202: Holocaust Prologue with US Holocaust Memorial Museum Director, Sara J. Bloomfield

After turning our attention back to Europe in the last few episodes, it’s time to finally examine the Holocaust. Back in episode 185, we covered a broad history of antisemitism in Europe and the violent results of the first few years of Hitler’s reign in Germany, going all the way to the nationwide November pogrom (also known as Kristallnacht). But before we go any further, we present this interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Director, Sara J. Bloomfield https://www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum/director. Sara has worked with the USHMM https://www.ushmm.org/since its inception in the 1990s, and has led the museum for 26 years. She also serves on the International Auschwitz Council and International Treblinka Council, has been named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French Republic, and is a recipient of the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. We are also joined by HTDS executive editor, Riley Neubauer. ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com https://www.htdspodcast.com/ and preorder Prof. Jackson’s new book https://www.htdspodcast.com/book go deep into episode bibliographies https://www.htdspodcast.com/bibliography and book recommendations https://www.htdspodcast.com/book-recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community https://www.facebook.com/groups/257926761619618/ get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette https://www.htdspodcast.com/newsletters-1 come see a live show https://www.htdspodcast.com/live-shows get HTDS merch https://htds-team-shop.fourthwall.com/ or become an HTDS premium https://htds.supercast.com/ member for bonus episodes and other perks. HTDS is part ofAudacy media network. https://www.audacy.com/ Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? ContactAudacyinc.com https://audacyinc.com/contact.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jackson?

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• 0:43Greg Jackson?

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• 1:14Greg Jackson?

  Hello, my friends, and welcome to what we're going to call a prologue episode of History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'm pleased to be joined by my executive editor, Riley Neubauer.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone. It's exciting to be here.

• 1:28Greg Jackson?

  So today, we are going to have what I think is just a real honor of an interview. We'll be speaking with the Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sarah Bloomfield. We'll get to her intro and just how unique of an opportunity this truly is. But before we dive into setting up the Holocaust, which is the real point of this episode, I do want to take just one second and kind of epilogue a little bit. To use that as a verb in the HTDS sense.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00Greg Jackson?

  On World War II, because we are so deep into this thing and yet we are not even close to being through it. This is just such a massive, massive tapestry with so many things to weave together.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  It is. It's a lot of ground and it's also, we've been bouncing back and forth geographically, which I think we decided to do very intentionally, if you want to talk more about that. But I'm sure as a listener, it might get a little bit chaotic sometimes if we're in Germany in one episode and then all the way across the world in Japan in another.

• 2:30Greg Jackson?

  Yes. And, you know, it's the same thing that I've felt in the classroom, teaching World War II, my entire career as a university professor. You have to make a choice between whether it is frustrating to miss some context as you stick to one theater and just plow through the Pacific and then plow through Europe, or vice versa. Right? Because you're missing crucial context. You don't get to Europe without Pearl Harbor. From the American perspective, right?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:59Greg Jackson?

  And that's exactly what we're about here, obviously, on HTDS. So, or you move chronologically and it does mean that there's a little bit of a pause, you know, in these stories. To me, the latter is the better course. I think it's important to have that context and we are very intentionally grouping together several pieces of an episode. I'm very opposed to one episode in Europe, one episode in the Pacific, one episode in Europe. That's just too jarring. But I would like to point out for listeners that if you want to get a geographical take, you can do that. Just jump around on your episodes. World War I was so much easier.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Well, America didn't enter until far later into the war.

• 3:47Greg Jackson?

  I know, I know. And so it also led us. Um, I'm gonna say cheat. It's the wrong verb, but-

• 3:54Speaker 01

  But it works here. Yeah.

• 3:56Greg Jackson?

  Yeah. Um, being able to do, first of all, one episode, which I very much enjoy. And I confess that it was one of the easier episodes to do because it was, obviously I don't have sound design and the same rich level of detailed storytelling that I can do in the classroom. But that episode, I want to say that was 128, forgive me if I misrecall a number, but being able to just lay out 99 years of causes building from Napoleon to the start of the war and then doing an episode where it was, hey, here are the highlights of World War I for the first, you know, 75% of the conflict, right? It's the right thing to do when you're giving the US experience in World War I. But yeah, it kind of feels like cheating. You get to fast forward basically to the end.

• 4:38Greg Jackson?

  And then you're just following this one expeditionary force in Europe that's barely hitting big numbers as the war ends, in a way, as important as that American effort was to change the tide of the war. Whereas here, we're following two massive US forces, literally on opposite sides of the globe. And I do want to be careful, or rather, I'll say, I've been very mindful, as I am in the classroom when I teach World War II. I don't want to see the Pacific get shortchanged. I love the European side. As weird as it always is, I know everyone understands what a historic means and they're like, I love the history of this war. It's not condoning war, hate war, but, right?

• 5:21Greg Jackson?

  The gripping stories, the significance of how the world changes as a result. But so many Americans, so many servicemen bled and died in the Pacific. I don't want to throw too big of a blanket over this, but it's so often the case that World War II gets reduced to a European focus. And I just don't want to omit, skip, cut out the very real sacrifices that happened in the Pacific. So trying to make sure we do justice to all of it, it means we're going to keep- Changing gears every, every few episodes, but you can always go back and listen just to whichever theater you want.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  I think it's a really good point, especially given the context. I mean, there's a lot that we need to understand about the state of the world before and in the early years of World War II, in order to better understand the American experience during it. And I think as we planned out these episodes, we were very keenly aware of how to connect these big world political entities, isn't the right word, but kind of the, the political changes in the world to the United States.

• 6:31Greg Jackson?

  Entities work because we're going for something even larger in terms of than even nation state.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:37Greg Jackson?

  You know, I, I think that's fine. And one other point I'd like to drive home is that I think it's important for us to remember, while in hindsight, World War II becomes very European centric. I mean, like you say, World War II, your average person thinks about Nazis. They do not think about Imperial Japan. But at this point in the war where we are at 1942, going into 1943, I think it's crucial to remember that for Americans at that point, it's really more about the Pacific. Japan's the one that carried out this sneak attack, the surprise attack that devastated Pearl Harbor. And so that's a shift that is going

• 7:19Greg Jackson?

  to happen, the more European focus coming to bear. But it was the cold open to one of our episodes, right? Before American boots ever set foot in Northern Ireland, to then prepare for being deployed to North Africa, which we kind of throw in as like, this is all the European theater. But, you know, technically, we're still not in Europe. American boys have been bleeding and dying in the Pacific for quite a long time. So that's what Americans really latch on to. This, Europe feels like an add-on at first. So now, as we return to the Holocaust, so I'll again emphasize that I very much encourage

• 7:56Greg Jackson?

  anyone who feels rusty on it to revisit episode 185, get that early Holocaust locked back into your head, and then dive into these next few episodes. But as we return, we know that, again, the American mind is kind of more on the Pacific as Europe starts to play out in 42, 43, as word of the Holocaust. We'll get to that in a future episode, but word of the Holocaust does get to the United States well before the end of the war.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  I think the point about the Holocaust reaching the United States kind of midway through the war is really important and something to look out for. I think it's in episode 203, it's the one after this, little sneak peek.

• 8:35Greg Jackson?

  Yeah, and it's, well, yeah, we've got some heavy episodes. I think that's perhaps the best thing to leave it on, as we now let Sarah set us up to prologue the Holocaust. Now, she doesn't do interviews like this. She's never been on a podcast, but Riley, you made that happen. Do you mind telling the tale? How's this happening?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Of course. So, something you'll hear at the end of these next few episodes is that my great-grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and so we've had a very close family relationship with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. My great-grandpa, Miles Lerman, helped found the museum, and so Sarah knew him very well. And when Greg and I were talking about the most important conversations and themes that we wanted to talk about before the Holocaust, Sarah's name came to mind just because she would be able to tell HTS listeners about the American impact of the Holocaust and how Americans saw themselves within this larger global narrative. And so I'm incredibly honored that she decided to take the leap and be on her first ever podcast and that we're

• 9:42Speaker 01

  able to bring this conversation to you. It really means a lot to me personally and also in our HTS universe.

• 9:49Greg Jackson?

  You know, I'm just an observer on those emails as they were exchanged, Riley. It's touching. I appreciate that she's willing to do this. I appreciate you reaching out to her, but the connection was evident in the exchange, if that's okay for me to say that much, you know, publicly. So thank you again to you, Riley. Our conversation will continue in just a moment. And we'll be joined by Sarah J. Bloomfield, Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

• 10:29Greg Jackson?

  So we are honored to be joined by the Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sarah J. Bloomfield. Sarah also serves on the International Auschwitz Council and International Treblinka Council, has been named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French Republic, and is a recipient of the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Sarah and I are joined by HTDS Executive Editor, Riley Neubauer. And with that, Sarah, thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you here.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  I think to begin, we'd like to ask perhaps the obvious question, which is, why does a Holocaust Memorial Museum exist in the United States?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  It is a great and obvious question, and I'm really glad you asked it. And I think there's just one word that explains why there is a Holocaust Museum in our nation's capital. And that word is democracy. Because if you look at history, you can remember that before the Nazis came to power, Germany was an advanced, educated nation with a democratic constitution, a rule of law, free speech, more Nobel Prizes than any other country, among the most respected Christian theologians in the world. And yet, and yet, and yet. And I think there's another point here that in defeating Nazi Germany, our nation protected our own democracy.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  And that's why it's so fitting that the museum stands between the monuments to Jefferson and Washington and that our visitors see quotes from each of these founding fathers at our entrance. So that's the premise behind the idea that was started under President Carter's administration.

• 12:14Greg Jackson?

  Sarah, that's a fantastic point in how remembering the Holocaust is so vital to democracy. Do you mind going any deeper on the relationship between the museum and the federal government? How does some of that come to bear in your day to day?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Well, let me just, if it's okay, if I could just give you a background about how it was set up under President Carter. He asked Eli Wiesel to chair a commission to study the idea of, it really began as a memorial. Should there be a national memorial to the Holocaust? And the commission said, well, given the history of the Weimar Republic and what happened under Nazism and America's role in defeating Nazism, it should really be an educational institution because memory alone is not enough. And so Congress mandated that we raise private funds for and build the museum itself. And it's a partnership between Congress and Holocaust survivors throughout the country that really built

• 13:13Speaker 02

  this institution. And, you know, one of the things that I think there was a concern in the beginning was, you know, would Americans from all different backgrounds, would non-Jews see this as relevant to them? And we found in our opening year, of course, that was the case and has been true ever since. Our visitors are 95% non-Jewish and they all come out of the museum finding it, from what we can tell, deeply meaningful. And they see it as a story of history and a story of humanity.

• 13:43Greg Jackson?

  That speaks to my own personal experience. One of my earliest memories in life was going to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Not your DC location, but it was very poignant and stuck with me. And I asked my mom as well this morning, just got thinking, why did you take me? For her, this is just a part of the human story, the American story, an important thing that she wanted her kids to understand.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  You know Eisenhower, I've been thinking a lot about what he said to our troops before the D-Day invasion because it's incredibly powerful words. He said, "Soldiers, sailors, and airmen, the eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world." And of course, who knew if it was going to be a success or not. But he was an extraordinary leader. And by the way, I'm sitting here in my office that's right next to the museum, looking over the Eisenhower Plaza.

• 14:53Greg Jackson?

  I'm jealous. I'll leave it at that. What a great place for you to spend your days.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  It is. We just had six World War II veterans visit last week.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  That sounds incredible. And I think one of the things, especially about the museum, that has always struck me is how important the educational awareness and the ties to building human connections are, right? It seems like a lot of what you do is you connect visitors to real human beings who lived during the Holocaust. And in this day and age, I feel like people of my generation and of other generations have fewer personal ties to an experience with the material. And so I'm wondering, as we move kind of further away from people who lived through these experiences and are direct descendants, how and if you've altered any of your educational strategy or the programming that you do to appeal to these younger generations who might

• 15:45Speaker 01

  not necessarily have that intimate knowledge, given that your focus is really on building these human connections?

• 15:50Speaker 02

  So that's a great question. And I would say, first of all, anything we do that features Holocaust survivors, whether having one sitting in the building to talk to visitors, or getting short videos from them online, is hugely successful, even among teenagers in America. And we've done some research on this, and we found that teenagers love authenticity, and they consider survivors really authentic. So it's wonderful that they respond so well to them. So, you know, about that authenticity, the other thing, of course, and we know that the survivor population is declining. The last survey I saw, there are only 196,000 left in the world and about 31,000 in the US.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  And with that reality, what's the other piece of authenticity that we have? And that's our artifacts that show really the reality of what happened when you don't have those voices. And we know from doing visitor research that our visitors, when they come away from the museum, the things they talk about most are saying things like, oh, my gosh, I saw the real railroad car, the real barracks, the real shoes. That's what they remember and they connect with the victims. What was it like to wear those shoes, to be in that barracks, to be in that rail car? So we do try to emphasize survivor voices and artifacts wherever we can to create those connections.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  But I'd like to say something else about this. We've done a lot of testing in recent years from our visitors about what do they want more out of in the exhibition? And what they say to us, because they're not Jewish, is, well, I don't really see myself here. I'm not a Nazi, of course, no one thinks of themselves as a Nazi. And I'm not Jewish, so I'm not a victim. I want to know what ordinary people in Germany and across Europe did during the Holocaust. And that's great because we want to answer that question. We want them to think about that. Because the truth is, the Holocaust would not have been possible without the collaboration

• 18:06Speaker 02

  of many, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and the silence of millions of ordinary people. And we want our visitors to know about that and to know that a few ordinary people, very few, did make other choices and helped the victims. And we want our visitor to think about the choices they make in the world today.

• 18:28Greg Jackson?

  So you're touching on, I think this is a challenge that every historian, whether it's public history, we're talking about museums, we're talking about academics, writing monographs, there's this grappling with the multifaceted nature of any history. So in this instance, there are the Nazis, the clear perpetrators, the Jews, the clear victims, and then, as you're just saying, all those who silently let things happen or silently pushed back, and yet, there's nothing more powerful than storytelling. Storytelling is what really brings someone in to a history and helps them to see themselves or to relate and connect to the past and realize these aren't just stuffy names on paper, but these were people who lived and felt the same fears and trepidations and

• 19:12Greg Jackson?

  hopes and dreams that we all do today. What myriad of challenges are you constantly facing, thinking through all of that?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Okay, so you asked a really wonderful question about how we approach this, and many museums are based on their objects you come to see, a dinosaur or a Picasso. Here you come to not see things necessarily, but to learn about a story. And we are a narrative-based museum, and our artifacts are there to help support the story. I don't know if you know this great quote, I heard Ken Burns refer to it, it's from the author Richard Powers, "Something like the best arguments in the world can't change a single mind, the only thing that can do that is a good story." And the museum has one of the world's most powerful stories, and we're always asking

• 20:03Speaker 02

  ourselves, how can we tell it better so that it resonates with our visitors, and particularly with young people? And one of the changes we're making to the way we tell our story, it's very much focused on what happened during the Holocaust, and we need to add to that story how and why it happened and who made it happen. Because if we want people to think about the choices that were possible then, and the choices they make today, and what are their own roles and responsibilities in society, and do critical thinking, we really need to add that how and why and who aspect of the story.

• 20:45Greg Jackson?

  There's no better answer than that. Who is it that said that originally?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  It's Richard Powers.

• 20:49Greg Jackson?

  Richard Powers.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  "The best arguments in the world won't change a single mind, the only thing that can do that is a great story."

• 20:58Speaker 01

  I completely agree with you, especially since we've had Ken on as a guest in previous HGDS episodes, which is always a nice connection. But I think one of the really interesting things I've picked up on from what you were saying is that a lot of the narratives and the stories you're telling are ones that really appeal to this American audience, right? The Holocaust didn't take place on American soil, but the United States has adopted this memory of the Holocaust into our collective memory and our national story. And I'm wondering if you might have any inclination as to why this might be and how you're trying to combine the American story with the larger narrative of the Holocaust?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Well, I'd say a couple of things about that. First of all, we do, as I said before, we emphasize every American connection to the history. So the liberation of the camps and fighting the Nazis and ending World War II is obviously the most important one, but there are also wonderful stories about Americans who tried to rescue Jews during the Holocaust in various ways. And of course, the big story about how after the war, so many survivors came to America to rebuild their lives. And with the observation this year, the commemoration of America's 250th, we are showcasing all

• 22:21Speaker 02

  of these aspects of America's connection to the Holocaust to share with you some of the quotes about our survivors. When we asked some of them, like, what does America mean to you? One of them said, "I knew this is a country that I'll have all the opportunities." Just simple. Another said, "When I came to Miami, I kissed the ground. In Poland and Germany, I couldn't speak what I wanted to say. Here, you have a right to scream and yell, and somebody will listen to you. This is freedom." And I really think, you know, our survivors remind us, I get to work with these people every day.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  It's the privilege of a lifetime, but they are always reminding me, don't ever take for granted the freedoms and opportunities this country offers. Don't ever forget, this is a very unique country, even with all its flaws, that there is no place like it. They just love America.

• 23:20Greg Jackson?

  Amen. Um, look, the story of the United States is rich and complex and it has its warts and all, but it truly is a special place. I assume you end up working with a lot of second generation, the children of Holocaust survivors as well. Do you feel that there's a sense of that same gravity that's passed on in a unique way?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, first of all, they feel they would not be here but for America.

• 23:45Greg Jackson?

  Right.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Um, so they feel an incredible commitment and gratitude to this country. There are efforts as a survivor population is diminishing for some in the next generation to talk about their family stories. So that is a new trend now that's starting to happen. And I think that's wonderful because I think to carry on things to new generations, the advantage there is also younger people can sometimes connect with younger people in different ways. But I think we're still kind of at the early stages of that, so we'll see what happens. But right now, I mean, we have about 44 survivors who volunteer and come to this museum every week and talk to the public and do all sorts of other things for us.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  They translate things in our collection. And as long as we have them, we're gonna just do everything we can to bring their words to the public and help them have an impact on the next generation. I'd like to go back to the thing about, we were talking about America and American history and values.

• 24:49Greg Jackson?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  When I talked about the Eisenhower Plaza that I have sit right outside my window where people enter the museum, after they walk through the doors of the museum itself, they see two quotes engraved on our walls. One is a letter from, I think it's 1790, from George Washington to the Turo synagogue in Rhode Island, one of the obviously earliest synagogues in America. And he wrote, "This country gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." That's just part of this longer letter. But the reason it's there is because America was the first country where Jews could be both Jewish and American.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  It's such a novel idea in history. They are not here, subjects to any king or czar or monarch at the whim of things. They are just ordinary citizens and can retain their Jewish culture and identity. So it really speaks to what is so unique about this country that is founded not on an ethnic group, but this glorious idea of individual human dignity. And right across from that quote sits the most famous sentence in history. Those lines about all men are created equal from Thomas Jefferson. Again, these are more reminders about what you're going to see in this museum is in dialogue with everything you see outside the museum.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  All these memorials to Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, the White House, the Capitol, et cetera. It's in dialogue with our democracy.

• 26:29Greg Jackson?

  Well, to me, Sarah, that is the common ground that makes all of us in our various forms and backgrounds, American. I think the most brilliant sentence ever penned in the English language is that is a self-evident truth. To make that assertion, all men are created equal. Call that self-evident. And to not define the nation by a religion, by an ethnicity, to define it by liberty. And that, of course, poses inherent challenges, but those are challenges worth facing as a collective group. And spitballing as a non-Jewish man here, but as I think about my experience in these museums, you know, I feel like there is common ground that every American does feel when

• 27:13Greg Jackson?

  they walk in, as they wrestle with whatever, obviously, I mean, the Holocaust is such a singular event. You know, there are a few such singular things that anyone could compare to, yet that recognition of that wrestling with a space where all of us can simply be who we are, believe what we want. Next up, we're talking about one of USHMM's current exhibits, Americans and the Holocaust, as well as Holocaust education and the museum's wider goals.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Thinking more also about the American Jewish experience and what it's like, right, the really unique historical experience of Jews in the United States. I'd like to ask you a little bit about your Americans and the Holocaust exhibit, and what stories you've chosen to highlight and what themes were important to you.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  So that exhibit is really, it's a picture of our own country during this period, during the same period from Hitler's rise to power to 1945 and the end of the war. And we're showing the public, what did Americans know as the Holocaust is unfolding in Europe? And how did they respond? And it's really a story, we call it Americans and the Holocaust. It's not America particularly, like, talking about the government, although we look at the government, but we look at Americans as citizens. And this is because we are the country, you know, the country is us. So we wanted to show it from that perspective. And again, that focus, of course Franklin Roosevelt is in there,

• 28:59Speaker 02

  and of course, very problematic people like Breckinridge Long from the State Department. But we also show ordinary Americans. And this was in the beginning when polling was starting to first happen. So the exhibit features a lot of polling. And this shows the last time antisemitism was high in America. Antisemitism is very high today, much higher than it was then, at unprecedented levels. But this was the last time that this was the case. And so what you have in America is, for example, in 1938, when the Nazis staged violent action across Jews everywhere in Germany.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Synagogues, Jewish businesses, Jewish homes, kill many Jews, plunder all their property. It's headline news in America everywhere. Two out of three Americans blame the Jews for their own persecution. Two out of three.

• 29:55Greg Jackson?

  Wow.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  And even after the war in 1945, now remember, America has, we didn't have TV then. We don't have social media. People are learning about the Holocaust in newspapers, on radio. But the war is what everyone is so focused on. And of course, the atrocities that they've heard about seem unbelievable. No, they just can't be true because they're so horrific. But at the end of the war, when Life Magazine and these other magazines start publishing in these newsreels that people are seeing in movie theaters, and America starts to see the evidence, again, here's a poll where they asked Americans, should we let more

• 30:39Speaker 02

  of these Jewish refugees after the war who've survived this into the country? And only 5% said let them in. So again, it was a time of Americans, you know, very high degrees of antisemitism. Now, counterpoint to that, you have extraordinary stories of individual Americans. He said, whatever my fellow countrymen think, whatever my government thinks, I'm going to do things to help Jews. So we feature a lot of different stories about that, about taking that individual initiative. And that gets back to that story about critical thinking about my own roles and responsibilities today. What can I do?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  And there are always choices. And our motto here is like, what you do matters. You see that around the building. What you do matters. I would say to you all, history matters. History helps us think how what we do matters. And that's what we always are really conveying in everything we do.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Do you think presently in the United States, there's a lack of knowledge about the Holocaust and about Holocaust history?

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, we know this from a lot of surveys, not only a lack of knowledge, but also, very alarmingly, skepticism about whether it was true. Again, this is Eisenhower predicted that was to happen because he said, "The crimes are so horrible, in the future, people will think this is just propaganda." And he was absolutely right. I always say, Eisenhower, he could never have anticipated social media, but he did understand human nature. So we find, I would say, when I look at the picture, you have denial, but you also have a lot of misperceptions and ignorance. A lot of people just aren't sure, or they

• 32:31Speaker 02

  have misguided views. They think, "We've done some research, just Hitler alone and a few Nazis killed Jews." Things like that. And also, I think we have to put this in larger context. I think historical literacy is at all-time lows. I think you have, you know, civics education probably not doing well. Fewer people are studying history. Everyone wants to major in STEM, or in business, or finance. You know, we want people to major in history. To be a responsible citizen, you have to, just have to know about where you've been in order to think about and shape your future.

• 33:10Greg Jackson?

  Sarah, you're singing our song here. Absolutely agree. You can't have a functional republic without a citizenry well-versed in these things.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Given the increase in lack of historical scholarship and understanding, how has a museum been pivoting in terms of educational materials and your museum strategy? Are you trying to address some of those gaps in understanding?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, I'd say a couple of things. First of all, I'd say their good news is, we have more secondary school teachers interested in our teacher training and professional development than ever before. But as you said, we have to shape our resources to help them teach this in a way that's relevant. So, for example, one of the things we've done is because young people today get exposed to so much propaganda online, we have developed a module using Nazi propaganda posters.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  And help teachers teach students, how is that propaganda designed to influence public opinion? Because we want students to be more discerning consumers of all the propaganda that's being thrown their way on TikTok or whatever it might be. So this is something new that we've been trying. We've also done, as I said, this focus more on why the Holocaust happened, helping explain antisemitism. Many people have misperceptions. They think the Nazis were antisemitic, but have no idea that antisemitism was around for 2,000 years before Hitler was even born and that conspiracy theories about Jews are not new. They didn't start with the Nazis.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  They didn't end with the Nazis. They're in the world today and hoping that young people will not be susceptible to the conspiracy theories about Jews and others that they might be exposed to.

• 35:03Greg Jackson?

  So as you may know, here on HTDS, we're about to start, we'll say, what, our second run of Holocaust episodes. We did early Holocaust, basically pre-World War I, 1930s, and now we'll be taking our listeners into the camps. And so about three or four episodes in total. What might you suggest, since our listeners are going to be hearing you before they hear these more specific stories? What are some things you believe that they should perhaps keep in mind? You know, framework or thoughts?

• 35:37Speaker 02

  So I would encourage them to think about what happened well before Hitler came to power. Not just the Weimar Republic and all the issues it faced, the economic problems, the polarization, the divisions, but go back even further because great events, great meaning, you know, enormous world-shaking events like the Holocaust and World War II. They're not meteorites that came down from the sky. Nazism, you know, didn't come from nowhere. These events all have deep roots. So our new way of kind of telling this history is to put the public to think, what are those deep roots? Were we redoing our main exhibition?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  And it will start in Europe in 1900 and show this vast continent as a very dynamic, exciting place that's very modern and undergoing a lot of change due to new technologies. And that change is creating great advancements, but also great problems for society and leading to a lot of uncertainty and societal anxiety. And it's in this turbulent atmosphere, exciting but turbulent atmosphere, where many people benefit. But of course, many people don't as they have to readjust their lives. This is like industrialization.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  I'm sure that's a topic you've dealt with before. And of course, you have many of these trends happening in America as well. But in Europe, what starts to happen in the midst of all this is you have new questions starting to be asked. People are looking for answers, right? History teaches us that we always look for simple answers to complex questions. Yep. So in this turmoil, people start asking, why is this happening? And with the rise of ethno-nationalism, one of the questions and scientific racism, those two phenomenon, they start to say, who truly belongs to our nation? Who is truly German? Who is truly French?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  And of course, the answer ultimately is, well, we have this Jewish minority that's been here. They're not really us. They don't truly belong. They came from somewhere else. And this is a nation that should only be for the true, and this is very much of a racial concept, the true racially pure French, the racially pure. Germans and you can see how these ideas are starting to lay the groundwork for a Nazi movement that is going to be set off because of World War One. And World War One, you know, many scholars I work with say World War One began in 1914 and did not end until 1989. You've probably heard this before.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. But it set off an entire century of trouble and of dislocation and conflict. And the two biggest totalitarian ideologies, you know, in modern history. So that would be my encouragement for how people think about the Holocaust is to look even deeper in history.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  I think too, as we've started to put these episodes together, one thing that's, I mean, it struck me for years and years as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, but especially as I've been crafting these narratives is just the scale of these horrible, horrible stories and the magnitude of all that's come out of the Holocaust. And I'm wondering if you could offer, suppose me and the rest of our listeners, some advice on how you process and understand and undertake this work of Holocaust storytelling and not kind of break down or go numb after you're surrounded by so much and so much destruction.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  So one thing we found in doing visitor testing is that our visitors do not grasp the scale of the Holocaust. And we are going to do more to introduce that and to introduce how quickly it happened. So, you know, once the mass killings begin, four million Jews are killed extremely quickly in just a few years. And by D-Day, you know, and everybody is so excited about D-Day and it's about the liberation of Europe, but by D-Day, five million of the six million who be killed are already killed. So it's not only the size, it's the speed. So you have to communicate that for the public to grasp what an earth-shattering event this was.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  At the same time, you need to personalize it. This wasn't six million statistics. This is six million individual murders. And these are people with loved ones, with communities, with friends, and they're completely destroyed. So we balance the statistics, but also with a lot of the individual stories about who these people were and what happened to them. That's what our public also tells us. They want to know those stories, but they also want to know the fates. You may recall, we have a large tower of faces that shows one community, one tiny little shuttle that's, you know, near the Polish-Lithuanian border, that's been

• 40:59Speaker 02

  there for hundreds of years. And these are pre-war pictures of this community. And it's basically all wiped out in two days by mobile killing units after being there for centuries. But these are pictures of such ordinary people, it just looks like us. And I've taken through so many VIPs from all over the world, people from every country you can imagine, and everybody walks in that room and goes, "Oh, oh," because everybody can identify with the individuality and the humanity of just other human beings that are just like them.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Is there a particular story, either in that section of the museum or an artifact you've come across in your time working for the museum, that struck you the most?

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I had pulled out a quote from one of our visitors. We had visitors write comments, you know, in a comment book. And this visitor wrote after the end of the main exhibition, I'll share it with you. It says, "This experience was beyond words. Our senior class came to DC expecting to have fun and maybe learn about government and politics. I don't think any of us expected to learn about humanity." And it's signed Mandy from Iowa City. So I think the visitors do a great job of seeing this vast history connected

• 42:24Speaker 02

  to them. The other story I would tell you is, we have in our collection now these remarkable letters that, well, they're little teeny letters on scraps of papers, that some of the victims, when they're being deported, they of course did not know exactly where they were deported, but they're being deported to killing centers, or throwing from trains, hoping someone would pick them up and get them to their loved ones. So these are like people's last words. And we have some in our collection now, and we did a test with visitors to see how it resonated, where visitors could read these letters for themselves and get a little

• 43:04Speaker 02

  bit of background on the context within which they were written. And one of the visitors was a middle-aged woman, and she said, you know, I came to Washington with my teenage kids, and we took them to a lot of museums. This is the only time they have really been engaged, was reading those letters.

• 43:25Greg Jackson?

  You give a masterclass on it, day in and day out, Sarah. It's that impressive ability to ensure that the human side of history, even in such an ugly event, is being presented to your visitors. There's nothing that will make history get through, even to, you know, to lean into the stereotypes, I guess, the checked-out teen, like them realizing those historical figures were people. Sarah, it's been delightful having you. Is there any last thoughts that you'd like to leave with our listeners before we wrap up today?

• 44:01Speaker 02

  I would just say thank you for your interest in our work and for people seeing that history is really, really looking at ourselves in the mirror. That's what it's really about. And I just hope people will study the Holocaust, come to the museum, study the causes of the Holocaust, and see themselves in that story, and see themselves in the future story that they can write as citizens.

• 44:29Greg Jackson?

  That's beautiful. And of course, if you're in the Washington DC area, everyone, we'd encourage you to make a visit. It'll be more than worth your while. Thanks again, Sarah, and it's truly been a delight.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you. And that was a fantastic thought to end on.

• 44:45Greg Jackson?

  And that does it for this prologue episode. It was a real honor to have Sarah on the podcast. I'll see you back here in two weeks when we continue our episodes about antisemitism and the Holocaust.

• 45:01Greg Jackson?

  History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Episode produced by Dossie McCraw with editorial assistance by Riley Neubauer and Ella Henriksen. Special thanks to episode co-host Riley Neubauer, USHMM director Sarah Bloomfield, and the museum staff. Production by Airship. Sound design by Molly Bobb. Theme music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship.

• 45:33Greg Jackson?

  HTDS is supported by fans at htdspodcast.com/membership. My gratitude to you kind souls providing funding to help us keep going, thank you. And a special thanks to our patrons whose monthly gift puts them at producer status. Adam Goran, Ahmed Chapman, Amy and Ross Hensman, Andrew Nissen, Andrew Sherwin, Anna M. Huta, Art Lang, Baby Nico, Bob Stinnet, Bonnie Brooks, Ryan Gavigan, Ryan Boils, Ryan Goodson, Bruce Hibbert, Kayden Hallitz, Charles Clendenin, Charles Starkey, Charlie Majes, Christopher Merchant, Christopher Lyle, Christopher Pullman, Christopher Young, Cody Brown, Colleen Martin, Colin Ferris Pennington, Connor Hogan, Craig Burrhost, Dan G., Daniel Beecham, Daniel

• 46:15Greg Jackson?

  L'Kana, Darren Chambers, Daryl the Kid Lovell, David Rifkin, Dean Heiser, Deronte Spencer, Donald Moore, Eli Edwards, Elizabeth Chris-Janson, Ellen Stewart, Ernesto Franco, Ernie Lomaster, Ethan Lowery, Ethan Thompson, G2303, Jeffrey Nelson, George J. Sherwood, Gareth Griffin, Gina Johnson, Gordon Garwood, Henry Brunges, Holly Hamilton, Jake Gilbreth, James Bledsoe, James Blue, James Schlender, Jarrett Zangora, Jeffrey Moos, Jennifer Minjioni, Jennifer Ruth, Jessica Poppin, Joe Dobis, John Booby, John Frugal Dugal, John Huber, John Messmer, John Oliveros, John Radlevich, John Schaefer, Jonathan Schaff, Jordan Corbett, Joseph Curry,

• 46:57Greg Jackson?

  Joshua Steiner, Julian Wright, Justin Tolman, Karen Bartholomew, Carl Friedman, Carl Romer, Ken Culver, Kim R., Kimberly Pruitt, Kristen Pratt, Kyle Decker, L. Paul Goran.

• 47:09Greg Jackson?

  Laura Norman, Lawrence Neubauer, Linda Cunningham, Mark D. Worrell, Mark Ellis, Marsha Smith, Mason Glenn, Matt Siegel, Michael Longest, Michael Sullivan, Nick Caprell, Nicholas Powell, Owen W. Sedlak, Paul Huguenroth, Philip May, Randy Keen, Rich Ruckel, Rick Brown, Rob Drasovich, Robert Shelton, Rock Gay, Ryan Fogelman, Sam Holzman, Sarah Prescott, Sarah Traywood, Scott Hurst, Shane Smith, Shannon Hoagland, Sharon Feasen, Sean Baines, Sean Collins, Stacy Ritter, Steve Williams, The Creepy Girl, Thomas Churchill, Thomas Matthew Edwards, Thomas Sabbath, Tim and Sarah Turner, Todd Curran, Tom Bestafka, Travis Cox, Walter M. Ames, Wesley McKee, William Durham, William

• 47:51Greg Jackson?

  Curry, William Thompson, and Zach Jackson. Join me in two weeks, or I'd like to tell you a story.