I think it’s so interesting how the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which obviously is supposed to speak about Jewish Heritage, is a Holocaust museum. How Jewish history and heritage is so marked by the Holocaust. I decided to go to this museum because I had to fulfill one of my cutltural passport requirements, and I haven’t been to this museum in a few years, so I thought it would be a meaningful place to go to. The museum is comprised of 3 levels: Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, The Holocaust, and Jewish life post-Holocaust. I’ve always liked history, and the Holocaust is one era that particularly haunts me and that I have examined time and time again. I have taken many classes about the Holocaust, read many books, memoirs, and stories about the Holocaust, visited many Holocaust museums in New York, Washington D.C., and Israel, and I even went to Poland to visit the concentration camps. Each time, I always try to imagine myself as one of those Jews dragged off by the Nazis, and as much as I’ve come close, it still doesn’t feel real – it still just seems like a movie. When I visited the museum, I looked at all the artifacts that hold the traces of the vibrant, thriving Jewish life in Europe. I saw pictures of all kinds of Jews – religious, rabbis, secular, completely assimilated Jews, Jews that didn’t even know they were Jewish. All of them were living their normal lives until suddenly their lives would be changed, never to be the same, as the Nazis came and began to impose laws that would eventually lead to the downfall of European Jewry. There are pictures and documentaries showing the Nazis destroying all kinds of Jewish institutions, burning Jewish books, deporting Jews to ghettos and concentration camps, and of course, Jews being burned in the ovens. This is all hard to handle, and it cannot be processed fully, definitely not by someone that has grown up in New York in the twenty-first century, someone who cannot even begin to imagine the perils of war, someone like myself. On the third floor, my favorite floor, there are pictures of the liberations and the new State of Israel, a home for the Jewish people, a place where Jews are guaranteed a place to live and be safe and be surrounded by friends and family. A promise that the Holocaust will never happen again.
As I looked at all the remnants, the artifacts, the facts and figures, and see the few things that survived, that outlived all the people who perished in war, it’s hard to have faith that the Jewish people live on. But as I walk around the museum and see other Jews there who are mourning the destruction and working hard to make a life for themselves here, I know there are Jews today who are flourishing and contributing members to society. And I know that something lives on. Overall I had a great, thought-provoking and meaningful experience at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Anyone who loves culture, religion, and themes of hope can appreciate this museum.
I had a very similar experience while visiting the Museum of Jewish Heritage and also have been haunted by the holocaust. I think I made my first visit to the museum in seventh grade with my class. It was then my eyes were opened to the atrocities of the holocaust. Since then I have gone to various museums and taken various holocaust classes so that as a jew and as a human being I will never forget what happened.