U.S. Holocaust Museum Passes 30 Million Visitors in Washington, DC

Written by Miles Hellerman Friday, 12 March 2010 23:03

WASHINGTON (AP).- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says 30 million visitors have now come through its doors. The museum said Wednesday that the milestone was passed this week. The museum has been open since April 1993. A museum spokesman says 1.75 million people visited last year. Museum officials also note that 88 heads of state and more than 3,500 foreign officials from more than 130 different countries have toured the museum.

Washington's Smithsonian Institution museums counted 30 million visits combined in 2009. The most-visited museum was the natural history museum with 7.4 million visitors. Admission to both the Smithsonian museums and the Holocaust museum is free.

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, promote human dignity, and prevent genocide. A public-private partnership, federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanence, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by donors nationwide.

Located among our national monuments to freedom on the National Mall, the Museum provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values. With unique power and authenticity, the Museum teaches millions of people each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide. Visit : www.ushmm.org/

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