It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.

[4] Researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have documented 42,500 ghettos and concentration camps created by the Nazis throughout German-controlled areas of Europe from 1933 to 1945.

[7] After a unanimous vote by the United States Congress in 1980 to establish the museum, the federal government made available 1.9 acres (0.77 ha) of land adjacent to the Washington Monument for construction.

[8] In 2002, a federal jury convicted white supremacists Leo Felton and Erica Chase of planning to bomb a series of institutions associated with American black and Jewish communities, including the USHMM.

[12] In designing the building, Freed researched post-World War II German architecture and visited Holocaust sites throughout Europe.

[13] Other partners in the construction of the USHMM included Weiskopf & Pickworth, Cosentini Associates LLP, Jules Fisher, and Paul Marantz, all from New York City.

Upon entering large industrial elevators on the first floor, visitors are given identification cards, each of which tells the story of a person such as a random victim or survivor of the Holocaust.

Upon exiting these elevators on the fourth floor, visitors walk through a chronological history of the Holocaust, starting with the Nazi rise to power led by Adolf Hitler, 1933–1939.

The Permanent Exhibition ends on the second floor with the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by Allied forces; it includes a continuously looped film of Holocaust survivor testimony.

[20][21][22] In response to the outpouring of grief and support after the shooting on June 10, 2009, it has also established the Stephen Tyrone Johns Summer Youth Leadership Program.

Each year, 50 outstanding young people from the Washington, D.C. area will be invited to the USHMM to learn about the Holocaust in honor of Johns' memory.

[25][26][27] The exhibit explained that in the early 20th century and during Hitler's rise to power in Germany, it was widely accepted that the Protocols documented an actual conspiracy by a small cabal of Jews to control the world for nefarious purposes, and that government and media in some countries continue to promote the Protocols as proof that such a Jewish conspiracy to control the world exists.

[28] The Museum's holdings included art, books, pamphlets, advertisements, maps, film and video historical footage, audio and video oral testimonies, music and sound recordings, furnishings, architectural fragments, models, machinery, tools, microfilm and microfiche of government documents and other official records, personal effects, personal papers, photographs, photo albums, and textiles.

[35] The Museum contains the offices of the Committee on Conscience (CoC), a joint United States government and privately funded think tank, which by presidential mandate engages in global human rights research.

[36] In addition to coordinating the National Civic Commemoration, events are held during the week of the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust on a theme designated each year by the USHMM.

[37] Since 1999, the USHMM also provided public service professionals, including law enforcement officers, military personnel, civil servants, and federal judges with ethics lessons based in Holocaust history.

[41] In some cases, archival material now housed at the Center has allowed the post-mortem reconstruction of considerable achievements, such as the work of Lodz ghetto artist Melania Fogelbaum and others, which would otherwise have been lost to Nazi extermination and total war terror.

[43] It is published in all six of the official languages of the United Nations—Arabic, Mandarin, English, French, Russian, and Spanish, as well as in Greek, Portuguese, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu.

It seeks to collect, share, and visually present to the world critical information on emerging crises that may lead to genocide or related crimes against humanity.

[58] The USHMM published a statement declaring that it "unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.

"[59] A group of historians and scholars responded with an open letter portraying the stance of the museum as "a radical position that is far removed from mainstream scholarship on the Holocaust and genocide."