ORLANDO, Fla. — Tuesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, a day to remember how Jewish people around the world overcame Nazi atrocities.
What You Need To Know
The Holocaust Museum for Hope and Humanity project could break ground in late 2026
The new museum will feature a large exhibit hall, traveling exhibits space, classrooms and community meeting space
The Holocaust Center Board has raised $44 million of the $63 million needed to build, operate and endow the museum
Plans to build a new Holocaust Museum on the edge of downtown Orlando are moving forward. The city is leasing the property on South Ivanhoe Boulevard to the Holocaust Center board for $1 per year because the center will create public benefits.
The elaborately designed museum will serve as a gateway to the north end of downtown Orlando and a reminder of a chapter in history we cannot repeat.
Students are learning about a horrible era in history at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida in Maitland. The center’s board is working with Orlando city leaders to build a world-class Holocaust Museum.
Ron Schirtzer is the Holocaust Center board chair. He says the new Holocaust Museum for Hope and Humanity will help people remember and understand history.
“The importance of our mission here is to use the lessons of the Holocaust as a guidance to try to stamp out bigotry and hatred,” he said.
Renderings show how the old Chamber of Commerce building will transform into a modern museum with a 7,000-square-foot exhibit hall, plus traveling exhibits, learning labs for students and community meeting rooms.
Schirtzer says the board has raised $44 million of its $63 million goal to build, operate and endow the museum. Schirtzer believes the center will help young people understand how isolationism, bigotry and the fear of foreigners created the conditions that led to Nazi atrocities.
“I think that we can impute on the younger generation the importance of reaching out and understanding people who may be a little different than you, may have a little different background from you, but fundamentally are the same as you and I,” he said.
Suzanne Grimmer is Director of Museum Experiences. Grimmer says the new museum will provide more immersive lessons to help students realize that some people who survived the Holocaust are now our neighbors in Florida.
“This isn’t just a distant event. It happened to people in your own community, and these themes of injustice, othering and unbelonging are the patterns that we find when these atrocities occur,” she said.
Orlando’s Appearance Review Board will review the project design at its meeting this Thursday.
The museum board hopes to break ground on the project by the end of this year with a soft opening in early 2028.