By Jackie Sheckler Finch
When Gestapo officers discovered the annex in which the Frank family had been hiding for more than two years, the Nazis were looking for Jews and for valuables. Picking up a packet, a Gestapo threw it on the floor when he found it contained only papers and a young girl’s diary. Instead, the officer walked away with silverware and a candlestick, leaving behind what would become one of the world’s most important writings.
“If he had taken the diary with him, no one would ever have heard of my daughter,” Otto Frank later said.
His daughter, of course, was Anne Frank. The 15-year-old girl and her sister Margot died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. Their mother Edith was murdered in Auschwitz in January 1945. Only Otto Frank survived when Auschwitz was liberated, and he worked diligently to get his daughter’s diary published. A Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956, The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 30 million copies.
Today, the story of Anne Frank and the 6 million European Jews killed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945 are remembered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
“The Museum has been a popular attraction since its opening 25 years ago, welcoming more than 43 million visitors,” said Wily E. Jones, deputy director of museum services. “The museum’s lessons about human nature and the dangers of unchecked hatred and Antisemitism are as relevant as ever and visitors of all backgrounds respond to this history.”
During the museum’s “high season” from March 1 through August 31, visitors needed timed tickets to prevent overcrowding and to provide visitors with a more comfortable experience in the museum’s permanent exhibit on the Holocaust.
“The museum offers free admission as it is America’s national memorial to the Holocaust and serves to educate all Americans about this history and its lessons for today,” Jones said. “The passes are timed entry passes allowing individuals or groups to enter at specific times during the day.”
Groups have two options to obtain timed passes. In the first option –the one most recommended—online advance passes for June, July and August are released at 8 p.m. EST on Feb. 28. Each pass has a $1 service charge and there is a limit of 55 passes per person per date of visit. Passes can be ordered over the phone at (800) 514-3849.
The second option allows free online reservations to be made for groups of 40 to 120 people. Group reservations can be made three months in advance of the date for the proposed visit. Demand for reservations is very high and often individual dates book within minutes of release for visits from March through June, Jones said.
If you go
Spanning three floors, the museum’s permanent exhibit The Holocaust offers a chronological narrative of the Holocaust through historical artifacts, photographs and film footage. Visitors also encounter personal objects and eyewitness testimonies of individual survivors. Special exhibits tell different aspects of traditional Holocaust history or showcase issues surrounding modern day genocide, Jones said.
“In addition to those exhibitions, there is a speaker’s program featuring Holocaust survivors as well as a film series,” Jones said.
The museum’s newest exhibit – Americans and the Holocaust – opened April 2018. “This exhibition is a portrait of American society that shows how the Depression, isolationism, xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism influenced American responses to Nazism and the Holocaust,” Jones said. “It reveals how much information was available to Americans at the time and asks why rescuing Jews did not become a priority, except for a few individuals who took the risk to help.”
Chartered by a unanimous act of Congress, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened April 22, 1993. Located among other national monuments to freedom on the National Mall, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, and the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values, Jones said.
“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,” Jones said. “And it encourages them to act, cultivating a sense of moral responsibility among our citizens so that they will respond to the monumental challenges that confront our world. The museum reminds us that ‘what you do matters.’”
For more information about 2019 group ticketing: visit https://www.ushmm.org/online/group-reservation.
