Liberation Pavilion

Grand Opening November 3, 2023

The National WWII Museum will open the highly anticipated Liberation Pavilion, its final permanent exhibit hall, on November 3, 2023. Liberation Pavilion explores the end of World War II, the Holocaust, the postwar years, and how the war continues to impact our lives today. The three-story pavilion houses two floors of exhibit space featuring first-person accounts, iconic imagery, powerful artifacts, and immersive environments, as well as a third-floor theater offering audiences a brand-new cinematic experience.

Liberation Pavilion’s first floor galleries, Finding Hope in a World Destroyed, honor the sacrifices of the WWII generation and explore the immense cost of war with exhibits on the Holocaust, Anne Frank, faith in wartime, and the Monuments Men and Women. The first floor also includes a panoramic theater with personal testimonies from Holocaust survivors and the US forces who liberated them as well as an interfaith chapel to provide a quiet space for contemplation.

The second floor of Liberation, the Goldring Family Foundation and Woldenberg Foundation Forces of Freedom at Home and Abroad (1945–Present), explores the war’s impact in the postwar period and its lasting legacies today. Exhibits examine the rebuilding efforts of a world destroyed, the war crimes trials, the emergence of the US as a world “superpower,” movements for social change and civil rights, new technological innovations, and the war’s impact on foreign policy. An interactive gallery provides a reflective space for visitors to voice their thoughts on the war’s legacy and what it means today.

On the third floor, the Priddy Family Foundation Freedom Theater offers audiences a multimedia experience focused on what was at stake during World War II and subsequent generations’ ongoing struggle for freedom and human rights. The production highlights how freedom almost vanished from the world in the 1930s and 1940s as well as efforts to protect and promote freedom during and after World War II. At a pivotal moment in the show, the theater audience platform itself rotates.

The National WWII Museum

Museum Campus

Building Location

Liberation Pavilion