There is no other monumental structure more powerful than the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Everywhere you look, it alludes to the history the Museum addresses with its abstract forms to help you feel—and try to understand—what happened. It gives visitors the sense that they are not in Washington nor anywhere else familiar. The building endeavors to remind people of the terrors and the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust.
In 1985, when I was still busy teaching, I heard that a museum about the Holocaust was going to be built here in Washington, DC, on the National Mall near the Washington Monument, next to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. I could not have guessed that the soil on which it was going to be built would be mixed with the soil from concentration camps.
After I retired from teaching in 1992, I volunteered to translate German documents in the offices on L Street that were preparing an immense amount of material to be used in the new museum once it was built. Since I was a weekly volunteer there, I was invited to the construction site on 14th Street and Independence Avenue SW. I was outfitted with a hard hat for safety because the open ground was filled with cranes, building materials, and construction workers digging and using dangerous tools. I had to be careful not to stumble over the building materials.
I drove two more times to the 1.9-acre site that had been made available by the US federal government. It sat on Raoul Wallenberg Place (formerly 15th Street), which was only 400 yards from the Washington Monument. At the time, I also saw a railcar hanging high in the air on a very large crane. It was to be placed on the third floor before the building was completed because it would be too large to fit through any opening. I had seen some blueprints during the construction and could not wait for this strange and abstract building to be completed.
The day it was dedicated was a rainy day. Hundreds of umbrellas covered the people who came to the dedication ceremonies for the Museum on April 22, 1993. I was standing on the side of the plaza, which was later called Eisenhower Plaza, and I heard the speeches by US President Bill Clinton, President of Israel Chaim Herzog, and Elie Wiesel. I felt very honored to be there. Four days later when the Museum opened to the public, the first visitor was the Dalai Lama of Tibet.
I do not remember exactly when I made my first visit to the Museum, but I do remember how it felt when I first walked into the finished building. I noticed the bookstore and then some flags and writing on the wall, but could not understand which way to turn next. Should I turn left? Or right? Why did architect James Ingo Freed make it so difficult to get to the heart of the Museum?
Finally I reached the Hall of Witness and observed a massive open rectangular space with brick walls. These walls, two floors high, were covered by a glass roof with geometric panes. The skylight looked like a gabled roof and reached as high as the fifth floor. There were heavy metal reinforcements holding the glass and brick together. I could see the sky, and to me it seemed like the only way one could get out. On the granite floor there was an illuminated, glass-tiled, single line about 15 feet long that ended for no reason and then picked up again. Two bridges above spanned between two sides of the hall. People walked across them, making me feel like I was being watched. The main staircase was wide at the bottom and narrowed gradually to the top like a receding railroad track heading to a concentration camp.
Everywhere I looked, spaces evoked images that told the story of the Holocaust. The two walls at each end of the rectangular space seemed at odds with each other. One was white marble for hope and the other black granite for sinister days during World War II. All these distortions and ruptures made me feel like I was where the Holocaust took place. The Hall of Witness certainly gets the visitor emotionally ready for the main exhibition and all the other exhibitions that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has to offer.
The architecture of the other spaces in the Museum is also suggestive and makes me feel that the Museum is not only a memorial and a monument, but also a grand and awe-inspiring sculpture. It is a building of exceptional sensibility and impact, and the visitor will remember it for a long time.
I have spent almost 30 years now as a volunteer at the Museum. I have taken workshops, become part of the education department, and been trained to be a docent for the main exhibition and all the special exhibitions. I have attended lectures and participated in new events. I have also had the privilege to be part of the Museum’s speakers’ bureau, as well as the Echoes of Memory writers’ workshop.
From this Museum I have learned so much more about my own experience during the Holocaust and how it fits into the history that the Museum teaches. When I tour the fourth floor of the main exhibition, I see in detail my life in Germany when I was a young girl. This segment of the exhibition knows all about me, and I know that I will always be part of its fabric. I also hope that I will always be in the air of the entire Museum because I have spent so much time and energy in so many areas of this magnificent structure. My work is part of this teaching memorial and has become part of me. I feel that every time I connect with the Museum, I learn something new. I want to continue to contribute to this living memorial to the Holocaust that, as its mission states, “inspires citizens and leaders of the world to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.”
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