Called the “Tower of Faces” this three-story-tall exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., displays about 1,500 portraits of residents from Elsiskes, Lithuania, who were murdered by the Nazis.

COVE — This summer marks the 78th anniversary of the complete liberation of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps, and an unforgettable opportunity for a Cove mother and daughter, Jennifer and Hannah Robbins, to tour the renowned United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Since its dedication in 1993, the museum has drawn tens of millions to its permanent Holocaust exhibit to learn about the systematic killing of over 6 million Jews, 3 million Soviets, 1.8 million non-Jewish Poles and others including homosexuals, Roma, Greeks, the disabled in institutions, common criminals and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Despite its grim content, the public attendances cannot be overstated.

“It was so crowded that it was hard to see everything,” Jennifer Robbins said. “It’s the busiest place I got to see throughout the National Mall for sure.”

Jennifer Robbins was highly anticipating the tour because she has a strong interest in World War II history, and Hannah Robbins was curious about the psychological lines that were crossed during this unconscionable genocide. Still, they said nothing could have prepared them for what they were going to see and how it impacted them.

The self-guided tour began on the third floor, depicting 1933 Germany, the year Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and the Nazi party took control. Each floor offered a chronological narrative of the Holocaust progressively leading the crowds from the third floor through the second floor and finally to the ground level, concluding in the year 1945 and the liberation of prisoners from the killing centers. The many videos staged throughout the tour route were very graphic.

“It’s one of the most gut-wrenching, horrific things that you’ll ever see,” Jennifer Robbins said. “They don’t tell you to be quiet there, but everybody was (instinctively) so somber, quiet and respectful the entire way through it.”

Despite its somber atmosphere, the mother and daughter said the museum is also very fascinating as it allows the viewers to see the faces of Holocaust victims and learn their personal stories. Jennifer Robbins said this was dramatically illustrated in the museum’s three-story “Tower of Faces.”

The tower walls are covered with 1,500 portraits of residents from a single Lithuanian town called Elsiskes, a population of 3,500 in 1941. These Jewish residents never set foot in a concentration camp, because they were visited in their hometown by one of the German mobile killing units. Their deaths were among an estimated 2 million described as a “Holocaust by bullets.”

Jennifer Robbins said one of the museum’s features is the opportunity for visitors to scan a personal portrait in the museum, using a device such as an iPad, and then listen to that person’s family history. She was struck by a portrait of two sisters, about 2 and 6 years old. After scanning it, her iPad related how these two small girls were forcibly taken from their parents and sent to a concentration camp. In the end, only the youngest one survived.

“As a mother, it’s hard for me to even imagine that kind of thing happening to children and knowing they were going through that all alone,” Jennifer Robbins said.

Hannah Robbins said there were so many videos in the tour, showing atrocities too shocking for many to see. Not surprisingly, the Holocaust Memorial Museum is recommended for visitors aged 11 and older.

“It made me sick to my stomach to see,” 16-year-old Hannah Robbins said. “I’m standing there asking myself, how do we even have these videos? Are these real? They absolutely are. They are evidence that this really happened.”

Giving herself a break from these images, Hannah Robbins said she went into an audio theater with glass walls called “Voices from Auschwitz” on the third floor. There she sat down and listened to an audio recording of personal testimonies from a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had been forced into concentration camps because their Christian Bible-based beliefs did not support Nazi ideology.

Many Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested and sent to concentration camps starting in 1934, right after the camps were set up. Robbins said their experiences about how they survived the concentration camps and about their families were deeply moving.

As she listened, she said that she could hear the sadness in their voices as they spoke, and she began to feel the pain they went through. She also learned that Jehovah’s Witnesses could have left the concentration camps at any time by signing a declaration renouncing their beliefs, but very few did that.

“Voices from Auschwitz was my favorite part of the museum by far because of just how real it made everything feel,” Robbins said.

Posters at the museum urged visitors to think about what they saw and ask the question: Why? For the mother and daughter from Cove, it made them thankful for what they had.

“I put myself in the shoes of some of these young girls pictured there, and I asked myself, how would I have felt if this happened to me?” Hannah Robbins said. “I shed a few tears and felt sick to my stomach that so many people went through that.”

Both mother and daughter agree that even thought it was disturbing at times, everyone should go to the museum at least once to witness the profound lessons it teaches about hatred, genocide and the promotion of human dignity.

“I don’t know how to stop hatred,” Jennifer Robbins said. “Those kinds of people feel no remorse for anything they do. They believe their thoughts and actions are right. Unfortunately, there is so much hatred in the world today. Going through the Holocaust Memorial Museum just makes you want to hold your loved ones tighter.”

Called the “Tower of Faces” a three-story-tall exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., displays about 1,500 portraits of residents from Elsiskes, Lithuania, who were murdered by the Nazis.

The photos were originally taken by the owner of the town’s photo studio and were gathered later by his granddaughter, Yaffa Eliach, for the exhibit. The town’s residents were Jewish victims of the German mobile killing units, and their deaths were among the estimated 2 million executions described as the “Holocaust by bullets.”