With Trump Internal reports allege the federally funded institution is pre-emptively removing educational materials on American racism to avoid a political clash with the Trump administration. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is facing accusations of self-censorship after reportedly stripping educational resources regarding American racism from its public platforms. According to a report by Politico, the institution quietly removed long-standing lesson plans and videos that explored the historical connections between the Third Reich’s racial laws and the Jim Crow era in the United States. These modifications occurred during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office, leading two former employees to suggest that leadership acted pre-emptively to avoid conflict with the administration’s stated push against ‘corrosive ideologies’. While a museum spokesperson has officially labelled these allegations ‘false’, internal emails and web archives reveal a significant shift in the institution’s digital and educational footprint. Neither Trump nor the White House had publicly called for modifications to the museum’s content. Both former staffers spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared professional retaliation. ‘It seems like they were trying to proactively fall in line as to not then be forced to change,’ one of them said. At some point after 29 August 2025, the last date the page was captured on the Internet Archive, the museum took down a webpage called ‘Teaching Materials on Nazism and Jim Crow.’ That page had provided lesson plans exploring connections between American de jure racism and Nazi racial policy. It included links to resources on African American soldiers during the Second World War, Afro-Germans under the Holocaust, and related topics. A 2018 video hosted on the museum’s YouTube channel, a recorded conversation between a Holocaust survivor and a woman whose father was lynched in Alabama, has been made unlisted. The clip can still be reached through a direct URL, but no longer appears on the museum’s page. The removals coincided with a broader push by the Trump administration against what it termed ‘corrosive ideology’ at the Smithsonian Institution and a government-wide effort to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion material from federal websites. The Holocaust museum, though federally funded, is independent of the Smithsonian.
via ibtimes: US Holocaust Memorial Quietly Removed Jim Crow and Nazis Materials to Avoid Political Fallout
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