The Dallas Holocaust Museum is back and better than ever, with an expanded mission to promote tolerance, diversity, and empathy.

Cover photo: The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, Dallas, Texas, USA (2019).

WARNING: The following article features and/or discusses NAZI imagery, murder, genocide, and antisemitism.

The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum finally opened on Wednesday, September 18th, after a truly long wait. The $73.5 million facility broke ground in 2017 — just two years ago — but the original Dallas Holocaust Museum dates back to 1977, in the basement of the Dallas Jewish Community Center. This dedicated space is a 40 year dream in the making.

For the grand opening, visitors wrapped all the way around the block. Just a day before, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson were joined by several Holocaust survivors for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Polish survivor and Dallas resident Max Glauben reflected on the new space, “We built something that we never imagined was possible.”

The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum has an expanded scope with a redefined mission: “We are dedicated to teaching the history of the Holocaust and advancing human rights to combat prejudice, hatred, and indifference.” The new museum includes several rooms dedicated to the Holocaust, genocide, human and civil rights.

A consistent theme throughout the museum is the notion of the Upstander, someone who fights injustice and stands up for the rights of others. Several red plaques are dedicated to the stories of people who stood up against the NAZIs, such as diplomats who issued fake visas to Jews which allowed them to escape. Kiosks towards the end of the exhibit journey encourage visitors to volunteer at local institutions. With rooms dedicated to ongoing genocides and civil rights struggles, the museum makes it very clear that everyone must be an Upstander.

The museum leaves little to the imagination. At the beginning of the first wing, after an introductory video — and a few flights of stairs — entrants are quickly greeted by a colonnade draped in NAZI banners. Informative plaques crowd every wall, along with artifacts and images. There are 55,000 square feet of exhibits, all of which, are brutal in their honesty and clarity.

One series, labelled Targets of Persecution, reminds visitors that the NAZIs sought to kill many types of people in addition to Jews, such as Roma and the handicapped. I overheard a docent explain that NAZI officers would command suspected Jewish men to drop their pants and then immediately shoot them if they were circumcised.

The Shoah Wing (Shoah is Hebrew for “catastrophe”) details Hitler’s philosophy, the creation of the gas chambers as a “final solution” and recounts the horrific experiences of the Jewish ghettos and NAZI concentration camps. The exhibit indicts many bystanders, including U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was hesitant to intervene, nations such as Switzerland which enabled NAZI Germany, and even antisemitic Poles.

Troublingly little is mentioned about how Adolf Hitler was — at least partially — inspired by the United States to begin his assault on the Jews. Hitler praised Jim Crow laws and specifically the Immigration Act of 1924 which tightly restricted naturalized citizenship. When I asked a docent, I was pointed to a plaque that only mentioned how Hitler enjoyed the American mythology of the frontier. For a museum located in the United States to ignore this dark history feels like willful ignorance.

The museum fumbles in a few other ways as well. An important piece of the exhibit is a restored NAZI freight boxcar, the same kind used to deport Jewish people. This is the first museum in the world to feature a NAZI boxcar but nothing about the lighting or architecture suggests the artifact’s importance.

The boxcar is cramped in the tight exhibition space and both sides are open, with visitors aimlessly passing through. Inside, a video recounts stories of being transported but few people seem to watch for very long. The experience would be more memorable if visitors were invited to sit inside, in silence, to imagine the sheer panic and terror of deported Jews awaiting their almost-certain death in the camps.

The most gruesome images of the Holocaust are hidden nearby in a crack in a wall, which feels both gratuitous and easy to miss. I barely noticed them. Less importantly, many Polish names are anglicized. The NAZI concentration camps Chełmno and Bełżec, for instance, are displayed as Chelmno and Belzec and confidently mispronounced by docents.

Overall, however, the museum is well designed. There are maps, infographics, portraits of families and survivors, and countless stories. At the end of the main wing, visitors learn about the trials of NAZI leaders in Nuremberg, and the subsequent Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Human Rights Wing illustrates Dr. Gregory Stanton’s Ten Stages of Genocide through historical atrocities which have taken place around the globe, including Armenia, Cambodia, and Rwanda. Kiosks sit in the Pivot to America Wing which detail the long and tenuous history of civil rights in the United States including the struggles of African Americans, American Indians, and Asian Americans.

The museum also has a dedicated space for temporary special exhibitions. The room currently features the exhibit Stories of Survival, a collection of items salvaged and treasured by survivors of genocide. The collection, on loan from the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, includes family photos, toys, and other documents from an international group of survivors. The exhibit lasts until January 31st, 2020.

There are a few local touches that emphasize the museum’s location. Most notably, the facility includes The Memorial and Reflection Room dedicated to Dallas-area victims and relatives. The room overlooks the courtyard which features This Place, Everywhere a specially-commissioned artwork by Texan artist James Surls.

The sculpture’s six-petal flowers are dedicated to the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. The eighteen flowers represent Chai, the Hebrew word for life. Another eighteen eyes jut out in various directions, looking to the past and to the future. About the opportunity to create a sculpture for the Holocaust Museum, Surls told Texas Monthly, “I don’t think I could ever top that, to tell you the truth.”

The museum also includes a gift shop with the kind of trinkets one would expect to find in similar institutions, such as t-shirts, cups, and magnets. There are several souvenirs dedicated to the concept of Upstanders as well as Holocaust history and civil rights. There’s even a few items designed by LGBT+ artist Lisa Congdon.

The return of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is vital and — frankly — not a moment too soon. There has been a five-year upward trend in reported hate crimes nationally with a 37% rise in Antisemitic crimes just in 2017. There has also been a global spike in white nationalism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacist propaganda distribution nearly tripled from 2017 to 2018.

Just two months ago, in August, a gunman targeted immigrant “invaders” in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, with a gun he purchased in a Dallas suburb. The shooter wrote an anti-Hispanic manifesto and will likely face federal hate crime charges. He killed 22 people and wounded 25.

Education appears to be the only solution. Florence Shapiro, a former state Senator who authored the bill that established the Texas Genocide and Holocaust Commission, explains, “By teaching the history of the Holocaust and other genocides, we educate visitors about diversity, tolerance, and empathy,” adding, “We show students what happens when hatred and bigotry permeate our society and lead to violence.”

One study, conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, found that 22% of American millennials either had not heard of the Holocaust or were unsure. 41% of total respondents could not identify Auschwitz as a concentration camp.

200,000 people are expected to visit the museum each year, half of which will likely be students. The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is the only Holocaust museum serving North Central Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

This is the first Holocaust Museum that I have visited in the United States. It is an unenviable task to reproduce the visceral sadness felt in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam or the palpable fear of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim. In my opinion, nothing can replace the experience of visiting these sites in person but the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum makes a meaningful and worthy attempt to capture a semblance of these feelings. The exhibits are well-designed and the information is undeniably important and relevant. If you’re nearby, I certainly recommend a visit.

The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is located in the Historic West End, 300 N. Houston Dallas, Texas 75202. General admission ranges from $12 to $16. The museum is open every day of the week. Visit the website here.