Today’s field trip was to Washington DC. I visited both the National Museum of African American History and Culture and Holocaust Museum. Just in case you want to visit both museums are relatively close proximity. The best underground or metro stop is Smithsonian and you can get their on the blue, orange, or silver line. The first stop was to the Holocaust Museum. The museum opened in 1993. Access to the exhibits start with an elevator ride to the top of the building. At the top, there is a little film about the Nazis rise to power in Germany. The exhibits continues with the decision to remove undesirables from the general population. From Ghettos to kill centers and work camps. Germany’s expansion into the east was document with video, testimonials, and displays. Life in the concentration camps was detailed and the room with the shoes was a vivid reminder of all the people that came though the camps, many of them were killed by gas, shooting, or lethal injection. When the war was over the people rescued from the camps had no where to go. Many lived for years in rescue camps. The non-Jewish Germans feared that they would want to seek retaliation and feared their return. Further propaganda enforced the thought that Israel was the only place to go. The U.S.A did very little to welcome the survivors into this Country siting strict immigration laws. One may wonder how this museum works into the research for the book. First, Hitler and the Nazi party researched American Jim Crow segregation and emulated those tactics by establishing ghettos. Second, I can’t help the thought that the labor camps, torture, beatings, malnutrition, convict leasing, and other inhuman conditioning of the camps did not come from the U.S. history of slavery, black codes, convict leasing, and systemic racism. Also, after the Civil War was over, African Americans were not welcome in the Country they were born in. Think about it, if the importation of slaves was band in 1801 by 1865, most slaves were born in this country. Any way, here are some photos of the day.
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