Jay M. Ipson (born June 5, 1935, in Kovno as Jacob Ipp) is a Litvak-American Holocaust survivor and co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia.
Jay M. Ipson (born June 5, 1935, in Kovno as Jacob Ipp) is a Litvak-American Holocaust survivor and co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia.
Jacob Ipp was forced into the Kovno Ghetto, established by the occupying forces of Nazi-Germany, with his family at age six. One day, when he and his mother were in line to be deported for execution they were the only two people to survive out of 5,000. After escaping the ghetto with his parents in 1943 before it was turned into a concentration camp, they had to hide for 9 months in the countryside where they spent 6 months underground, hiding in a potato hole. Ipp endured bleak post-war conditions until the family immigrated via Munich to the United States when he was twelve.
The Ipp family arrived in the United States on June 12, 1947. His father Israel, who had been an attorney in Lithuania, found work cleaning bathrooms in a gas station. His mother Edna worked as a seamstress in Thalhimer's department store. To make their integration into American society easier, they decided to change their family name to Ipson.
Jay M. Ipson [1] graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and attended the University of Richmond. He joined the United States Army Reserve in 1954, serving as an instructor in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He was honorably discharged at the rank of sergeant after eight years of service. A skilled aviator, Ipson ascended to the rank of full colonel in the Virginia Defense Force Aviation Brigade, serving as its commander from 1988 to 1992.
As owner of American Auto Parts in Hopewell, Ipson was active in the Anti-Defamation League and frequently spent his mornings giving talks at local schools about the Holocaust. A friend suggested that he should establish a museum to let people learn more from him. After a discussion with leaders at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and with backing from financial and legislative leaders, the Virginia Holocaust Museum was born.
The Virginia Holocaust Museum was established in May 1997 in five small rooms at the old school building next to Temple Beth-el in Richmond. Ipson was mainly supported by Al Rosenbaum [2] and Mark Fetter. Rosenbaum created the sculpture of the menorah used in the museum's logo. Ipson served as the museum's president and executive director until 2012. [3] [4]
But the number of students wanting to attend was rising very fast and so they had to look for a new location. With support of Congressman Eric Cantor the government of Virginia provided an old warehouse at 2000 East Cary Street. After enormous efforts the new museum was opened in 2003.
The Virginia Holocaust Museum features tours, programs, lectures, films and other events, and many of the emphasized stories are about the experiences of Holocaust survivors who reside or had resided in Richmond. In 2007, the Virginia Holocaust Museum celebrated its 10th anniversary. [5] On Yom HaShoah in April 2008 Governor Tim Kaine [6] opened the only originally rebuilt Nuremberg Courtroom ("Palace of Justice") in the United States as new part of the Virginia Holocaust Museum. [7]
Already more than 150,000 people have visited the Virginia Holocaust Museum; about 70 percent are students. The museum is one of many organizations worldwide where young Austrians can serve their Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Gedenkdienst).
![Jay M. Ipson receives the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award from Christian Prosl [de] Botschafter Christian Prosl, Jay & Elli Ipson, Adrian Kainz.JPG](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Botschafter_Christian_Prosl%2C_Jay_%26_Elli_Ipson%2C_Adrian_Kainz.JPG/220px-Botschafter_Christian_Prosl%2C_Jay_%26_Elli_Ipson%2C_Adrian_Kainz.JPG)
Sidney Shachnow was a Jewish American Holocaust survivor who attained the rank of major general in United States Army. He retired in 1994, after almost 40 years of active service.
Timothy Michael Kaine is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 38th lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 and 70th governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010. Kaine was the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2016 election as Hillary Clinton's running mate.
Gedenkdienst is the concept of facing and taking responsibility for the darkest chapters of one's own country's history while ideally being financially supported by one's own country's government to do so. Founded in Austria in 1992 by Andreas Maislinger, the Gedenkdienst is an alternative to Austria's compulsory national military service as well as a volunteering platform for Austrians to work in Holocaust and Jewish culture-related institutions around the world with governmental financial support. In Austria it is also referred to as Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service provided by the Austrian Service Abroad. The Austrian Gedenkdienst serves the remembrance of the crimes of Nazism, commemorates its victims and supports Jewish cultural future. The program is rooted in the acknowledgment of responsibility by the Austrian government for the crimes committed by National Socialism.
The Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit organization founded by Andreas Hörtnagl, Andreas Maislinger and Michael Prochazka in 1998, which sends young Austrians to work in partner institutions worldwide serving Holocaust commemoration in form of the Gedenkdienst, supporting vulnerable social groups and sustainability initiatives in form of the Austrian Social Service and realizing projects of peace within the framework of the Austrian Peace Service. Its services aim at the permanence of life on earth. The Austrian Service Abroad carries and promotes the idea of the House of Responsibility for the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in Braunau am Inn. The Austrian Service Abroad is the issuer of the annually conferred Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award. The program is funded by the Austrian government.
The Virginia Holocaust Museum (VHM) is a public history museum located in Richmond, Virginia, United States. The museum is dedicated to depicting the Holocaust through the personal stories of its victims.
The Kovno Ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas during the Holocaust. At its peak, the ghetto held 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, or were shot at the Ninth Fort. About 500 Jews escaped from work details and directly from the ghetto, and joined Jewish & Soviet partisan forces in the distant forests of southeast Lithuania and Belarus.
Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.
The Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award (AHMA) was founded by the Austrian Service Abroad in 2006.
George Kadish, born Zvi (Hirsh) Kadushin, was a Lithuanian Jewish photographer who documented life in the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust, the period of the Nazi German genocide against Jews.
Anne Bright Holton is an American lawyer and judge who served as the Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2014 to 2016. She is married to United States Senator and former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, the vice presidential running mate of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
The Holocaust in Lithuania resulted in the near total destruction of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews, living in Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland within the Nazi-controlled Lithuanian SSR. Out of approximately 208,000–210,000 Jews, an estimated 190,000–195,000 were murdered before the end of World War II, most of them between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was massacred over the three-year German occupation – a more complete destruction than befell any other country affected by the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the non-Jewish local paramilitaries, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated. The Holocaust resulted in the largest-ever loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania.
Al Rosenbaum was an American artist and the co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia.
Theresa Pollak was an American artist and art educator born in Richmond, Virginia. She was a nationally known painter, and she is largely credited with the founding of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. She was a teacher at VCU's School of the Arts between 1928 and 1969. Her art has been exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. She died at the age of 103 on September 18, 2002 and was given a memorial exhibition at Anderson Gallery of Virginia Commonwealth University.
Nancy Wright Beasley is a Virginia author who primarily writes about the Holocaust. Her most notable books are Izzy's Fire: Finding Humanity in the Holocaust (2005) and The Little Lion (2016).
The 2018 United States Senate election in Virginia took place on November 6, 2018, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the Commonwealth of Virginia, concurrently with other elections to the U.S. Senate, elections to the United States House of Representatives, and various state and local elections. Incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who had been his party's nominee for Vice President two years earlier, was re-elected to a second term in office, winning this seat by the largest margin since 1988. This was the first election since 1994 that anyone had been re-elected to this seat.
Sara Ginaite-Rubinson was a Jewish Lithuanian-born Canadian author and academic. During the Second World War she was a resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, becoming a Jewish partisan in 1942.
Bruno Kittel was an Austrian Nazi functionary in the German SS and Holocaust perpetrator who oversaw the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto in September 1943. Kittel became known for his cynical cruelty. He disappeared after the war.
Chaim Yellin was a Lithuanian Yiddish-language poet and leader of the resistance movement in the Kovno Ghetto during the German occupation of Lithuania.
Esther Lurie was an Israeli painter.
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