I am writing today about a news article which was published recently: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/11/03/school-probes-student-mockery-holocaust-museum-exhibits.html
The following quote is from the article:
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SIDMAN, Pa. – A Pennsylvania school district is investigating complaints that students on a class trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum posted pictures making light of some exhibits.
Superintendent Ed Bowser of the Forest Hills School District said Friday officials are looking into social media posts from the senior class trip Wednesday to the Washington, D.C., museum.
Senior class president Gage Singer tells The Associated Press that most students were respectful, but a small number “made a mockery of what they saw,” including in a Snapchat post of shoes confiscated from concentration camp prisoners.
In a letter posted online, Singer called the conduct “unacceptable,” and apologized on behalf of the entire class.
Bowser says any student discipline will be handled privately.
Forest Hills is about 80 miles (129 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh.
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These students should have been given instructions, in advance, about how to act in a Holocaust Museum. As for myself, when I am in a Holocaust Museum, I keep saying silently to myself: “Don’t laugh, don’t laugh.” This has saved me from being arrested when I have visited Holocaust Museums.
Many years ago, I wrote about my visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC on this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/USHMM/Exhibits.html
The following quote is from my website:
The permanent exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC has the world’s largest collection of Holocaust photographs and artifacts, displayed on three floors of the museum, covering 36,000 square feet.
Visitors are allowed to take their own self-guided tour and spend as much time as they want looking at the 2,500 photographs and 900 artifacts. The exhibit includes 70 video monitors, 30 interactive stations and 3 video projection theaters.
There are no tour guides leading large groups and disturbing the quiet contemplation of the other visitors. The exhibits are in chronological order, beginning with the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and ending with the founding of Eretz Israel in 1948.
Each of the three floors of the exhibit has a theme, starting with The Nazi Assault – 1933 – 1939 on the fourth floor, moving on to The Final Solution – 1940 – 1945 on the third floor and ending with The Last Chapter on the second floor. To see the whole exhibit requires at least one to three hours.
According to the museum’s designer, “the primary purpose is to communicate concepts,” not just to display objects. At the end of the tour, visitors must enter the 6,000 square foot Hall of Remembrance, which has 6 sides symbolizing the 6-point Star of David, and the 6 death camps where 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
As you enter from the 14th Street entrance and walk down the hallway on the main floor, the first place you come to on the left-hand side is the room where the elevators to the permanent exhibit are located. To your right in this room is a table with a box of 500 different booklets, which look vaguely like passports, with the museum logo printed on the cover.
Each visitor is asked to select a passport, which has the name and picture of a real person who experienced the Holocaust. As you proceed through the exhibit, you are supposed to turn the pages in the booklet to find out what happened to this person, whose identity you have assumed. I visited the museum twice on two successive days so I got two passports. I did not see any place to turn in these booklets at the end of the tour, so I assume that they were intended to be souvenirs.
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