By Elisa Gradwohl

Today we began by going to the US Holocaust Museum. It started off when you get a card with a person who was in a concentration camp. The card told their story and, along the way, you can put it into a computer and hear more of their story. On the top floor of the museum we read and saw how Hitler came to power and what he was doing before he became chancellor. The next floor had videos of how some nations knew but did not do anything about it. There were also many pictures throughout the exhibit of men, women and children who perished.

The last floor told the story of the medical tests they did at some of the camps, what a barrack at Auschwitz looked like, and models of the gas chambers. We were also able to hear stories of survivors and liberators.

At the end of the exhibit we could go into a big room with an eternal flame and many little candles that were under the names of the various concentration camps.

Our next stop was lunch and then a choice of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum or the Art Museum. I chose the Air & Space Museum and was able to see the power of innovation in America.

This museum was followed by a visit to the Newseum. It is a museum dedicated to telling the history and power of journalism. The first thing we did was watch a 4D movie about the history of reporting. Your seat moves up and down during the movie which helped make the movie feel more real. There was a really good 9/11 exhibit in the Newseum as well. They had a movie about the tragic day, as well as the various newspaper front pages from that day too. While most of us were too young to remember exactly what happened that day, the exhibit still touched us. There was also an Elvis exhibit which was cool because we have already been to his birth home, Graceland, and Sun Studios. We also learned that the news gets its name from the first letter of each direction: North, East, West, and South.

We ended our day by going to dinner and going to an old school movie theater and saw the movie “Inception.” It had a really complicated ending which kept us talking. All in all, it was a great day.