Washington Memorial to Victims : Holocaust Museum to Stress Education

A member of a federal commission, saying he had found out in the last few weeks “how little is understood about the darkness that is called the Holocaust,” Friday disclosed details of a $30-million museum in Washington that is designed to become a major center for education on the Nazi genocide.

The controversy over President Reagan’s visit last Sunday to a German military cemetery where Nazi SS officers are buried “demonstrates that we must redouble our efforts to educate the public,” Mark Talisman, vice chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, told the House Appropriations subcommittee on the interior.

Besides housing historical exhibits, a memorial to Holocaust victims and Nazi documents and other artifacts, the museum will contain a computerized international clearinghouse for library and museum collections about the period in 13 countries, Talisman said.

How Genocide Occurred

The airy, five-story red-granite structure will face the Tidal Basin south of the Washington Monument. It will include meeting spaces and separate libraries for the public and scholars.

Talisman said a permanent exhibit will explore the Holocaust period, from 1933 to 1945, and how the genocide was allowed to occur. “That is clearly relevant,” he said. Temporary exhibits will “depict the richness of the life of the peoples who were destroyed.”

“This is not to be a gallery of horror shows,” Talisman added.

An international competition will be held to design the interior of the 10,000-square-foot memorial area, which will be hexagonal to denote the six points of a Star of David.

Honoring the Victims

Since Congress established the 50-member council in 1980, disputes have arisen over whether the memorial should honor only Jews or include other victims of the Nazis, including Gypsies, Poles and homosexuals.

Talisman said the memorial will emphasize “the centrality of the Jewish tragedy and the universality of that message to others.”

Its exhibits and collections will cover all victims of Nazism, but its emphasis will be on Jews and Gypsies because they were “the two peoples who were exterminated just because of who they were,” he said.

Talisman presented final plans for the museum, which have been discussed since 1978, in asking for $1.95 million to operate the council in fiscal 1986. The council’s chairman, writer Elie Wiesel, was a leading critic of Reagan’s visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg.

The museum is to be built with private funds. Talisman said that so far the council has raised $11 million, and $10 million more is pledged. The construction will cost $30 million, he said, and the cost of equipping the memorial, filling the archives and endowing educational and scholarly programs will bring the total to as much as $100 million.

The museum will probably be operated at government expense, like other Washington museums, Talisman said.