On July 9, 2018, I have paid a visit to the Holocaust Museum Houston (HMH) which is located in the Houston Museum District. It was an eye-opening experience, and I had never experienced such heart-tearing emotions. The museum raised my awareness of the violence and terror of the Holocaust. It is important to understand that the museum plays an important role in educating its visitors about the past. The general atmosphere in the HMH is shifting from neutral to negative. I cannot say that the atmosphere in the HMH is formal, but it is special. I had seen many people crying when reading about the exhibits. The air and the atmosphere there are filled with emotions. I got under the impression that people were afraid to talk or make any loud noises. Unlike any other fine arts or modern art museums, the HMH has something different about the way people behave in it. I had been so overwhelmed with the history that I got goosebumps.

Though the HMH itself is not that big, some of the exhibits are tremendous. The one that appealed to me the most was the Eric Alexander Garden of Hope. It is a garden with stone sculpture and engraving on it made on a black granite slab that said: “Remembering the million and a half children who perished in the Holocaust, and Honoring the eternal spirit of all children” (Jimenez). The garden itself is a tranquil place to have a rest. There is a monument made out of the blue granite in the center of the garden. It has an engraving with a poem by the Holocaust survivor. The black granite slab with the name of the garden was the one that appealed the most to me. The simplicity of the form, polished granite piece, and its black color that symbolized death. All these made me realize the number of children that had never lived to become adults.

Though all of the presented objects were rather appealing to me, some seemed to be less powerful. One of them is a replica of the WWII Holocaust Railcar manufactured by Gottfried Lindner in 1942 at Aktiengesellschaft in Ammendorf (Lindner). It is the type in which millions of Jews were transported. The history behind the monument to the railcar is strong and powerful, but the actual experience of witnessing it did not engage me emotionally. I recognized that these wooden walls were the symbolizing the oppression and wooden coffins, but perhaps I had already been too emotionally disturbed to react properly to this exhibit. That railcar seemed too ordinary to me: plain wood, dark inside, no windows or big air holes. It was a real-life cattle railcar, and Jewish people had been treated relevantly. They were transported for days without food or water, with about a couple hundred of people forced into a single railcar. I realize that something inside my mind rejects the slightest possibility of such attitude, and perhaps, it is the reason that I cannot fully comprehend this exhibit as a valuable part of the HMH collection.

The subject of the Holocaust remains appealing and disturbing because people must learn from the events of the past to eliminate them in the future. Most of the exhibits leave the visitors speechless and deeply affected by what they see, hear, or read. The fundamental mission of HMH is to educate the community on one of the most horrifying events in the course of the modern history. The represented exhibits focus mostly on the lives of individuals while some of them review the community as a whole and show the means of transportation of Jews such as a railcar, and the wooden boat that transported the people to Sweden to prevent them from being sent to the concentration camps.

The whole experience left me rather emotionally disturbed, but I do not regret the visit because it was a life-changer. I believe that any person who respects history and wants to make a difference in the future has to visit it. I am definitely coming back to it to have another chance to explore and experience the feeling and sensations. The second visit will be different from the first one because I know what to expect now and will have the chance relive each moment and try to embrace the sense of every presented item. It is the place all people need to visit, and I recommend it for sure. It will reveal the hidden emotions and reveal one’s true feelings just as it was with me.