Local Holocaust Museums Grow Amid Worries About Future
‘The Generation That Gives Money Is Moving On,’ Said One Expert
By Gal Beckerman
The numbers speak for themselves: There are now 16 Holocaust museums in the United States, from Albuquerque, N.M., to Houston, to Richmond, Va. And these are just the biggest of nearly 150 Holocaust centers all over the country.
The proliferation of museums detailing the story of what happened to European Jewry during World War II has been largely a phenomenon of the 1990s, part of the general increase in Holocaust awareness in the culture at large. But it has by no means slowed: The most recent museum, in Skokie, Ill., opened last spring, while construction continues on a second Los Angeles museum, to open in the summer of 2010.
With a substantial, federally-backed national museum in Washington, critics are increasingly wondering about the need for so many local museums. Even more important, the question of whether these institutions will be able to financially sustain themselves into the future — given the heavy costs of maintaining collections, and the dying off of the Holocaust survivors who founded them — is of great concern to museum directors.
“We just had a board meeting in December in New York City, and we all talked about the dwindling of funds,” said Susan Myers, executive director of the Holocaust Museum Houston and vice president of the Association of Holocaust Organizations, referring to her fellow museum directors. “We’re all competing for the same money. It’s an everyday conversation we’re having.”
Those who defend the existence of the regional museums do so on the grounds that they serve populations that cannot visit the nation’s capital.
William Shulman is president of the association, which was founded in 1985 with 25 members and now has 282 affiliated Holocaust centers worldwide, the majority of which are in the United States. He denied that there are any serious, long-term financial concerns for these institutions, and emphasized instead that the museums are playing a critical role in Holocaust and genocide education.
“The rationale for having them is because most people don’t get to Washington,” Shulman said.
Even Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — the institution that, by most accounts, would have to bear the burden in the future of caring for the collections of any museums that can no longer support themselves — agrees that these local museums are important.
“The national museum is becoming so national and global in our work that we now are depending on these smaller, local organizations to be on the ground everyday in their communities,” Bloomfield said, “because we can’t be in all 50 states at once.”
The concerns about these institutions fall into two broad categories. First is the worry that heavy investment in Holocaust museums and monuments is taking away funds from other more critical needs in the community.
“There is a very profound question of how much of our limited resources we are going to put into that as opposed to other things,” said Jonathan Tobin, executive editor of Commentary magazine. “This is a time when Jewish education is going begging, when Jewish schools are under siege financially, as well as having the need to maintain basic social services for the elderly and the poor. These things have to be taken into consideration. It begs the question of how many of these institutions do we need in this country.”
But the even greater worry about these local institutions — shared by those who run them — is how to keep them financially viable.
Unlike the national museum in Washington, which, according to Bloomfield, is almost halfway toward its goal of raising a $400 million endowment, the majority of the regional museums were started by survivors, with the goal of keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust in their communities. The generation that strongly supported them is beginning to die out. Only the larger of these museums have endowments at all, and then relatively small ones.
In Richmond, the Virginia Holocaust Museum was started in 1997 by Jay Ipson, who was born in Lithuania and was still a young boy when he arrived in the United States as a survivor. The museum was housed first in five small rooms at a local synagogue, and mostly told the story of Ipson’s family. In 2000, the State of Virginia donated a dilapidated 120,000 square-foot tobacco warehouse as a new site. Ipson also managed to get the backing of Marcus Weinstein, a real estate mogul and local Jewish philanthropist.
According to Ipson, who calls Weinstein his “angel,” the philanthropist has underwritten the transformation of the massive warehouse into a sprawling museum that opened in 2003. It has no endowment, and Ipson’s hope is that Weinstein’s promise of supporting the museum in perpetuity holds true.
“I’ve been told — I haven’t seen the paperwork — that he left in his will that we should continue to get those funds at a minimum,” Ipson said.
Weinstein said he would support the museum as long as there’s funding. “I can’t say what will happen in a hundred years,” he said. As for his will, he declined to comment.
Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar who is the director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at American Jewish University, is not opposed to the proliferation of these local Holocaust initiatives and has even acted as a consultant for many of them.
But he, too, has concerns about the future. “The generation that would give huge money to create that is moving on,” Berenbaum said. “The survivor who was 18 when he survived is now 82. The survivor who was 30 is now 94. That generation is unfortunately going the way of all flesh, and therefore the question for every institution is, how do you create for the future. Endowments in particular used to look like the safest bet, but these past years have shown us that they are not such a secure choice anymore, which is why the presidents of museum boards are pulling their hair out of their heads.”
For many Holocaust museum directors across the country, the solution has been to look outside the Jewish community for support.
Myers said that 50% of her donors in Houston are non-Jews. She has also reached out to such corporate sponsors as AT&T and Continental Airlines. The shift in focus away from a Jewish audience and donor base has also affected the content of the museum, which is evidenced, Myers pointed out, in its two current exhibits: one about John Paul II’s role in Catholic-Jewish reconciliation, and the other about Muslims who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
And still, the building of new museums continues. The latest is in Los Angeles. In a city that already has a Holocaust institution in the Museum of Tolerance, a new 30,000 square-foot building is being constructed for an older institution, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, now housed on the ground floor of the ORT building, on Wilshire Boulevard.
Mark Rothman, executive director, was unapologetic about the addition of yet another museum to the Holocaust landscape. The Museum of Tolerance, he said, was more generally focused on human rights — “It’s in the name,” he said — while his museum more narrowly tells the story of the Jewish experience of World War II.
Rothman sees hypocrisy in those who criticize the building of Holocaust museums while using the Holocaust to raise funds for other community needs, including for the local federation. “As soon as they can stop using the Holocaust in some way to raise money, I think that at that point it’s valid to say maybe it’s not reasonable to spend community resources on museums,” he said.
With a projected endowment of $2 million to $3 million — not yet raised — he, too, sees problems that his institution might face in the future. But, he added, they are no different from the challenges that will confront all institutions of Jewish life.
“In 15 years, I think the questions being raised about Holocaust institutions are also going to need to be answered by every Jewish federation in the country,” Rothman said. “In general, your profile remains older people who are not going to be with us at some very near point in the future. That’s the profile of our donors, and that’s the profile of the donors for every Jewish organization in Los Angeles.”
Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com
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Mark, I think you had a lot of good things to say about the addition of another Holocaust Museum. You are doing a great job of making a modern site that the community can benefit from. Congratulations!
WE CANNOT SIMPLY LET DIE THOSE BLACK YEARS IN WW-II AND STILL HAVE FANATICS IN IRAN AND MANY OTHER PLACES AS WELL DENYING THE EXISTENCE OF S UCH A TERRIBLE CHAPTER IN HISTORY.
I am amazed how much the Jewish Community, including some so called "survivors", are willing to pay for their and their ancestors guilt. As a young Polish Jew I survived the war in Poland and Germany. My family was slaughtered by Germans while the Jews of America and it's government looked the other way. Many European Jews could have been saved if their relatives in America had been willing to stage demonstrations and hunger strikes. They were advised, by the Jewish leadership and especially the Zionists, to refrain from making "waves". The Zionists did not care for Polish Jewry, their interests were in creating the State of Israel at any cost. Now they are building museums. It is cruel joke.
As a "child" of Holocaust survivors, myself born in a DP camp in Germany after the war, I have objected to all of these Holocaust theme parks. I think they have done more harm than good. They have actually fueled a backlash, and certainly have not mitigated the numbers of huge massacres that have occurred since. They have failed in their mission, if that mission was to deter future catastrophes of a similar nature. Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur testify to that failure. They have been a massive misappropriation of scarce Jewish resources that could have been used for better purposes, such as materially helping poor elderly survivors both here and in Israel, or in helping Righteous Gentiles who save many Jews such as my own mother. There should have been only two such major memorials built: one in Israel and one in Berlin. Putting them elsewhere as well was merely shoving guilt down the throats of others who had no direct responsibility for it. Most of these projects were pushed by liberal western Jews, few of whom actually experienced it up close, and perhaps were motivated by guilt in not having been able to do more earlier on, or perhaps by idealistic motivations, which have mostly failed as noted. We need fewer, not more of them. What we need is a strong Israel which in and of itself is the best memorial of all to overcoming and survival.
I am so torn. The memory of the Holocaust should never perish. Nor should that of any terror inflicted on a people such as we've seen in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia, Ukraine, even Canaan.
The National Holocaust Museum in D.C., and particularly Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, are deep and moving experiences, and both institutions will play important roles in keeping the memory of such horrors alive, with the hope the horrors are never repeated.
But we are not alone, as Jews, in having suffered at the hands of others. The most vocal among us are consumed with putting a perpetual guilt trip on the world. Every visiting foreign dignitary to Israel has his or her photo-op laying a wreath at Yad Vashem. The Holocaust has become a bludgeon, an excuse, and an umbrella.
'Never Again' has fueled an ideological nationalism of desperation, which has turned against people that stood in its path, like so many terrors of history. Oh, it's all relative. There's big, bigger, and ginormous. But no different. This fanatic nationalism that deprives others of roots, heritage, liberty, and life needs to be toned down and become more all-embracing, or it will destroy itself like so many others before it.
What role will the proliferation of Holocaust museums play in this drama?
Hymie Zoltsveis wrote:
>WE have muslim vermin around the world right now, yet we refuse to admit that islam has been WORSE than Nazis for 1,300 years. The ADL and much of the"Federation Jews" keep picking on Christians---many of whom are our allies---and ignore muslim killers.
Looks like somebody has forgotten the Holocaust already.
He ought to read the Nazi propaganda, where the Germans referred to the "Jewish vermin."
Racism against Muslims is no better than racism against Jews.
I think that any time we see this kind of racism, we should speak out against it.
That's the best way to remember the Holocaust.
Hymie Zoltsveis should reconsider his words. Change the word Muslims to Jews in his rant and it sounds an awful lot like National Socialism.
More so than the explosion of Holocaust museums that may not long survive the passing of the Survivor generation, the future of Holocaust remembrance is threatened by the proliferation of dates for commemoration. At last count, there is the 9th of AV, observed by the Haredi community, Yom Hashoah, Kristallnacht, and the United Nations observance of the liberation of Auschwitz. Something has got to give, History can not carry multiple commemorative dates, no matter how dramatic and important the event. Furthermore, the key to universal remembrance is found in ritualized Jewish remembrance, for if we have no formal mechanism for remembering, nobody else will do so either. It is therefore essential that the Holocaust be incorporated in the Jewish calendar with a definitive date, and observed by a set of rituals. This is our traditional way, which has preserved the memory of our liberation from bondage in Egypt at Passover, the destruction of the Temple at Tishe B'av, the recue of Persia's Jews facing extinction at Purim. Over the long run, whatever is not ritualized is forgotten.
The Fedeartion of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, which represents the last generation of Survivors, has recognized the urgency of this situation. It has issued a collective ethical charge placed upon the spiritual and secular leaders of the Jewish people, those active today and those of times to come to bind the last generation of Survivors, to the Jews of all generations to follow, in the service of
Yom Hashoah commemorations have an unsettled "ad-hoc" character, not likely to endure beyond the lives of the Survivors and liberators.
I used to be sympathetic to you guys. But, you have been beating this drum for too long, and now it's getting even louder. So it's clear to me you have "another" agenda. People are so sick if you guys incessant beating of this drum, when/if Iran nukes Israel everyone is going to know why, and isn't going to give a lot of sympathy because you are using it all up on the event that happened 80yrs ago, and are STILL asking for $ for it now. Get over it already.
IGARBUZ.I too was born in a D.P. camp in Germany and I agree with you. All the museums in the world will not help if Israel is destroyed. We need to take the millions given for museums and use the money for Jewish education. Yeshivot and Day Schools are in desperate need of financial help. Instead of Museums create Chairs in Holocaust education at the various universities. We have enough museums and movies. Dayenu.
I will never "get over the Holocaust." I lost my siblings, grandparents , aunts, uncles and cousins and I live with the memory of the concentration camp number on my father's arm as well as the anguish of my mother who suffered in work camps and concentration camps. I will never be played out. However I must admit that there is no business like Shoah business. Enough movies, museums and people making money without donating it back to Jewish education and causes. We also need to say never again and speak out against genocides throughout the world.
16 museums and 150 centers? For something that happened in Europe? Where are the museums and centers for the holocaust of the American Indian and why isn't one in Washington, DC?
Or are some people more special than others?
maybe "get over it" was a bit harsh, but my point remains. This is like the annoying guy in school who no matter WHAT happens, always had something bigger/better/worse than anyone else, and never shuts up about it. 50M in Russia, and yet we only hear about 6M in Germany. Why is that?
What I should have said is I have no problem with you mourning over the event (if that's what happened), but stop DEMANDING and asking us to.
It's old, and you guys have gone to the well too many times, and are actually turning folks against your cause as a result. You do not see it because you are too close to it, but you are beginning to encourage the hate you are speaking against, by your very actions. GET OVER IT.
I'm all for preventing future events like this, but spotlighting it ad nauseum is GETTING OLD.
The Holocaust industry is all about making money by guilt tripping non-jews. Was there ever any commeration of the Holocaust or any invoking of it's sacredness, without a hand simultaneously reaching for a dime? With the neverending bleating lament, I finally had to do my own research. The result was that now I do not believe the account of the Holocaust at all. I used to believe it, Ann Frank, lampshades, etc., but now I don't in any part of it. What I say never again to, is another Holocaust museum.
to answer gerda bikale go to yad vashem during yom hashoah - i am guessing there is nothing ad hoc about commemoration services there - as a matter of fact there is but one institution that does not have the same concerns re money or validity your article raises - that is Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
I think the true memorial to the Holocaust is the lesson: never blindly follow leaders.
(That's why Jews in the 1960s resisted the Vietnam war so heroically.)
I am glad to see that many here have learned that lesson.
Nicht vergessen!
Jake,
Please stop doing your own research. That just makes you a Holocaust denier. The lampshades and soap story are very emotional and if you question them people will get upset. You have to share in their emotion or you'll be on the wrong side of history.
If you want to look at the evidence for yourself, go and look at what the Sobibor Archaeological Project found: undersobibor.org
Look at the millions of teeth and thousands of tons of bone fragments. Look at the gas chamber that they found. Go and watch their documentary, "Revealing the Horror", which is intended once and for all to put a stop to Holocaust denial by showing what was really found under the ground in Sobibor.
Funny how there aren't clusters of Holocaust museums in countries that lack the political and military power of America. Are those countries not as useful to the Zion project?
There's no business like Shoah business.
Having been no part of what happened in WW2, and also having had many family members of generations past fight and die in that war, why should the USA be erecting these museums? Should not there be museums erected and funded memorializing the heroes of America who were part of the liberation? Should there not be payments made to the USA for all that was sacrificed for the victims of the 20th century holocaust?
This discussion is starting to be ammunition for Holocaust deniers. I guess my murdered relatives are really in Miami sunning themselves.
Seriously Forward editors---can somebody delete the antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, Holocaust-denying hate mail above? This is some nonsense---on a damned thread about Holocaust museums, no less.
I mean, am I hallucinating, or is this notice actually posted below?
"The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason."
Keep your promises, darn it!
As an American Jew who now lives in Richmond VA, the surpurlatives expressed by your readers amazes me! We are indeed fortunate to have an individual such as Mr. Weinstein who is willing and has the capacity to support our entity. However this is not the whole story, there are many in our community, Jew and non Jew who give of themselves to make Shoach an integral part of the community.
Our museum has been instrumental with the help of Governor Tim Kaine to provide our high school students with study into this horrendous period, the University of Richmond is also providing educators with the know how to present to their students an objective review of this historical time.Our holocaust survivors go out and speak at the schools throughout the state.
You might say " what a waste ", however, my contention is that there are many worthwhile needs in our communities, but what is more important than implanting social juetice into the minds of young people, who by the way have no idea of what transpired during this period!
For decades after the Holocaust there was barely any serious attempt made to educate our wider communities about what happened during that dark period in human history. Today, thanks largely to the museums described in this article, there is hardly a public school district in the country that hasn't implemented some form of meaningful Holocaust or genocide curriculum. The level of general education about the Holocaust, how it came to be, and the need to avoid such calamities in the future is so much higher now than it was a generation ago. This is one of the most positive legacies of the Holocaust museums. Of the millions of people from around the world who visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum each year, only 5% are Jews. 95% are non-Jews. Think about that for a minute. The rest of the world actually wants to know and learn from what happened, and is able to do so thanks to these museums. All that money was well spent. I hope future generations care as much as ours about keeping this going.
http://www.youtube.com/user/drdduke
I hope I am wrong, but I believe in the next 30 years there will be only a few Holocasut museums left. Without funding how can they survive? Unfortunately ,I do not believe that future generations will be willing to donate as generously as the generation which included the gracious monetary gifts of the Holocaust survivors.
Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg, I am not concerned with how many Holocaust museums there are as I am about the quality of those that will remain.
Transmitting the history of the Shoah is more important than the number of Museums around.
It's because history is so poorly taught these days that so many people are afraid of a loss of historical memory.
Huh-- I don't see a push for the Native American Holocaust. Especially since our country was built on it!
Watch my Holocaust survival story. Please send donations if you or any of your family are of German descent. And please, be generous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaCI4cqdPks&feature=related
The Palestinian Holocaust is happening RIGHT NOW and this make-believe "Jewish" non-sense is treated as fact?
I remember reading a few years ago that the 1st jewish prisoner to walk into Auschwitz had finally died at age 88. You know, I have always been amazed at the seemingly endless number of Holocaust "survivors." Who knew that the Germans were so completely inept at killing people? I guess Hogan's Heroes was truer than the Holo-fantasies of those profiting from Holocaust Industries, Inc.
where are the museums for those killed by communist bolshivek jews during the same time period? where is the outrage? Stalin killed more Jews than Hitler ever dreamed of.
How about those poor Palestinians,who daily are tortured by their occupiers?
Sadly, It is clear to those with open eyes that the holocaust has been exploited and used successfully as a tool for the greater expansion of the Isreali government .Ironically, these Isreali occupiers want to have it both ways.It takes chutzpah to ask for sympathy for money for holocaust tourist traps about their "chosen peoples" wwII genocide while they brutally occupy the palestinians today. People in the USA will wake up to this old chestnut...and those who posted bigoted slurs against all Muslims are no better than the Bigots of days gone by.
When I was 14 years old, 50 years ago, my father took me to the home of his friend. His friend happened to be a military photographer during World War II, and one of his assignments took place during the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. I do not remember the name or place of the camp. However I will never forget the foot-high stacks of 8x10 black and white photographs Mr. Bernardo showed me. I saw each and every one of those photos, and actually got sick. I know now why I was permitted to see them. Although I was never physically present at that place, I was instantly connected to the suffering that took place there. I immediately understood the senselessness of war and the lowest depths to which nations can sink. Evil truly stalks this earth in human form, and in many disguises. And judging from the continuing, unending slaughter on this sad planet, evil truly begets more evil.
Maybe instead of having so many museums on the Shoah, they could have just an exhibition on it within a museum dealing more broadly with topics in Judaica. I like most gentiles had no idea of the full breadth of Jewish culture and history until I started reading some books like Born to Kvetch by Wex, The Gift of the Jews by Cahill, and Judaism Discovered by Hoffman.
I had to stop myself 1/2 way through these comments before I literally would have to have destroyed my laptop in my fury at the idiocy and rhetoric of the majority of the comments here. While everyone (at least here in the USA) has a right to free speech, I wish there was a bigot filter so that the rest of us didn't have to be exposed to it, especially the impressionable youth who trust adults to tell them the truth and what is right.
And before you start spewing antisemitic drivel at me, I am an American of English/Irish/Danish descent who is a practicing Catholic, but by all means, call me a Jew-lover, I consider it a compliment.
I intended on responding to individual comments but after 10 in a row that begged a response, I have chosen to combine my responses into a summary that addresses points from some of the most hateful - those where the author actually attempts to use LOGIC to support their hatred. I have a feeling this may become a multi-comment response, but I refuse to apologize for that, because so many of the vitriolic comments above repeat the same thing over and over.
So here is my response (pt1): This is the only response directed to the original question (re: the # & funding of the many Shoah memorials) which is a reasonable one. The original comment itself is not offensive to me, as it raises a reasonable question. The remaining responses stem from my fury at the antisemitism:
[James Stafford Dec 28] "For something that happened in Europe? Where are the museums and centers for the holocaust of the American Indian and why isn't one in Washington, DC? Or are some people more special than others"
First, some people are NOT more special than others! That is the whole fallacy that created the Holocaust in the first place, with Hitler's claim that "Aryans" were a superior race, and all others (Jews, Poles, Ukranians, Russians etc) were 'subhuman'
The treatment of the American Indian is deplorable and still something that we as a nation need to take responsiblilty for. But that doesn't lessen the atrocities of the Final SOlution.
With regards to why so many and why here: Perhaps because in the decades following the Holocaust, Europe was in such turmoil and the survivors preferred to leave the lands where their neighbors and former friends had sold them to the Nazi's for a kilo of sugar, and so emigrated to the US and Israel (Yad Vashem is still the largest center for Shoah rememberance I believe) and both of these nations didn't try to minimize the suffering but acknowledged it and the survivors became among the most productive and beneficial citizens of their new countries. It isn't surprising that they would want to start spreading awareness in a climate of acceptance vs trying to force a war-torn continent to acknowledge it's widespread guilt in the mass-murder of millions of innocents - Jews, Gypsies, jehovahs witness, homosexuals, communists, Catholics & Russian P.O.Ws - from infants to the elderly - people who asked for nothing but the right to live.
That is my best guess as to why they are located where they are.
This will be my final comment, I hope some people take the time to read at least some of what I have written and realized that hatred and bigotry do nothing but harm those who posses them. Peace...
@[Dietmar Ferger Dec 29, 2009]
"...The international red cross estimates 272,000 died in all camps and they had access, but there are always some idiots who disagree, mostly Americans."
The International Red Cross (IRC) estimate is your basis for believing less than 300,000 people were murdered?? Do a little bit more research before quoting "facts' like these. The IRC was allowed access to ONE (1) came, THERESIENSTADT(Terezin) or the "Model Camp" created by the Nazi's to allay suspicions of the worldwide community after word started to filter through to the west about the horrors taking place in eastern Europe. The only "Red Cross" presence in any other camps were the vans painted with their logo used to transport the Zyclon-B gas used to kill thousands daily in the gas chambers from 1942 - 1944.
Try expanding your research, starting with the "Auschwitz Protocol / The Vrba-Wetzler Report" [http://tinyurl.com/yfjpzxc]. This document was compiled by the first 2 men to escape that camp. They had been prisoners for over 2 years and were in positions (as block clerk and mortuary clerk as well as on the arrival platforms) to track hard data on the # of transports, average number of people per transport and percentage of each transport selected to 'live' (10% of men, 5% of women). In addition to their own observations and record keeping (one of them having the additional benefit of a photographic memory) they collected data from workers in the crematories on the amount of fuel required to burn a body and the amount of fuel used daily to verify their independent calculations. Upon escape, their only goal was to get this information made public to prevent the impending destruction of nearly 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews still living who were the next target.
Their statements were taken separately and they were intensively questioned for details verifying their data and even the sceptics could not deny the facts placed before them. They intentionally did not guess when they did not know something, but stated only what they could substantiate as fact. They even detail by transport the nationality of the arrivals and the # assigned to those not killed immediately
Their calculations estimated a minimum of 1.5 MILLION people murdered prior to 4/7/44 (another 500,000 Hungarians were killed after their escape) so I would feel more sure in my figures of 3-4 million in Auschwitz alone based on the abundance of statistical & substantiate data provided in this report than the IRC's "complete access to all camps". Especially since the German Commandant of the camp corroborrated this figured himself!
last year my kids 6th grade class went to a special event (Not the holocaust Museum) were they were regailed by the Israeli ambassador and other prominent jewish leaders from Israel and Los angeles about the evils of racism. I swear to you with the hundreds of Israeli flags and leaders I thought I was under an occupying power. very creepy.
27 million Russians died in WW2,19 million of them were civilians.Where are the centers commemorating the Russian and other Slavic/Polish/Serbian genocide?These people saved the planet from Hitler,not Jews,not the British and not Americans.
Maybe instead of having so many museums on the Shoah, they could have just an exhibition on it within a museum dealing more broadly with topics in Judaica. I like most gentiles had no idea of the full breadth of Jewish culture and history until I started reading some books like Born to Kvetch by Wex, The Gift of the Jews by Cahill, and Judaism Discovered by Hoffman.
After the second world war my generation mourned for the atrocities of the Nazi regime and the suffering of the poor defenseless jewish people that were imprisoned in horrible conditions as I grew older I began to see the true nature of that particular time in history, The reality always was that the suffering was world wide and the same mentality existed after the war as it did during it. I still believed that the jewish people were ostracized because of their particular beliefs. Yet in the years that followed I began to remember the words of my grandfather who made a friend of a jewish man who was in hospital with him after the first world war. He was an elder at the synagogue in the 20's. This man was bitter because of the actions and pressures inflicted upon him by the then zionist movement within his own culture he foretold many things that later came to pass. His reputation had been demolished because he felt the influence exerted by this group was damaging to him his business and his family. It was a tale that I listened too but did not really understand. Now in this age it appears that jewish gentleman was correct. He said that the jewish faith was being manipulated by this group and would eventually bring ruin. As the zionist increased in power and influence great suffering was inflicted by design upon the jewish nation. The creation of museums of the holocaust is a mistake because it is not meant for the 'gentiles' but meant to polarize the jewish people into believing they are under attack and this is the only way to prevent it. This is completely the wrong way to see it. It actually brings into being a schism that increases the likely hood of people thinking of Jews as a different species. (See some of the earlier post) This is dangerous. When the people of earth believe any member of the human race is different it opens up a door of hatred that allows all sorts of satanic events to take place. We must all remember that we are here on earth for a short duration then we return to God and it is to him we must account for our actions and thoughts. True glory is the successful passage through this life, the shame is not following the loving principal that is god. I have known jewish people that I have loved and laughed with yet they are very different from the hardened zionist who have hatred in their hearts. I believe they are the majority but like us all are preyed upon by those who have special interest in increasing the suffering of humanity. Hatred is endemic amongst the small minded unfortunately.
First of all, I think these comments need a moderator to edit out all the wackos! Second, I agree with Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg that the best way to spend the money and honor the memory of the victims is to support day schools, not more museums. "Teach them to your children"!
It is quite apparent that the Holocaust(TM)has become such an incredibly monstrous industry. Will we see museums devoted to the Bolshevik Holocaust engineered by the Jews Lenin, Marx and half Jew comrade Stalin? Will we learn of the Jewish run Cheka and NKVD a Holocaust that took 55 million Russians and 7 Million Ukrainians? Will we see a museum dedicated to the Cambodian slaughter abated by the Jew Henry Kissinger? Armenian genocide? What of the ethnic cleansing of over a million Semites in the area now known as Israel? Something stinks, the hypocrisy glaring. Yes people died as they do in all profit and power driven wars. Will the so called righteous Jews admit that they have engineered their own Holocausts throughout time? Where is the honesty? It is amazing how popular mythology is injected into the human mind. The Anne Frank story has been proven a fraud, it's Jewish author awarded $50,000 by the NY supreme court in a suit against the Franks, the woman who lived with wolves all tall tales. Not one dime should go to any of this. The money should be used in teaching the populace the real truth of history. The Danzig corridor and many other historical incidences should be revealed.
there will always be many holocaust museums as long as the american goyim have the money to pay for it. if they don't have money to pay for it, we will just loan it to them at usurious rates. its good to be the jew
This board needs a moderator. I do believe in freedom of speech and do not think that because a comment is negative to the article that means that it should be taken down.
However, what has happened is that Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites have obviously found this article and the comment thread through Google or another search engine and are now having a field day. It has degenerated into obscenity and name calling and needs to be culled.
I'd like to see at least one Palestinian Holocaust Museum... ...anywhere.
By the way, I think we are all Earthlings and I try to avoid hating anyone unless they are absolute jerks. The above "Mel Gibson" is one of those jerks. We cannot ignore them, but they must be marginalized. Most Jewish people I have ever met seem to be pretty intelligent people. So it bothers me that when I hear the phrase "Never Again" that it should not be applied to all of humanity, the Palestinians included.
I wonder hoy many luxury museums and centers devoted to north american indians are there ?
This jew-holocaust thing is just crappy propaganda nowadays to keep profiting, it is evident, it is an industry, it is known jews like to and tend to manipulate and create myths to later profit from them, no mistery why they control first the media, it is their base station to fine tune minds.
I am not jew hater, but this crappy asfixation of holocaust things makes me feel sick, deeply sick even more when there are many problems now and there were bigger attrocities before (british, spanish colonialism)
Ude R In Mexico BTW Not white, and not a defender of ilegal immigration, protect your nation.
When I worked in the Former Soviet Union, I heard the daughter of a Christian political prisoner once say, "During the war, my parents' generation openly said they disliked Jews, but they risked their lives to save them from persection, as did many, many others. But now we see where that got my parents' generation. Endless calumny. So we've learned. This time, we'll say that we like them, but we won't lift a finger to help them." Appaling comment, yet why would someone make it?
The jews are such wonderful people. They never did ANYTHING to cause such hatred among the Germans. They were just poor, oppressed, TOTALLY innocent people who were thrown out of about 109 European countries down throughout history and just mysteriously happen to have all these problems and hate everywhere they go, but it's ALL everybody elses fault. ALL those countries were wrong about them and their kind. They're such wonderful peace-loving people, true lovers of humanity.
I mean look at the great things the jews are doing with monopolizing the media and hollywood, controlling the federal reserve banks and manipulating the money supply, robbing americans blind on wall street with goldman sachs, the kosher tax on food, getting american sons to fight israel's wars so they become more hated in the arab world and thus the target for even more terrorism and they also have a very disproportionate amount of power and influence in the government relative to their population.
They're also the main proponents of full censorship toward any opposition and a long list of other great things that have made our society much better off. Such nice people those jews, I just can't understand why the Germans or anybody else would do such a thing.