitter page, and an e-mail newsletter service.

The Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative was a collaboration between the USHMM and Google Earth. It sought to collect, share, and visually present to the world critical information on emerging crises that may lead to genocide or related crimes against humanity. While this initiative focused on the Darfur Conflict, the Museum wishes to broaden its scope to all human rights violations. The USHMM wanted to build an interactive “global crisis map” to share and understand information quickly, to “see the situation” when dealing with human rights abuses, enabling more effective prevention and response by the world.

Traveling exhibitions:
Since 1991, the USHMM had created traveling exhibitions to travel all over the United States and the world. These exhibitions have been to over one hundred cities in more than 35 states. It is possible to request and host various subject matters including: “The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936”, “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals”, and others depending on what a community desires.

Mission:
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America’s national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country’s memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust.

The Museum’s primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.