UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM PRESS KIT
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EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AND RESOURCES
Nearly half a million children visit the Museum each year, with either their parents or teachers. Since the Museum opened, more than 8 million children from around the world have visited the Museum, including student groups from all 50 states.
Approximately 25,000 school groups have visited since 1993.
Each summer, the Museum brings together middle and high school teachers from around the country for the Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators. During the two separate three-day workshops, Museum educators and scholars work closely with these teachers, sharing methods and strategies for presenting Holocaust topics in school programs. Since its inception in 1994, 3,110 educators from all 50 states and the District of Columbia have participated in the program.
In August, the Museum holds the annual Mandel Conference for teachers who have five or more years’ experience in Holocaust education. Each year, up to 25 educators in grades 8 through 12 are designated as Mandel Fellows and serve as leaders in Holocaust education in their schools, communities and professional organizations. To date, 210 Fellows from 48 states and the District of Columbia have participated in the program.
Since 2004, the Museum has provided professional development programming for over 18,000 members of the U.S. military. Cadets from West Point and Naval Academy midshipmen visit the Museum as part of their formal training. The Museum has provided programs for active duty officers from the National Defense University, Marine Corps University and Air Force Congressional Fellows program. During Museum trainings, military personnel study the Holocaust, with emphasis on the changing role and ethical dilemmas facing German military professionals during the Holocaust. The programs encourage reflection on the implications of these ethical dilemmas for understanding the complicated choices military personnel make in fulfilling their duties today. The goals of these programs are to reinforce the military’s commitment to core values and to its role in the protection of democratic values.
Each year the Museum also hosts leaders from various Federal Agencies who engage in an exploration of Holocaust history. Examination and discussion of the Holocaust through relevant case studies reinforces participants’ commitment to ethical leadership, to the ideals of public service, and to responsible decision-making. The Museum’s professional development programs for high level government employees (GS 14, 15 and SES) have become an integral component of the leadership training programs at the Federal Executive Institute and the Partnership for Public Service.
Developed in 1998 in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League, the Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust program allows law enforcement officers to draw lessons from Holocaust history that are relevant for their roles as enforcers of the law in a democracy. Officers and cadets from police departments in the greater Washington, DC, and Baltimore metropolitan areas receive training at the Museum, as well cadets from the Federal Bureau of Investigation training academy.
Bringing the Lessons Home: Holocaust Education in the Community, a program for metropolitan Washington, DC, high school students and teachers and funded by a generous grant from the Fannie Mae Foundation, has given more than 22,000 students, teachers, and parents from 40 area schools in-depth guided tours of the Museum since 1994.
Bearing Witness is a program for Catholic educators developed in conjunction with the Washington Chapter of the Anti-Defamation League. Since its inception in 1996, more than 130 Catholic educators from the Washington, DC area have participated.
Lift Every Voice is a literacy program that centers on Holocaust history in states across the southeastern United States and Washington, DC. It began in 1996 as a special event hosted by the Museum to denounce the burning of African-American churches in the southeastern region of the U.S.
The Museum’s Web site (www.ushmm.org) averages 1,200,000 user sessions and 10,100,000 Web text pagers viewed per month.
The Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors is a voluntary registry located housing the names of those who survived displacement or persecution by Nazi racial or political laws. More than 195,000 survivors and members of their families are registered. Survivors and their families can add names by visiting or writing the registry.
