Personal Narrative: My Visit To Illinois Holocaust Museum

For my outside cultural visit, I decided to visit the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center located in Skokie. It is located here in Skokie because Skokie had the highest number of Holocaust survivors. I had always wanted to visit this museum, but had never had the opportunity. This is a museum that should be on everyone’s list to visit. Although one of the issues I had with the museum is the lack of signage pointing out where it is. You had to be actively looking out for a sign just to find where it is. After my visit into the museum though, I believe I understand why they want a non-descript exterior and not anything that stands out. I observed many artifacts here. From passage tickets for Jews escaping Germany, to actual Nazi arm …show more content…
The sheer number of people killed in a span of two days is staggering. All of these Jews were pulled out of their homes, and marched into the valley. The victims to this senseless slaughter were lined up at the edge of the valley to be shot; so that the impact of the bullet carried the body forward and over the edge. It was very difficult for me seeing the pictures of the pile of corpses, with the next victims sitting at the top of the hill, awaiting their death. Sending mobile units was both inefficient and expensive. So the Germans came up with what they dubbed- “The Final …show more content…
I began realizing that a majority of the pictures I was seeing, were of people that passed during the Holocaust. Although there were videos and pictures of some survivors, explaining how they managed to escape the horrors of their captors, many of the pictures in the museum were the final pictures taken of these people. Seeing the faces behind fences of the prisoners, or the pictures of the women being led to their deaths, is a memory I won’t soon forget. Maybe that was the point of this museum. Maybe it isn’t that it is just a learning experience, but also a way for us to remember the atrocities the Jewish people went through, and in my case, feel for them as they were my own