Last Chapter

The final floor of the Permanent Exhibition addresses the liberation of the Nazi camps and the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, rescue and resistance efforts, and the aftermath of the Holocaust. It covers the postwar quest to render justice to those who carried out the murder of millions of innocent civilians and the efforts of Holocaust survivors to build new lives in Europe, Israel, and the United States.

The exhibition concludes with a second series of films on American responses to the Holocaust during the war years, and the film Testimony, in which survivors and rescuers share their experiences.

The issue of individual responsibility toward fellow human beings in danger is a recurring theme on this floor. Thousands of courageous non-Jews risked death or imprisonment to save their Jewish neighbors, and others—Jews and non-Jews—joined in the underground war against the Nazis. Still others joined the killers, becoming perpetrators or enablers of genocide. The vast majority of Europeans, however, were bystanders who did little to deter the Nazis or to aid Jews or other victims of Nazi persecution.

Highlights of this floor include the activities of French villagers in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the surrounding region to hide Jews, the Danish rescue of some 7,000 Jews, and the actions of the American War Refugee Board and Raoul Wallenberg to save Jews in occupied Europe.