The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America's national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country's memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny. See below for more detailed information. Adjacent to the National Mall, the Holocaust Memorial Museum tells the story of the Holocaust through an extraordinary collection of artifacts, films, videos, photos, and oral histories.
Admission is free.
In addition, the Museum's innovative approach to exhibitions and its powerful architecture have earned worldwide acclaim. The Museum is located near the National Mall, just south of Independence Ave. The Museum's main exhibition, The Holocaust, spans three floors and presents a comprehensive history of the Holocaust through artifacts, photographs, films, and eyewitness testimonies. Assigned timed entry is required. It begins with life before the Holocaust in the early 1930s, continues through the Nazi rise to power and the subsequent tyranny and genocide, and concludes with liberation and the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust.