Seven years after conceiving the idea for a permanent Holocaust remembrance and education museum in San Diego, Sandra Scheller has found a permanent home for her “RUTH” exhibition.
“RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust” is scheduled to open in its own museum space at Arts District Liberty Station in Point Loma in summer 2028. Before then, it will have a two-year engagement at the San Diego Central Library in downtown San Diego that opens Tuesday.
Scheller created RUTH in honor of her late mother, Czech-born Ruth Golschmiedova Sax, who was imprisoned in three Nazi concentration camps during World War II, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was 17 years old when she was liberated at the end of the war in 1945, and moved to the United States. Before her death in 2018, Sax devoted many years of her life to educating the public about the Holocaust and encouraging tolerance.
Scheller said finding a home for the exhibition is the fulfillment of years of hard work and community effort. Since 2020, the exhibit has traveled around the county in temporary installations at regional libraries. Because the RUTH collection is extensive, much of it has never been seen before due to space limitations.
“Memory needs an address, and now it will soon have one but only with the support of the community,” said Scheller, in a statement. “With the location in place, we will turn this dream into reality. A permanent museum at Liberty Station, in the heart of San Diego, will welcome the community to be a part of history. As San Diegans continue to visit the exhibit, contribute financially or donate artifacts, they will not only feel a part of it but will also be contributing to history.”
Exhibit cases featured in the “RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust,” now on exhibit at the San Diego Central Library. (RUTH)
The exhibition features rare, authentic Holocaust-era artifacts, World War II historical objects, survivor testimony, photographs and personal items, many connected to survivors who rebuilt their lives in San Diego and Southern California. Several survivors remain actively involved with RUTH, giving visitors a direct connection to living history.
Now that RUTH has a future home, the next phase of the project will be led by Executive Director Moises Salinas Fleitman and a board of directors. They will oversee fundraising, museum development and community engagement efforts with the goal of opening the permanent museum in about two years. There is a sense of urgency to the project because survivors are aging and their stories could soon be lost without preservation, as there has also been a recent rise in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denialism.
A serviceman examines artifacts in “RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust” at a library in La Jolla last spring. The exhibit is now open at the San Diego Central Library. (RUTH)
“The survivors entrusted us with more than artifacts; they entrusted us with memory,” Salinas Fleitman said, in a statement. “Our responsibility is not only to preserve that memory, but to carry it forward in a way that prepares the next generation to recognize hatred, confront antisemitism and act when others are targeted. That is the museum we are working to build.”
A conceptual floor plan for the public part of the museum includes five rooms that visitors will progress through, charting the history of early anti-Semitism, the rise of Nazism, the Final Solution, postwar/liberation, and Antisemitism and history. There will also be the RUTH core exhibit room, a temporary gallery with rotating exhibits and a room for reflection.
‘RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust’
Open: 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays; 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Closed on Sundays. Through mid-2028
Where: San Diego Central Library, 330 Park Blvd., downtown
Admission: Free
Online: rememberustheholocaust.org