At a Monument to Peace, A Day of Deadly Violence

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Shooting at Holocaust Memorial Museum

A gunman walks into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown Washington and opens fire, killing a guard, according to authorities.

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"We heard a really loud bang, and we saw a guy with a silver length of a gun walking through" the door, said Shannon Clark, a tourist from Iowa who was walking on the mezzanine at the time of the shooting.

Maria Hernandez of Bristow was leaving an exhibit when she heard shots. "I saw a security guard pull out his gun," she said.

Visitor Liliane Willens was heading into a basement auditorium to listen to a Holocaust survivor talk about her wartime experiences when she heard a noise that sounded like a roof falling in.

The audience in the crowded auditorium was told to stay put and that there had been a shooting but that people were safe where they were, she said.

Eventually, the Holocaust survivor went on with her presentation.

"It was quite ironic, because here was somebody talking about a tragedy in World War II, and here was this tragedy going on outside," Willens said.

After about an hour and a half, the audience was directed to a cafeteria, and police let the group out one by one after taking contact information, Willens said.

The shooting was reminiscent of one in 1998 in which a man stormed into the lobby of the U.S. Capitol and killed two police officers.

Von Brunn is said to have been a leading writer in the white supremacist fringe for many years. He also appears to be the author of a recent Internet posting suggesting that President Obama's background is being hidden from the public.

His online book, "Kill The Best Gentiles," contains hundreds of pages of conspiracy theories that include Holocaust denial, the ancient hoax of the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" and wild webs of fantasy about Jewish plotting against white people.

"This is a longtime white supremacist and anti-Semite approaching the end of his life who may have decided to go out shooting," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group in Alabama that tracks right-wing extremists.

On a rambling, racist and bitterly anti-Semitic Web site, a man who identifies himself as James W. von Brunn says he is a former World War II PT boat captain who was decorated for his conduct in battle, and was an advertising executive and film producer in New York.