I found the Holocaust Museum to be very sobering. I’m well aware of the atrocities committed against Jews and the other victims of the Holocaust. In the hall of pictures, I saw a portrait that strongly resembled my great-grandma Pearl, who was a Polish Jew. I saw portraits that reminded me of my grandmother and grand-uncle.
I had to take a break somewhere in the middle.
There’s an example train car in the museum for the guests to walk through, getting a glimpse of the feelings the would-be prisoners felt while they were in transport. As I was already slightly overwhelmed, I chose not to walk through, I could vividly imagine it, and that was enough for me.
And while this is not directly related to the museum itself, more so the other people in the museum at my time of visiting, it still contributed to my overall experience.
Guests at the museum make a big difference aswell. During my visit, there was a pair of people, a lady and a gentleman, dressed in business casual. From what I could tell, the lady was someone who had studied the Holocaust, most likely in a professional sense. She was pointing out the different things and elaborating on them to the man with her, getting close to the exhibits and remarking on how interesting things were.
And I get being enthusiastic about something you’re interested in, I get it, I think it’s nice to have something that you’re passionate about. But it made me, as a Jew, feel like the museum was a zoo, and that we, the victims of the Holocaust and other genocides, were the animals on display; being pointed at and treated like an object instead of a living human being.
Which is the opposite of what the museum was trying to convey.