have more men could go overseas. she worked in washington, d.c. where she worked as a payroll person. in the 1920s, the fears of immigrants which had been boiling during the time of the great migration to america started to come to a head and eventually leading to the johnson reed act of 1984 which effectively ended immigration by ins instituting quotas. this would of course become a very difficult thing, an obstacle ten years later when a lot of european jews could have used another safe harbor during the rise of the nazis. the 1920s was a rise of anti-semiti anti-semitism, largely due to the immigration surge that had happened up until the 1920s. so here we talk a little bit about that, about henry ford's

anti-semitism and the protocols of zion, this was a fraudulent document purportedly outlining a jewish conspiracy to take over the world. it was published during the 1920s. in the 1930s, there was a sort of cultural flourishing in america despite the depression. a lot of really rich artistic activity and so in this area, we look at the rise of the movies in the 1930s, as well as yiddish theatre. we look at the wpa that supported artists in the 1930s. we also look at the political situation in america, a lot of people were espousing different concepts like socialism or zionism.

we also explore religion in the 1930s. congregation shari eli was a south philadelphia immigrant synagogue that opened its doors in 1918. by the 1980s, membership slacked off and the congregation would soon be closing its doors. people moved out of the neighborhood and they didn't need the big sin nothing anymore. someone from the congregation called our museum and asked if we would like to go in and see their torah arc, which our curators did in 1984. they entered the synagogue and saw a monumental hand carved, hand painted torah arc that had been maid by these immigrants in south philadelphia 70 years earlier. we salvaged the entire tora torah arc. part is on display now, including these lions that were up near the ceiling. we think that a lot of the carving was done by people who

were carving care zell animals. you can see that kind of in the face of the lion. in this era, we look at the american experience of world war ii and the holocaust. jewish leaders were faced with a dilemma. should they boycott germany and rally in the streets and make lots of noise? or should they quietly work behind the scenes to come to a diplomatic solution to this rising problem of the nazi rise in europe. there was domestic anti-semitism. we saw in an earlier gallery, henry ford's publications, espousing virulent anti-semitic believes. you had people like father coughlin, who was a catholic priest who had a radio show and

was a national figure who spoke up against jews, very ant anti-semitic. of course, during this time, there were very strict quotas for who could enter america and when. the visa system was very controlled. this is a steamer trunk from a family that attempted to immigrate in 1939 on a luxury ship that was carrying 937 passengers from germany to cuba. most of these people were jewish and most of them had visas to enter the united states a the a later date. they were going to wait out the time period before that in cuba. when they arrived in havana, they realized that their landing permits were fraudulent. they had been sold to them by a corrupt government official.

so only a few people were able to get off the boat in cuba. the jewish community in america scrambled to try to figure out how to give these 930 people refuge in america. and they were ultimately unable to do so because those quota system was so very strict. the ship had to turn back to europe. joseph josephs who was on the ship with his wife lily and daughter leisle, this is their trunk, was part of the passenger committee that the captain who was ship, who was not jewish organized in order to boost spirits of the passengers as they were on their trip back to europe. people were terrified of what would happen to them when they had to get off the ship again. this particular family made their way to america the following year. they got off the ship in great britain and came to philadelphia the following year. in 1997, we got a call from an

auction house the auctioneer is a friend of the museum. the steamer trunk was put on consignment and he was looking at it and he noticed a sticker that said st. louis on it and he knew about the journey of the st. louis, so he called us and asked us if we were interested in the trunk. and he very generously purchased it from the consigner and donated it to the museum and it's now one of our really special artifacts here. by 1944, it was widely known that the holocaust was happening in europe.

we were immersed in world war ii and the secretary general asked several of his aides to write a report on this subject, what the government was doing to help aid european jews. these aides, including josiah dubois wrote a long report to him after studying the subject. he titled it on the acquiesce sense of this government on the murder of the jews. very explicit statement of what was happening. morganthal condensed this report, presented it to roosevelt and several days later, the war refugee board was instituted to try to help get people out of europe and give them refuge in america. despite that, very few people were able to come here. more went to england or other places. but one of the phenomena that we saw was that a lot of americas s

jewish and nonjewish started organizing and trying to figure out ways, grassroots ways to get threatened people out of hostile territory to america. one of those stories was that of helga weiss and 49 other children who were saved by a couple and the jewish fraternal organization. this couple gilbert and eleanor krause were able to obtain 50 visas to help bring unaccompanied children from europe to america. they traveled to europe to interview the families of people who applied for these visas. and one of them was helga weiss. her parents rosa and emil weiss applied for her to be in this transport. they had already sent their

older daughter to palestine so she could be safe there and they were happy to find a spot for helga on this transport. helga brought with her this teddy bear, a set of pajamas that her mother had made for her. and her mother's hair brush. this is helga in her passport here. she strongly remembered the application process. she was only 8 years old at the time, but she later said she always remembered having to write everything forgetly and the amount of pressure that was on her to do efrl perfectly during this application because her parents were so frightened that fe she didn't -- if her handwriting wasn't perfect then she might not be chosen to go on this trip and be rescued. helg a's mother died in the holocaust. her father managed to come to america and she had been living with a foster family during this time. about a year when they were

separated and they moved to detroit where she grew up. a very sweet lady. she trained seeing eye dogs later in life. and used this teddy bear in school presentations that in he experience of jewish people during the holocaust. >> so in this gallery, we look at the experience of jewish soldiers fighting in the war, both men and women. we look at culture during this time meperiod, cold war and

establishment of the state of israel, as well as carrying on jewish traditions. both of the floors above us started with an immigration story. this floor starts really more with a migration story. a lot more of them went to israel, some stayed in europe, some came to america. the establishment of the state of israel was a roop really momentous story. it carried a lot.

a safe refuge, a jewish home. during the 1950s, we experienced the red scare. and this was a very frightening time for jewish for jewish people, many of whom had been involved in communism in the period before in the urban neighborhoods. a lot of ideas were percolating about how to improve america, how to make things work well for everybody. and communism was one of those ideas that people had. one of the big news stories at the time was the trial of julius and ethel rosenberg who were a jewish couple. we know now that julius was -- we're not sure of ethel's involvement in the plot, but they were executed. at the time, people didn't necessarily believe they were

spies, but they were anti-semitic and certainly there were anti-semitic aspects to the way that americans were reacted to their trial. you hear about the hundred black list, and it was a real thing. this is a book called red channels. it was written and published in 1950. if you open up the book, you'll see all kinds of famous names of very well known people, and it goes through and it lists everything that they did that was considered unamerican. this is the summons for screen writer alba bessie to come before the house on american activity committee. she became what was known as part of the hollywood ten, which were a group of hollywood people who were imprisoned. bessie was in jail for a year in

contempt of congress, who would never work in hollywood again. in this area, we look at the experience of jewish families who moved out of the urban areas into the suburbs that were opening up. at the end of world war ii, a lot of people had the opportunity to get an education, start a business, and buy a house. in a nicer place than the immigrant neighborhoods they had been in. so a lot of people were moving to the new suburbs outside of the city. here we talk about the catskill, very famous, and also the leisure activities in the post war period, going to resorts for vacation, where the catskills were of course a mountain area in upstate new york that became

popular with artists in the 19th century, and then with vacationers later on, people looking to get out of the city. that's the hotel book, they wouldn't accept jews to register at the hotel. so jews started to build their own hotels, including classics like the concord, kutcher's. a lot of the clientele was jewish. they would have kosher services and facilities in the fall. one of the results of people moving out to these suburbs was that weren't in such tight-knit communities anymore.

they wanted to help the children remain jewish, support jewish tradition in their children and meet other jews in their community where they have a lot of christian neighbors. so this is a time period when the first jewish community centers were established in america and people are making an effort to send their children to jewish schools or to supplemental jewish schools after school and on the weekends. here we look at jewish summer camp. along with sendingt 1200

>> she made hundreds and hundreds of them. and brought them to schools and taught kids about the bible. she eventually opened a commercial business, the american bible doll company, which sold bible dolls in department stores in the 1950s and '60s and eventually a large collection of these bible dolls came to the museum in the 1980s that came directly from diana foreman, that she had made. so in this area, we start to look at the 1960s, 1970s, a time of great social fermenting of different ideas.

we look at jews who were involved in the civil rights moment. we look at feminism, and the jewish relationship with israel in this time period as well. the last area of our exhibition, where we have artifacts is this area, where we look at the 1980s and jewish culture in this time period, as well as just identity, what is means to be a jew in the late 20th and early 21st century. this is a hanukkah mennora that was designed by a holocaust survivor from germany. he collected a lot of artifacts. he designed this in 2011 when the statue of liberty turned 125 years old. he made a cast of a little statue of liberty souvenir

statueett. and turned it into a mennora. we have it on display here, and we actually loaned it out to the white house a couple of years ago. president obama lit it for hanukkah. we wanted to give our visitors a chance to talk back to us and talk with each other after making their way through this exhibition and learning about the history of the jewish people in america. so in this gallery, we project four questions all the time. we change them according to current events. if something happens, we ask a new question, and visitors get a chance to fill out a post-it note with their opinion and put it on the wall and see how people are reacting to contemporary events, which have a lot to do with historical events. >> this was the second of a

two-part look at the national museum of american jewish history. you can watch this and all other american history programs at c-span.org/history. >> american artifacts continues with items that have been left at the vietnam veterans memorial in washington, d.c. later we'll take you inside philadelphia's congress hall, which served as the u.s. capital in the late 18th century. each week, american history tv american artifacts visits museums and historic places. the vietnam veterans memorial includes an estimated 450,000 items since it opened in 1982. the collections are stored in these blue boxes. next, we'll see a selection of items left at the wall.

>> hi, my name is janet donlin. i'm a museum technician for the national park service. i work specifically for the vietnam veterans memorial collection, which is housed here, in the museum resource center in landover, maryland. it's a central facility for national capital region parks, but our collection specifically is housed entirely in this building. we are a collection of objects that are left at a memorial in d.c., the vietnam veterans memorial. visitors come by the memorial every day, leave objects at the memorial, which our park rangers collect. and every two weeks or so, we do a pickup at the memorial, bring them to our marine resource center, where we sort through them, catalog them, and make them part of our collection. so i've chosen some objects to show you from the collection. they kind of cover the range of topics that the collection

interprets, including ptsd, prisoners of war, mothers and fathers who have lost children. they are objects that will be going on display very soon and i think they're a really good example of the types of things in the collection. so this was left at the wall in the '90s. this is actually part of a door that was in this man's -- corporal michael petal's room when he was in high school. the note is from his brother, but it tells you the context of the item you see here. petal drew this on his door when he was still at home. it depicts a serviceman crouching over the body of maybe a dead soldier. and after he drew it, he drew his own name on the dog tags of the dead soldier. his mother was not okay with that. she didn't think that was very cool, so she made him erase it.

and soon after, he went into the military, went to vietnam, and he was killed in action. and his brother cut this out of the door and brought it to the wall after he wrote michael's name again on the dog tags. and so he left it at the wall for his brother. and i don't know if you can get like a close-up of the letter here. it's a really good letter too. and it tells the same story, but in a much better way than i could have. big brother, you never made it home, so i brought a piece of home to you. here's the picture you drew on your bedroom door before you went to vietnam. i know you had put your name on the dog tags and mom made you erase it, so i filled it back in for you. you seemed so old to me when you went to vietnam, but now i know you were still a young man. i remember the things we did together, the motorcycle rides and the hand stands up the stairs. i always wanted to thank you for

watching out for me. these are some severe the objects that we have selected for potentially going on loan to the ronald reagan library. they're having an exhibit out in november, and so we've done some initial selections for them. we're waiting on them to make the final approvals, but they showcase kind of what is in this collection, what things the collection speaks about. this one specifically is a really good example of something left from a mother to a son. this was left on veterans day in 1983. it was left by a woman called eleanor wim bish, whose son was killed in action in vietnam. she has been leaving this type of object since the wall was first dedicated.

this one specifically mentions, it was from '83, but this one specifically mentions her diary that she wrote the year previous, in 1982, the date she was there, the date the wall was dedicated and she describes seeing his name on the wall for the first time. and walking up to the wall, seeing his name and what she felt seeing his name, but then also looking around and seeing all the other people around her, who are also touching the names of their loved ones. so it describes how overwhelming that was for her. she continued to leave letters like this, wrapped in plastic, arrayed on a poster board for at least 10, 15 years, for her son. she would do it on his birthday, on the day he died, mother's day, veterans day, christmas, easter, things like that, just

for the holidays that he missed. >> the day was unseasonably warm and sunny when we arrived in washington, d.c. we got out of the car and started walking towards this memorial. i could feel the pull towards this black wall and yet my feet didn't want to move. i was so scared. i was afraid i would find your name on the black wall, and yet some mistake had been made and your name had been left out. so how does one try to explain such mixed emotions? i'll never forget the day as your father and i started looking for your name. we had been looking for about a half hour when your father quietly said, honey, here he is. as i looked to where his hand was touching the black wall, i saw your name, william r stocks. my heart seemed to stop i felt like i couldn't breathe. it was like a bad dream. my teeth chattered.

i felt as though i were freezing. god how it hurt. i looked up and down the wall, this memorial to all the men and women who lost their lives in vietnam, these thousands and thousands of names. the collection started unexpectedly in 1982 from the very, very beginning of the memorial, people started leaving things. right from the dedication, people were leaving things at the memorial for their loved ones, for their missing loved ones, for those who came back and were wounded in action. it was an unexpected phenomena that just kind of sprung up out of nowhere. for the first two years, the park service wasn't sure what to do with the things that were being left at the wall. it was unprecedented. no one had ever done anything -- or no one had seen something like this happen before. and for the first two years, they kinda just kept the objects isolated, out of the way, trying

to figure out what to do with them. and then in 1984, our previous regional curator, decided to make this, all the objects, an official park service collection. so after 1984, it became an official park service collection, and we started collecting things regularly. and we've been doing it ever since. the blue boxes are kind of iconic, you know, what people see when they come here to the museum and resource center to see the vietnam veterans memorial collection. they're made specifically for our collection. they're large. they're made out of plastic that won't decay or cause damage to the objects. and they store all of the objects from the vietnam veterans memorial collection. this is a letter left for a man named gary from brett. it was left august 5th, 1989.

and the letter describes gary and brett's interaction in vietnam. they were comrades in arms. and apparently grit would always ask gary for the time. he never knew what time it was, even though he was a radio operator and could easily call in and ask out. and gary would always tell him. he also lost his can opener and would have to use gary's can opener. and gary was killed after an explosive device detonated near him. and the letter describes how grit held him in his arms as he grew cold and he wouldn't let him go. in 1989, he decided to leave his watch and his can opener at the wall for gary. it was