Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. Extended hours April 11 - June 13 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Permanent Exhibition (timed passes required)  (No photography is allowed)

The Holocaust
(Recommended for visitors 11 years and older)  The Permanent Exhibition presents a chronological history in a self-guided tour that spans three floors.

Nazi Assault - 1933 to 1939
The main exhibition begins on the fourth floor.  It depicts the Nazis' use of propaganda and terror to spread their ideology of racism, antisemitism, and extreme nationalism throughout German society.  The American and world response to the early years of the Third Reich, as well as the beginning of World War II, are presented.  The short films Antisemitism and The Nazi Rise to Power are shown on this floor.

Final Solution - 1940 to 1945 (third floor)
This section of the Permanent Exhibition describes the ghettos, deportations, slave labor, and concentration camps, and the implementation of the "Final Solution" through instruments of destruction such as mobile killing units and the death camps.  The audio presentation Voices from Auschwitz can be heard on this floor.

Last Chapter (second floor)
The Permanent Exhibition concludes on this floor and documents rescue, resistance, liberation, and survivors' efforts to rebuild their lives.  Survivors tell their personal stories in the film Testimony.

Special Exhibitions (no passes required)

Remember the Children:  Daniel's Story (recommended for visitors 8 years and older).  This exhibition recounts the history of the Holocaust from the perspective of a young boy growing up in Nazi Germany (first floor).

The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk.  This exhibit presents more than 140 original works of art by Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), a gifted book illustrator who became one of the most influential World War II artists in America.

Orientation Film (No passes required).  An overview of the Museum's exhibitions and memorials is presented throughout the day.

Memorials

The Hall of Remembrance is the nation's memorial to Holocaust victims (second floor)

The Wall of Remembrance (Children's Tile Wall), with more than 3,000 tiles painted by American school children is a memorial to the approximately 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust (lower level).

For the dead and the living we must bear witness

When you enter the museum, you are given an Identification Card of a real person who lived during the Holocaust.  My person was Feige Schwarzfink.

Date of Birth:  May 8, 1925
Place of Birth:  Szydlowiec, Poland

Feige was born to a religious Jewish family in the small village of Szydlowiec. She lived with her parents, six brothers and sisters, and elderly grandparents in a small house which, like many homes in the village, had no running water, indoor plumbing, or electricity.  Her father was a shoemaker.

1933-39:  In the afternoons after public school, I studied at a Jewish religious school. Although my parents didn't know it, I attended meetings of the Bund, the Jewish Socialist party. My older brothers and I liked going to the Bund because of the nice people who belonged, rather than for the Bund's political activities. On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and by September 9, they reached Szytdlowiec. The Germans put the village under a 6 p.m. curfew and closed the schools.

1940-44:  In November 1942 the Germans chased us out of our home; that same day the Germans seized me and my sister, Esther, and with other young Jewish girls, we were forced to walk to a labor camp at Skarszysko. There I worked 12-hour shifts - some all day, some all night - in a munitions factory producing shells. For this grueling day's work we received one slice of bread, a bowl of soup, and some ersatz coffee. My sister and I didn't drink the coffee; we used it to wash our hair, which was always dirty and lice-infested.

Feige was sent to another labor camp and three concentration camps before being liberated on April 30, 1945, by the American Army. She emigrated to the United States in 1949.