Holocaust Museum Houston opens three years and $34 million later

by Trenton Hooker

Walking into the Holocaust Museum Houston, there’s a palpable weight of history inside its doors. The interior bombards your senses with confinement as you walk through a journey of liberation — but this is intentional. The museum’s new $34 million expansion helps patrons come closer to understanding the darkest period of the 20th century.

The June 22 grand opening fulfills the dream Siegi Izakson had in 1981. Izakson traveled to Israel for a gathering of Holocaust survivors, when he realized the need to educate the world about the Holocaust and to preserve the memories of those who survived it.

Initially opened in 1996, the Lester and Sue Smith Campus is the new jewel of Houston’s Museum District. The new construction doubled the space to almost 57,000 square feet, making it the fourth largest museum of its kind in the country.

“Too marvelous for words,” said Bill Orlin, a Holocaust survivor who calls Houston home. Orlin said that it’s an amazing testament for the city and the Jewish community.

Orlin was born in Brok, Poland with a population of 2,000 people; of which, 834 were Jewish. He was born in 1932 and remembers the Nazi Blitzkrieg of Poland in 1939; like it was yesterday.

“The Jewish population, in the village I came from, has been there since 1740,” he said, “I watched from the churchyard, my house burning.” Orlin and his family were able to cross over to the Russian-occupied zone of Poland after initially encountering the Nazis, but those who stayed behind were not as fortunate.

“They were taken out into the forest,” Orlin said. “They made them dig their own grave, and then they killed them.”

Orlin lived in the Soviet Union for two years, before the Nazis invaded in 1941. Then, just like so many times before, his family packed up anything they could to flee from the devastation. However, after the war, Orlin’s family came to Canada as refugees — but the family had its heart set on Houston.

“My father always wanted to come to Houston, Texas,” he said, “not because of the cowboys. But because he had a father here who left Poland when he was three years old.”

Orlin joined the United States Army and served in the Korean War before returning to Houston in the late-1950s. He and his wife were active in the Houston Jewish community and the museum until her death last June. Orlin is an active volunteer at the museum; he comes weekly to speak with museum patrons and regularly gives talks at its theater for larger audiences.

The museum’s new 200-seat theater isn’t the only new improvement; patrons now can expect to have a more active experience.

“From darkness–light,” said Clare Legg, digital marketing and communications specialist for the museum. “This is something our survivors say a lot. Our mission has always been what can we learn from the Holocaust. What can we learn from humanity and inhumanity to prevent such atrocities?”

Legg says that technology and innovation lead the front in educating the public. Throughout the exhibit, screens project the accounts of survivors told in their own words. The most impressive of which, Dimensions in Testimony, displays a simulated survivor that answers patron’s questions. When someone asks a question on a connected microphone, hundreds of hours of logged testimony is combined with an artificial intelligence system, answers the question with realistic accuracy.

Legg says that the mission of the museum expands its focus to recognize hate crimes internationally and to combat the rise in anti-semitism. In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League reported that anti-semitism in the United States has more than doubled since the previous year. So far, in 2019, there have been 468 hate crimes committed against Jews in the United States, according to the ADL.

White nationalism and the rise of the alt-right have made Jews a frequent target of hate — the pinnacle of anti-semitism in 2018 was the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October that took the lives of 11 parishioners. The rise of hate crimes in America isn’t far from the mission of Holocaust Museum Houston.

“That’s what we are trying to do here,” Legg said. “This memorial is a testament against hate in all it’s forms. Changing it is up to us.”

After the new construction, the museum is the fourth largest of its kind in the country. The new campus is double the size of the previous building and has a floor space of 59,000 square feet. | Relics of the Holocaust are preserved throughout the museum to stand witness for the present and future. Jews were forced to wear yellow badges to feel shameful and outcast from society.

Two patrons view a large wall map of the concentration and death camps in Europe. All told, over six million Jews were murdered by the Third Reich. | The Nazi chose Zyklon B as the primary method of genocide. German scientists selected it for its cheap cost as an insecticide and industrial scale.

Two visitors stand next to railway car thought to transport Jews. Over 100 people would be packed in railcars for hours on end, waiting to arrive in death camps. | A patron sits for a question and answers session with Bill Morgan, a survivor, who is part of the Dimensions in Testimony exhibit.