The Florida Holocaust Museum in downtown St. Pete is planning a $15 million renovation. The project will create an immersive theater for interactive Holocaust survivor testimonies and expanded exhibition space. Located at 55 5th St. S., the facility will renovate existing first- and third-floor spaces rather than expand its physical footprint.
The new first-floor Immersive Theater will become a larger home for Dimensions in Testimony. This is a digital experience that lets visitors ask questions of Holocaust survivors and get answers drawn from pre-recorded interviews. Developed by the USC Shoah Foundation, the technology uses voice activation and natural-language processing to match visitors’ questions with relevant recorded responses.
“Each survivor has been asked over 1,000 questions,” Museum President and CEO Eric Stillman said in a conversation with St. Pete Rising. “When a viewer asks a question, the technology picks up certain words and responds with the survivor’s recorded response from the earlier questioning. It becomes like a real in-person dialogue.”
Dimensions in Testimony is already available to guests. But the current setup is limited to a small number of participants. The new theater will hold 68 people in a single session, with movable seats and a microphone visitors can use to ask questions directly through the platform.
The experience includes testimony from four Holocaust survivors right now. The recordings were made in 2021. Three of the four survivors have since died. Stillman said a grant will help add recordings from two more survivors.
“This museum used to be an old bank building,” Stillman said during the same conversation. “What used to be the old vault will be converted into the new Immersive Theater that can host over 60 people. With the theater, entire groups of school kids can hear the questions and participate.”
The theater will also show new introductory films about each survivor. There will be a wrap-up film following each testimony, and an introductory film about Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.
The renovation’s second major component is The Wiesel Experience, which will take shape on the third floor. The institution was chosen in 2024 to become the permanent home for Elie Wiesel’s entire collection, library, and works. This includes many materials that have never been put on public display. Elie Wiesel taught at Eckerd College for nearly 30 years and cut the ribbon when the downtown location opened in 1998.
Visitors can already see a sneak peek of the collection, including photographs and artifacts. The expanded experience will recreate Elie Wiesel’s office and feature touchscreens allowing access to his full digitized collection. It will also include manuscripts, recordings, personal artifacts, a library and writing workshop, and a dialogue space.
The Immersive Theater is estimated to cost $5 million. The Wiesel Experience is expected to cost $10 million. The facility has already gotten approval for $1.5 million in Florida Fixed Capital Outlay funding for the theater and $2.5 million for The Wiesel Experience.
The project is in permitting right now. Construction is expected to begin once the City of St. Petersburg approves the plans. Officials hope to open the Immersive Theater in 2027 and The Wiesel Experience in 2028.
The renovation plans follow an $8 million project completed last year that added a new entrance with enhanced security features, an open-air second-story balcony, and a temporary installation featuring elements of the collection. That project also expanded the gallery housing the Danish rescue boat Thor, one of several fishing boats used to evacuate Jewish people from Nazi-occupied Denmark to Sweden in late 1943. The rescue effort saved more than 7,000 people.