Welcome to Holocaust Museum Houston. My name is Christine Lahti, and I am honored to be your guide today. We will share with you some of the history of the Holocaust and highlight a number of artifacts as well as introduce several of Houston’s survivors. And as we do so, ask yourself: how did this happen? Could it happen again? What is my role? What can I do I do to help create a future without hate? Many visitors to the museum are surprised at how the Holocaust started: gradually and in full sight of a modern, well-educated population. Mein Kampf—which Adolph Hitler wrote as a prescription for the Third Reich and the Nazi party—was published in 1923 following Germany’s defeat in World War I. In it, Hitler laid blame for all the nation’s misery at the feet of the Jews and advocated violence against them to restore Germany to what he saw as its lost glory. It didn’t happen overnight. As the Nazis rose to power, the society around them changed and more and more restrictions on Jewish life were enacted. Survivor Leah Shander: [FEMALE HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR] "The thing that I remember most is my father saying…It cannot last. We've been here for so long. We're German. We may be of Jewish faith, but we're Germans…the German people are not going to allow this…" NARRATOR (Italics indicate a second voice underscoring) Consider the Jewish laws, beginning in 1933 with the ascent of Hitler and the Nazis. […limit Jewish students to 1.5 percent of total…] Consider the compromises demanded of Jews […prohibited from taking doctoral exams…]—in small and mighty ways—that gradually withdrew them from German society […excluded from Journalism …not permitted to serve in military…] and their identity as Germans citizens. [… revoke passports … defined as un-German…] Consider the gradual steps that prompted increasing isolation […ban from public gardens, sports grounds… shopping restrictions…], then economic and social sacrifices […criminalize property transfers… forced sale of Jewish businesses…], followed by threats to safety […forbidden to leave Europe…], and what we now know followed. The unthinkable. Survivor Otto Schlamme: “The Nuremberg Laws which came into being in the ‘30s in Germany, it was a way that all of us got touched. In other words, my father had to give up his business, my mother had to… she had students she couldn’t teach during an Aryan student anymore, and I had to leave the school because I couldn’t mingle with Aryans in the public schools.” NARRATOR: The rise to power by the Nazi party in support of Adolph Hitler was a gradual but determined process. It took twelve years to indoctrinate German society to behave with utter prejudice, barbarism, and ultimately violence.