Aug. 4 – Washington, DC

Day 139 – U. S. Holocaust Museum

Gangplank Marina

We have been so busy the past few days, so we decided to stay on the boat this morning and get a few needed chores done and relax. The Holocaust Museum is free but you have to get tickets to get in…ours where for 12:45. So after lunch we rode over to the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. They have done a wonderful job presenting the horrors of the Holocaust in an educational way that would even be suitable for most children to see. The museum tells the story of Holocaust victims in a personal, harrowing way. Visitors board a freight train; the way victims en route to the concentration camps did, and hear recordings of survivors' recollections of life in the camps. Exhibits track the rise of the Nazi machine and the mass murder of six million Jews and countless European minorities. The unspeakable tragedy that took place in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s must be spoken about so that people never forget…that is the mission of this museum.

This evening we sat on the flybridge and listened to music in the park above the boat.

The front of the museum

I think this is considered the back of the museum...it faces The Mall

The visitor center of the Holocaust Museum

No pictures were allowed in the museum, so the following pictures are courtesy of the internet. This is one of the original trains used to transport Jews to the camps. Visitors walk through it, as if they are being loaded on the train the way the Jewish people were so long ago.

Some of the shoes the German's collected from those who died in the camps

The alter in the Hall of Remembrance - The inscription reads:  Here lies the earth gathered from death camps, concentration camps, sites of mass execution and ghettos in Nazi occupied Europe, and from the cemeteries of American soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany.

Park above the boat...they were having a farmers market complete with beer, wine, food and music