The Holocaust Experience

How can one keep the memory of the Holocaust alive? At least three institutions across the world are tackling this question: the Staatsmuseum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, the Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. They do so in different ways. On the location of the former camp, a constant, meticulous, but almost impossible restoration of the remains takes place. In Los Angeles, visitors can not only listen to stories by survivors, but also experience themselves what it is like to be led into a gas chamber. And in Washington DC, trouble nor expense have been spared in the search for Holocaust relics like shoes and even human hair. Director Oeke Hoogendijk also shows how the visitors - from a group of touring cyclists in Auschwitz to school children in the Museum of Tolerance - react to all these efforts: as always, with bewilderment, disbelief and horror.