Holocaust Museum Houston

"How did that disaster happen?"
Plaque in Holocaust Museum

A former coworker of mine used to work in the archives of the Holocaust Museum Houston, and she talked about how difficult it was to come to work every day, constantly surrounded by the gravity of the Holocaust. I must confess, I know relatively little about the Holocaust. I have read a couple of books, but I have shied away from movies or a deeper knowledge of the event. It is difficult for me to comprehend the motivations behind it and further education will just perplex, frustrate, and enrage me more. As one visitor at the museum remarked, "I never have understood it." I don't think any of us ever will.

The Holocaust Museum exists to educate people about the Holocaust and, as their visitor guide says, to "Stop Hate." Hatred and ignorance have always existed, but the sheer evil of the Nazis seems beyond comprehension. The destruction of the city Lidice has stuck in my mind as the model of the irrational scope and senseless inhumanity of the Holocaust.

June 13 was my third visit to this museum, but it had been several years since I had been. Photography is not allowed inside the museum, the centerpiece of which is a permanent exhibit and a video theatre (which was packed) that shows two thirty-minute videos (I did not stay for either). The permanent exhibit begins with Jewish family trees for local Houstonians, with the names of family members who perished in the Holocaust listed in black. There were a lot of names listed in black.

Photos, videos, placards, and displays detail various periods of the Holocaust including a grouping of some of the book titles that were burned by the Nazis on May 10, 1933. A nice local exhibit focused on Nathan Klein, owner of Klein Ice Cream, who sponsored more than one hundred Jewish immigrants in an effort to save them from the Holocaust. One photo had haunted me from an earlier visit: a mass of corpses found in 1945 in a concentration camp; very hard for me to look at and comprehend. "How did that disaster happen?"

In addition to the permanent exhibit, there are other galleries that display temporary exhibits; photos by Clemens Kalischer were on display in one. There is the Lack Family Room, which contains the Wall of Remembrance, Wall of Tears, and Wall of Hope, and allows for reflection and meditation.

Outside is the Eric Alexander Garden of Hope, and visitors are encouraged to take a rock and place it in the garden in remembrance of victims of the Holocaust. There are also two items on display: a 1942 Railcar "of the type used to carry millions of people to their deaths" and a 1942 Danish fishing boat "of the type used to save more than 7,200 Danish Jews from execution."

Plaque for the Garden of Hope with the trees and me reflected in it.

A gathering of stones placed in the garden in memory of victims of the Holocaust

The railcar is the curious item for me. Even knowing that a railcar like this transported millions to their deaths and were packed each time with as many as two hundred people (many who did not even survive the trip), I feel a sense of calm and solace inside it. It is not because the railcar is far removed from the association of the horrible event and is now "just a railcar" since other objects on display carry symbolic weight to me (particularly a striped uniform worn by a survivor of a concentration camp). It must be the realization that despite the horrors of the Holocaust, mankind survived. If the human race could survive the atrocities of the past, allowing me to stand here today in this railcar, it gives me hope that we can survive the challenges of tomorrow.

One of several engraved sections of a wall commenting on railcars

1942 railcar of the type used to transport victims

Interior of the railcar