Grim yet hopeful addition to National WWII Museum addresses the conflict’s world-shaping legacy
A new, permanent addition to the sprawling National WWII Museum in New Orleans is a three-story complex with displays as daunting as a simulated Nazi concentration camp bunk room, and as inspiring as a violin pieced together from scrap wood by an American prisoner of war.The Liberation Pavilion opened Friday with ceremonies attended by surviving veterans of the war, Holocaust survivors, historians and actor Tom Hanks, a longtime supporter of the museum.The new pavilion is ambitious in scope.Its exhibits, which fill 33,000 square feet (3065.80 square meters), commemorate the end of the war's death and destruction, emphasize its human costs and capture the horror of those who discovered the aftermath of Nazi atrocities. Films, photos and recorded oral histories recount the joys and challeng...