United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

(USHMM)

   The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was created by a unanimous act of the U.S. Congress in 1980. The museum was built on federal land adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and is located on Raoul Wallenberg Place, named for the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary during World War II. The architect, James Ingo Freed, who designed the building, fled Germany as a child in 1939. Since its opening, the museum has welcomed more than 25 million visitors and reaches millions more through its outreach programs. The museum’s mission, however, is education and through its extensive programs, it reaches students from junior high school to graduate researchers, educators, law enforcement officials, and the military,

   Using text, photos, maps, films and artifacts, the museum’s permanent exhibition tells the history of the Holocaust with particular emphasis on the murder of millions of Jews, although it also includes the history of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. Also included in the museum is a library of more than 72,000 items in 55 languages as well as an archive with more than 42 million pages of documents, 77,000 photographs, 9,000 oral histories, and 985 hours of historical footage. The museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies is a venue for Holocaust scholarship and allows visiting scholars to share the fruits of their research with their colleagues. The museum’s website (www.ushmm.org), reaches both a national and international audience, providing the most recent updates on Holocaust research.