United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Henry Mayer, Chief Archivist

On Saturday, July 8, the Washington Internship Program brought all participants to a    tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum preceded by two talks delivered in a classroom within the museum. The chief archivist of the Holocaust museum, Henry Mayer – who formerly worked as head archivist for the Smithsonian Institution – lectured on the Museum’s permanent collection and the types of research conducted there. Dr. Linda Bayer, who first came to Washington during the Carter administration to help the
President’s Commission on the Holocaust plan a memorial to this tragedy, spoke about the history of the Holocaust and the museum that seeks to educate the public about its causes.

Dr. Bayer distinguished this unprecedented act of genocide from general warfare and stressed the anti-Semitism that led to the killing of six million Jews by Nazis during World War II. She discussed why the irrational slaughter of Jews took precedent over the German war effort. The Holocaust was examined in the context of slavery, the devaluation of human life, industrialization, and a cult of death. (Previously, Dr. Bayer wrote eight newspaper articles about the museum that were published during the week when the institution opened. These pieces featured the people who created the museum, the meaning of the architecture, the history of this terrible event, and its warning for the future. Dr. Bayer also wrote a biography of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Elie Wiesel, who is the founding chairman of the Holocaust museum and a senior professor at Boston University where Bayer was a faculty member for seven years.) WIP gave tickets to all students who toured the museum following this class.

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