The idea for this museum took shape in Houston in 1981, and it opened in 1996. A $34 million expansion reopened it in June 2019 at 57,000 square feet on the Lester and Sue Smith Campus, fully bilingual in English and Spanish. The core gallery, Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers, builds its history around people who later settled in Houston, and it moves you past two objects that stop almost everyone: a German railcar like those used for deportations, and the Danish rescue boat Hanne Frank, a reminder of the 1943 boatlift that carried most of Denmark's Jews to safety in Sweden. The Lester and Sue Smith Human Rights Gallery widens the lens to genocides and rights movements since. The Samuel Bak Gallery holds the survivor-painter's haunting work, and the Caress Gallery, And Still I Write, gathers diaries kept by young people in war. Give yourself time; it is heavy, and it is meant to be.
What to expect
- Expect a security check: bags are inspected and everyone walks through a scanner.
- No photos in the first-floor galleries; no-flash photos are fine on the second floor.
- No outside food; the second-floor Bagel Shop sells bagels, wraps and coffee.
- Pick a docent-led, audio or self-guided visit; schedule docent tours online.
- Visitors with disabilities get in free, and service animals are welcome.
What to do
- Walk the Bearing Witness gallery and stop at the railcar and the Danish rescue boat Hanne Frank
- Spend time in the Lester and Sue Smith Human Rights Gallery
- See Samuel Bak's paintings in the gallery named for him
- 1996; expanded 2019Opened
- 57,000 sq ftSize
- 4th-largest US Holocaust museumNational rank
- Thursdays 2-5 pmFree entry