Holocaust Museums Debate What to Say About the Israel-Hamas War

At a Holocaust museum in Atlanta, staff members had typically ended their tours by saying that many survivors of the death camps immigrated to Palestine.

But after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the guides noticed that some students would ask a simple but complicated question: Is this the Palestine that we’ve been hearing about?

So staff members at the museum, the Breman, made a few changes, according to Rabbi Joseph Prass, the museum’s education director. Now, docents explain to visitors that many Holocaust survivors found refuge in “the British Mandate of Palestine” or “the area that would become the country of Israel.”

Each year, roughly two dozen Holocaust museums in the United States teach millions of visitors — often students on field trips — about the Nazi genocide of six million Jews, a history that is fading from living memory.

Visitors make their way through the Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial, in Washington.Credit…Drew Angerer for The New York Times

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel and the ensuing war, that mission has felt especially urgent, as the number of bias incidents against Jews has risen across the country.