Beth Shalom (lit. "House of Peace"), also named the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, is a Holocaust memorial centre near Laxton in Nottinghamshire in England. Opened in 1995, it is England's only dedicated Holocaust museum, though there is also a permanent exhibition at London's Imperial War Museum and another in Huddersfield, the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre, which was opened in 2018. [1] The centre was founded by brothers James and Stephen Smith following a 1991 visit to Israel during which a trip to Yad Vashem changed the way they looked at history and the Holocaust. [2] [3]
The museum seeks to educate primary school children about the Holocaust through its primary exhibit on children's experiences, [4] funded in part by a lottery grant of nearly £500,000. [5] Prince Harry was educated about the Holocaust at the Centre after he was criticised for wearing a Nazi armband as part of an Afrika Korps costume to a fancy dress party. [6]
On 21 July 2010, almost twenty years after the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre was founded, James and Stephen Smith and their mother Marina were each awarded honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by Nottingham Trent University. [7]
The Imperial War Museum (IWM), currently branded "Imperial War Museums", is a British national museum. It is headquartered in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of the United Kingdom and its Empire during the First World War. The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the museum aims "to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and 'wartime experience'."
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is a public research university in Nottingham, England. Its roots go back to 1843 with the establishment of the Nottingham Government School of Design, which still exists within the university today. It is the sixth largest university in the UK with 35,785 students split over five different campuses in Nottingham. The university has most recently opened a new campus in London.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.
Arek Hersh, is a survivor of the Holocaust.
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 Montreal Holocaust Museum is a museum located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is dedicated to educating people of all ages and backgrounds about the Holocaust, while sensitizing the public to the universal perils of antisemitism, racism, hate and indifference. Through the museum, its commemorative programs and educational initiatives, it aims to promote respect for diversity and the sanctity of human life. The Museum was founded in 1979 as the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre and is Canada's first and only recognized Holocaust museum.
Czesława Kwoka was a Polish Catholic girl who was murdered at the age of 14 in Auschwitz. One of the thousands of minor child and teen victims of German World War II war crimes against ethnic Poles in German-occupied Poland, she is among those memorialized in an Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum exhibit, "Block no. 6: Exhibition: The Life of the Prisoners".
The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the genocide of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, an attempt to implement its "final solution" to the Jewish question. 27 January was chosen to commemorate the date when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
Laxton is a small village in the civil parish of Laxton and Moorhouse in the English county of Nottinghamshire, situated about 25 miles northeast of Nottingham city centre. The population of the civil parish at the 2021 census was 251. Laxton is best known for having the last remaining working open field system in the United Kingdom. Its name is recorded first in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Laxintone, and may come from Anglo-Saxon Leaxingatūn, meaning the 'farmstead or estate of the people of a man called Leaxa. It is possibly the namesake of the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, and thus ultimately of all the other communities named Lexington in the United States, directly or indirectly.
The Mechelen transit camp, officially SS-Sammellager Mecheln in German, also known as the Dossin barracks, was a detention and deportation camp established in a former army barracks at Mechelen in German-occupied Belgium. It served as a point to gather Belgian Jews and Romani ahead of their deportation to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
Stephen D. Smith MBE is a Holocaust and genocide specialist who has designed, operated and consulted for many different Holocaust memorial centres. He currently holds the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education.
Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. He became known as the "famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp." His life and work were the subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film The Portraitist (Portrecista), which first aired in the Proud to Present series on the Polish TVP1 on 1 January 2006.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) was founded in Elsternwick, Melbourne, Australia, in 1984 by Holocaust survivors. It is currently Australia’s largest institution dedicated to Holocaust education, research & remembrance. Its mission is to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, and amplify the voices of Holocaust survivors, to inspire a better future free from antisemitism, racism and prejudice.
The American Jewish Museum, or AJM, is a contemporary Jewish art museum located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A department of the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Greater Pittsburgh, the museum is located in the Squirrel Hill JCC at the corner Forbes Avenue and Murray Avenue, in the heart of Pittsburgh's historically Jewish neighborhood. The museum was founded in 1998, and though it does not have a permanent collection, it hosts several original and traveling exhibitions each year. The AJM aims to explore contemporary Jewish issues through art and related programs that facilitate intercultural dialogue.
Robert Priseman is a British artist, collector, writer, curator and publisher who lives and works in Essex, England. Over 200 works of art by Priseman are held in art museum collections around the world including the V&A, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Musée de Louvain la Neuve, The Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, The Allen Memorial Art Museum, The Mead Art Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art and The National Galleries of Scotland.
The Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre began as Africa's first Holocaust centre founded in 1999. It has sister Centres in Johannesburg and Durban, and together they form part of the association, the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation (SAHGF). The SAHGF determines the educational and philosophical direction of the centre. It also conducts teacher training and is the only accredited service-provider for in-service training in Holocaust education in the country. It has trained over 5,000 teachers
Mémorial de la Shoah is the Holocaust museum in Paris, France. The memorial is in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, in the Marais district, which had a large Jewish population at the beginning of World War II.
A UK Holocaust Memorial and learning centre was first proposed in 2015 to preserve the testimony of British Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators and to honour Jewish and other victims of Nazi persecution, including Roma, homosexual, and disabled people.
Eva Olga Clarke is a British-Czech Holocaust survivor and former college administrator known for her birth at Mauthausen concentration camp. She is a speaker for the Holocaust Educational Trust. Clarke combats modern day instances of racism and prejudice through sharing her family's experiences in the Holocaust.