Holocaust Museum Houston
The Holocaust Museum Houston is a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust that opened in Houston , Texas in 1996 . It is part of the Houston Museum District.
The museum is the fourth largest of its kind in the United States . Its mission is to make the population aware of the dangers of prejudice, hatred and violence in the Holocaust. It also shows that these dangers are still very relevant today.
An important mission of the museum is the educational program. It consists of programs for teachers or students and an academic program. The teacher program helps teachers incorporate the Holocaust theme into their lessons. The museum's "Curriculum Trunks Program," available across the United States, provides teachers with multimedia tools, such as videos, posters, CDs, CD-ROMs, maps, books, and school activity plans, to make teaching more informative as possible. In addition, the facility offers competitions for schoolchildren as part of the school program, such as the annual “Yom HaShoah Art and Writing Contest”.
Members of the Holocaust Museum Houston have access to the Boniuk Library, which contains over 5,000 books on the Holocaust, the post-Holocaust era, Jewish history, World War II, and other related topics. The library also includes the HMH Archive and the HMH Oral Histories Project. The archive contains a large number of artifacts, documents, photos and rolls of film. In addition, there are more than 250 recorded testimonies from Holocaust survivors, witnesses, liberators and a member of the Hitler Youth.
The museum has both permanent and temporary exhibitions. An important part of the permanent exhibit called "Bearing Witness: A community remembers" are eyewitness accounts from survivors in the greater Houston area. At the beginning of the exhibition, visitors are introduced to Jewish life and culture in Europe before the war. Authentic film material, artifacts, photos and documents show Nazi propaganda and the path to the “ final solution ”. Also to be found in this exhibition are memories of the resistance of many people, such as the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto , uprisings by prisoners and the " Operation Texas ," a courtesy towards Jewish refugees by the later US President Lyndon B. Johnson . At the end of this exhibition, the visitor is shown two eyewitness reports in the form of films. These reports come from survivors, liberators, and Witnesses who emigrated to the greater Houston area after the war.
In addition to the permanent exhibition, the museum houses the Education Center, the Morgan Family Center, the Lack Family Memorial Room and the Eric Alexander Garden of Hope. The library is located in the Education Center. The Morgan Family Center houses the administrative offices, two further galleries for traveling exhibitions, the HMH classroom and the cinema. The Lack Family Memorial Room is a quiet place to relax and meditate. The Eric Alexander Garden of Hope was dedicated to the one and a half million children who perished during the Holocaust.
The museum offers a wide variety of volunteer opportunities. They can work as helpers in the library, in the administrative offices, at the reception or in the bookstore. Conscripts from Austria liable for military service can do a memorial service.
Since 1995 the museum has given the Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award, named after the 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson , to people who have acted with particular responsibility, dedication and courage against injustice. The prize is usually awarded once a year. Previous winners include Miep Gies , Edgar Bronfman , Steven Spielberg , Colin Powell , Lloyd Bentsen , Bob Dole , the Kingdom of Denmark and John McCain .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award on the Holocaust Museum Houston website. (Retrieved December 28, 2009.)
Coordinates: 29 ° 43 ′ 30.4 ″ N , 95 ° 23 ′ 9 ″ W.