Holocaust Museum Houston Brochure

Holocaust Museum Houston

The new Holocaust Museum Houston, Lester and Sue Smith Campus reopened June 22, 2019, after a two-year, $34 million expansion of its original home at 5401 Caroline Street. By more than doubling in size to a total of 57,000 square feet, the new facility ranks as the nation’s fourth largest Holocaust museum and is fully bilingual in English and Spanish. In becoming one of the top Holocaust museums in the country, the organization has broadened its mission as a superregional hub for Holocaust education and a national voice for human rights and social justice.

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Morgan Family Welcome Center

Memorial Room

Located in the far back corner of the Museum, just past Bearing Witness , the Memorial Room is a place for meditation and contemplation with the Wall of Tears featuring 600 hand-painted light-reflective ceramic tiles representing the six million Jews that perished in the Holocaust.

The Welcome Center provides a short orientation film that sets the tone covering Jewish life prior to WWI and WWII, traditions and origins, the Weimar period in Germany’s history and a brief history of antisemitism, including a definition and examples of pogroms and propaganda.

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Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers Holocaust Gallery

Authentic film footage, artifacts, photographs and documents expose Nazi propaganda and the ever-tightening restrictions in the steady move to toward the “Final Solution.” The exhibition includes a Danish rescue boat and 1942 German WW II-era railcar and personal artifacts from Holocaust survivors who called Houston home.

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Lester and Sue Smith Human Rights Gallery

RHONA AND BRUCE CARESS GALLERY And Still I Write: Young Diarists on War and Genocide

Visitors are challenged to engage with one another, and the outside world, to understand the choices that a single person can make to turn the tide and combat hatred, and to answer four questions: What are human rights?, How do atrocities happen?, Who stood up for human rights?, and What can we do?

The first of its kind in the United States, this exhibition tells the story of young people who wrote diaries during the Holocaust, World War II, and contemporary wars and genocides in Bosnia, Iraq and Syria. We invite you to read their words and listen to what they have to say.

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Moral Choices Hall

Jerold B. Katz Family Butterfly Loft

At the heart of Holocaust Museum Houston, programs based in the Moral Choices Hall will remind museum guests of the choices they remain free to make and the lives that they can successfully impact, spreading the primary message of the Museum.

Suspended as if in flight, the Butterfly Loft sculpture is a kaleidoscope of 500 butterflies that represent and memorialize the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust. Why butterflies? For over two decades, schoolchildren from around the world have created butterflies as part of their Holocaust studies with 1.5 million handmade butterflies now in HMH permanent storage. A selection of these personalized butterflies can be found encased along the wall of the education center across from the Butterfly Loft.

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Holocaust Survivors’ Wall

Hosting the nation’s largest collection of the prolific Holocaust survivor’s works with 131 paintings on rotation, the Bak Learning Center helps visitors to understand the content of his works, as well as the rich symbolism incorporated in his paintings. Samuel Bak Gallery and Learning Center in Loving Memory of Hope Silber Kaplan

Made of Jerusalem stone, the Survivors’ Wall includes the names of nearly 1,000 Holocaust survivors who made Houston their home after the war. Many of these survivors helped bring the Museum to fruition and several are still active in HMH speaking events.

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Albert and Ethel Herzstein Theater

The educational programs and outreach of the Boniuk Center feature the Museum’s current programs of educational excellence, including the Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers, the Spector-Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers, Max M. Kaplan Summer Institute, All Behaviors Count, Engines of Change Student Ambassadors, Educator in Motion, Through Their Eyes and the Summer Learning Experiences. The Center’s mission is to demystify and answer questions of morality and coexistence as they pertain to human behavior and decision making. Boniuk Center for the Future of Holocaust, Human Rights, and Genocide Studies

With state-of-the-art audio-visual, staging, lighting and sound capabilities, the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Theater and Mady and Ken Kades Stage are perfect for film screenings, live performances, seminars, presentations, concerts and panel discussions.

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Edith & Joseph Mincberg Gallery

Eric Alexander Outdoor Amphitheater

Edith and Josef Mincberg Gallery hosts unique and inspiring traveling exhibitions that are sure to captivate your guests.

The Eric Alexander Outdoor Amphitheater features a unique outdoor venue great for live performances, receptions and more. Your guests may also enjoy a beautiful evening in the tranquil Eric Alexander Garden of Hope.

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Eric Alexander Garden of Hope and Margolis Plaza Eric Alexander Garden of Hope and Margolis Plaza are located adjacent to the Eric Alexander Outdoor Amphitheater. This area is the perfect setting for your guests to enjoy an outdoor cocktail reception before or following a live performance.

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OUR VISION We envision a society that transforms ignorance into respect for human life, that remembers the Holocaust, and reaffirms an individual’s responsibility for the collective actions of society.

OUR MISSION Holocaust Museum Houston is dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, remembering the 6 million Jews and other innocent victims and honoring the survivors’ legacy. Using the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides, we teach the dangers of hatred, prejudice and apathy.

OUR PUBLIC VALUE STATEMENT Holocaust Museum Houston builds a more humane society by promoting responsible individual behavior, cultivating civility and pursuing social justice.

Lester and Sue Smith Campus | 5401 Caroline Street | Houston, Texas 77004 713.942.8000 | hmh.org