PRESENTATION

Marco- Well, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the
Holocaust in Washington, D.C.
The Holocaust Memorial Museum provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust
history. It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide,
promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.

INTRODUCTION TO THE HOLOCAUST

JESSY.- The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by
the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators. The Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933.
They believed that the Germans belonged to a race that was "superior" to all others. They claimed that the
Jews belonged to a race that was "inferior" and a threat to the so-called German racial community.
By 1945, the Germans and their allies and collaborators had killed nearly two out of every three European
Jews as part of the "Final Solution.
All of this is shown in detail in the next 4 wards.

Valeria- Well people, let's start this guided virtual tour through one of the three most outstanding museums
around United States.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred,
prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

Iris- Since its dedication in 1993, the Museum has welcomed more than 40 million visitors, including 99
heads of state and more than ten million school-age children.

Valeria- Without any more let's go to walk through this interesting museum.
We wish you an unforgettable tour.

WARD 1: THE AMERICANS AND THE HOLOCAUST

YAEL.- We are going to start the tour with the first exhibition.
The Americans and the Holocaust exhibition addresses important themes in American history, including
Americans’ responses to refugees, war and genocide in the 1930s and ‘40s. This exhibition will challenge
the commonly held assumptions that Americans knew little and did nothing about the Nazi persecution and
murder of Jews as the Holocaust unfolded.

ELIOT.- Here you will see the Nazism in the Americas: has existed since the 1930s and still exists today.
The membership of the earliest groups reflected the sympathies of some German-Americans and German
Latin-Americans toward Nazi Germany, embracing the National Socialist spirit in Europe and establishing it
within the Americas.

YAEL.- Nazism continued after the end of World War II in the Americas, especially in the United States,
with the influx of refugees entering the country fleeing the war. Many Nazi sympathizers entered the United
States with the intention of continuing their support of Nazism even after the war. These attitudes have
continued into the 21st century, with many supporters of Neo-Nazism still existing within the United States
and pro-Nazi groups, who have been known to attack and harass minorities.
WARD 2: DEADLY MEDICINE: CREATING THE RACE
ISIS.- Now let´s get in ward number 2 “ Deadly medicine: creating the race”
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany carried out a campaign to "cleanse" German society of individuals
viewed as biological threats to the nation's "health."
Participated in forced sterilization of patients who were carriers of genetic origin diseases and psychiatric
disorders, extermination of children and adults with congenital and mental diseases, “scientific and
pseudoscientific” medical experiments without consent and mass extermination of people based on their
religion, political, cultural, or sexual identity.
And here we have some experiments that carried out:
 Twin experiments
 Transplant experiments
 Head injury experiments
 Freezing experiments
 Sterilization experiments
 Food experiments

JESSY.- In such away the most common was:

Twin experiments
Experiments with twin boys in concentration camps sought to show similarities and differences in the
genetics and eugenics of twins, as well as to see if the human body can be manipulated in unnatural ways.
The leader of these experiments was Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on more than 1,500 pairs
of imprisoned twins, of which only about 200 survived.
At Auschwitz, he organized genetic experiments on twins, arranged by age and sex and locked in barracks
between experiments, which ranged from injecting chemicals into the eyes to see if they could change
colors to sewing twins together to try and create Siamese twins.
Transplant experiments
From September 1942 to December 1943, they carried out experiments in the Ravensbrück concentration
camp to study the regeneration of bones, muscles and nerves, such as bone transplantation. Sections of
bones, muscles and nerves were extracted without anesthesia. As a result, many victims suffered intense
agony, mutilation, or permanent disability.

WARD 3: ANNE FRANK THE WRITER: AN UNFINISHED STORY

Iris- Now please follow me to the third ward, where contains the exposition of “The Diary of Anne Frank” this
is the first, and sometimes only, exposure many people have to the history of the Holocaust. Meticulously
handwritten during her two years in hiding, Anne's diary remains one of the most widely read works of
nonfiction in the world. Anne has become a symbol for the lost promise of the more than one million Jewish
children who died in the Holocaust.
And it became a classic of war literature.

Gael - Early in the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, Anne’s father, Otto Frank a German businessman, took his
wife and two daughters to live in Amsterdam. In 1941, after German forces occupied the Netherlands, Anne
was compelled to transfer from a public school to a Jewish one. On June 12, 1942, she received a red-and-
white plaid diary for her 13th birthday. That day she began writing in the book.
Iris- And here, we have some key facts:

WARD 4: NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS

Gael- Over here we got the ward number 4 where we present The Nazi persecution of homosexuals. It
happened between 1933 and 1945.

Marco- In the holocaust period many people were repressed for their way of thinking, so it happened with
men in different sexual preferences we all know how the Jews were tortured but few talk about
homosexuality.

Marco- Just as the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David, they forced people they
labeled as gay to wear inverted pink triangles (or ‘die Rosa-Winkel’). Those thus branded were treated as
“the lowest of the low in the camp hierarchy,” as one scholar put it. The roots of the Nazi persecution of gay
people are deep. Since German unification in 1871, a section of the country’s criminal law widely known as
“paragraph 175” had said that men who engaged in acts of “unnatural indecency” could go to jail. In 1877,
the German Supreme Court of Justice clarified that to mean evidence of an “intercourse-like act.” But the
law was only enforced sporadically. And the fact that it was almost impossible to convict anyone unless he
confessed to such a crime in court meant that police just kept a watchful eye on gay bars and events, and
Germany ended up becoming home to a vibrant gay community.

Valeria- The war years witnessed a rise in concentration camp Himmler directed officers of the Criminal
Police that "in future, after their release from prison, all homosexuals who have seduced more than one
partner are to be placed in preventive detention at a concentration camps.
Once in the camps, the homosexual men had short life expectations and high death rates from overwork,
starvation, physical brutality, or outright murder.

Marco- Hitler saw gay men as a threat to his campaign to purify Germany, especially because their
partnerships could not bear children who would grow the Aryan race he wanted to cultivate. During that
period, gay-friendly bars and clubs started being shut down, authorities burned the books at a major
research institution devoted to the study of sexuality, and gay fraternal organizations were shuttered.
These efforts only increased after the Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 purge of Nazi leaders who were
accused of trying to overthrow Hitler.

FAREWELL (despedida)

Marco Well, is all about the Holocaust Museum.

Thanks everyone to have come to learn with us here in this museum, We hope to see you again.
Bye bye.