Remembrance: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Exhibitions

That most of us have learned about the Holocaust, in school and through our families and possibly our religious institutions, is testament is how hard we have worked to ensure that the horrors of this mass persecution aren't ever repeated.  By teaching each other about this tragedy and the awful acts that were committed, we hope to make such violence and prejudice repellent.  That's the aim of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and now through its online exhibits anyone can learn, in depth, the many different aspects of this genocide.

The Holocaust usually conjures up images of Jews being persecuted, which was its primary intention - but it's easy to forget that there were many other facets of the German rise to power.  The Holocaust Museum's multitude of online exhibits cover, basically, everything.  Want to know about the 1936 Berlin Olympics?  There's a huge exhibit about that event.  Curious about survivors who continued their lives in the United States?  You can view many oral histories about this migration.  You can also learn about religious leaders who opposed the German government, Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial.

Some of these exhibits are highly detailed - the one about the Olympics, for example, goes on for pages and covers just about everything you could possibly think of.  Some are just a few short paragraphs, like the page about people of African descent in Nazi Germany.  This inconsistency is a little annoying, because you don't know if you're going to get a avalanche of information and photos or just a few bits of information.  I was also frustrated by the setup of the online exhibitions, because if you got caught down the rabbit hole of a particularly detailed exhibit, it was difficult to get back to the main page displaying all of the exhibits.

But the online exhibits do plenty of things incredibly well.  There are a wealth of images, video, and oral histories to browse through.  The museum also lets you browse its ID program (which presents photos and histories of specific concentration camp victims) online.  Plus, the shear number of topics is really amazing because it reminds you just how devastating the Holocaust was to so many groups of people.  It's this type of presentation and remembrance that helps us keep in mind how devastating this period in history was, and why we should never forget it.


The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Exhibits
Website:  www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online