Six years in the making, the educational center at the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach is finally opening on Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis building is meant to give a foundation for the history of the Holocaust but also to give messages of hope and resilience and give some stories of actual people who lived through this, some who didn\u2019t, and the central function is really our theatre, showing the dimensions and testimonies and allowing visitors to interact directly with our survivors,\u201d said Jessica Katz, one of the memorial\u2019s board members.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On this sneak preview day, we saw a 101-year-old Holocaust survivor interview himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s me,\u201d Jack Waksal said when he walked into the brand-new theatre and saw a 3D video version of himself on the screen. Through virtual reality technology, visitors can ask questions and the survivors on the screen provide answers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI escaped in 1944. I was six months fighting against Germany in Poland, in the resistance,\u201d Waksal told us in an interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like all survivors, he has an epic story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Confined to the Warsaw Ghetto, then moved to a concentration camp, then forced into labor in a munitions factory, then a daring escape. The educational center has a picture of Waksal, his wife, and their baby just after the war.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery piece of the gallery has a quote from a local survivor,\u201d said Sheri Zvi, the CEO of the Memorial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From the beginnings in Germany to life after liberation, the gallery shows it all. The Memorial has been a landmark for decades, a place for peaceful reflection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably over 70% of our visitors in total are not Jewish, so it\u2019s really important to us to tell not only the history of the Holocaust but life before, how normal it was and how abnormal it became,\u201d Katz said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just about history; the educational center also has an exhibit of current antisemitic incidents, connecting the past with the present.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe live in an era when there\u2019s a lot of disinformation and misinformation out there and it\u2019s crucial for us to tell the story, use facts,\u201d explained Matan Benaviv, the chairman of the Memorial\u2019s board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019re connecting the dots to show the atrocities that hatred can inspire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Waksal told us with this new facility, his life\u2019s mission of keeping the memories alive has been accomplished.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should show the world, that\u2019s what happened, not to say it never happened, that is my thing and that\u2019s what I feel about it and I\u2019m so proud,\u201d Waksal said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six years in the making, the educational center at the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach is finally opening on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132,16016],"class_list":{"0":"post-229348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news","11":"tag-miami-beach"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}