In May 1993, one month after President Clinton dedicated the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the first major delegation to tour the new museum arrived from Chicago. This gathering of 800 museum contributors, led by Gov. Jim Edgar, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and other state dignitaries, was inspired by Jill Weinberg, Midwest regional director of the Holocaust Museum, who thought it was appropriate to celebrate the opening as a community because of the show of support by Chicago-area residents.
The support she referred to was the $30 million raised exclusively from private donations during a four-year period beginning in 1989. That extraordinary sum, generated by Weinberg and her staff of two, surpassed the individual amounts collected by each of the museum’s four other regional offices in California, Florida, New York and Washington. (Other contributions were not funneled through branch offices.)
Ultimately, $190 million was amassed to build and equip the nation’s first museum memorializing the millions who perished at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.
“There is no question about it, Chicago is the flagship community in fundraising. They were the first ones to understand the importance of the museum,” said Miles Lerman, chairman of the United States Memorial Council in Washington, the governing body of the museum. “Jill is a dynamo, a motivator and very dedicated. I am very proud to be associated with her.”
“In the beginning, it was very difficult to raise money because no one believed the museum would really be built,” said Weinberg, a resident of Highland Park. “Holocaust survivors didn’t believe the U.S. government cared enough about their story.”
There were other problems, too. Throughout the world, many Holocaust memorial projects were already in place, and the idea of a national Holocaust Museum was confusing to the American public. But what distinguishes the museum in Washington is that in addition to remembering the Holocaust’s 6 million Jewish victims, it also tells the complete story of the Holocaust’s 5 million additional victims, including Gypsies, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, the handicapped and political prisoners.
Stuart Eisenstadt, chief domestic adviser during the Carter administration, is credited with the idea for the Holocaust Museum. In 1980, Congress agreed to donate the land for the museum with the stipulation that money from private sources be raised to build it. It was not until 1989, however, that the site for the National Holocaust Museum on the National Mall, just 400 yards from the Jefferson Memorial, was dedicated by then-President Ronald Reagan.
At the time, Weinberg, who had been working in various fundraising capacities for the previous 12 years at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, an umbrella organization for social service groups, was tapped for the position of Midwest regional director for the museum.
Once she understood the enormous time commitment and responsibility the job demanded, she was at first hesitant to accept it.
“I had two young daughters to consider, but I realized what an incredible and historic opportunity this project provided,” she said. “We are the last generation to know the Holocaust survivors intimately, and even though I had personal issues as to whether I should take this position, it has been more personally and professionally satisfying to me than I could ever have believed.”
In mid-1989, Weinberg asked Bonnie Miller of Highland Park and Marcia Ross of Lincolnwood, both of whom she had met during her years at the Jewish Federation, to join her in working for the museum as the only other paid regional staff members, working out of a Highland Park office. The women’s first task was to begin educating the public about the need for a national Holocaust Museum.
The kickoff event was held in January 1990 at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. More than 1,200 people came to view an exhibit titled “Daniel’s Story,” which explained in great detail the story of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of a child.
“We never dreamed we’d get the response that we did,” said Ross, the museum’s associate Midwest regional director. “It was a freezing cold night, but still people who cared came.”
Although the event was considered a huge success, Weinberg believed that educating small groups of people about the need for the museum would likely prove more successful in the long run. So she and her staff began asking friends and neighbors to host informal get-togethers in their homes where potential contributors could watch a video about the Holocaust and listen to survivors’ personal accounts of their experiences.
To date, 100 such meetings have been held throughout the Chicago area. The idea worked.
“When I first heard about the plans for a national Holocaust Museum, I said to myself, not in my lifetime would this museum be built,” said Fritzie Fritzchall, a survivor of Auschwitz who lives in Buffalo Grove. Fritzchall has helped educate hundreds of schoolchildren about the Holocaust. When she was asked in conjunction with the fundraising to speak to groups of adults about her Holocaust experiences, she agreed.
“I’m very proud of the tiny link I am in this chain that helped build the museum,” she said. “It seems that we still need to learn from the past. Only through education can we prevent this from happening again.”
In 1992, Judy Appelbaum of Glencoe mailed more than a thousand notes she had handwritten to members of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, inviting them to attend two fundraising meetings on behalf of the Holocaust Museum. Her personal efforts resulted in more than $200,000 being raised from congregation members who live in and around Lake County.
“I believe people will respond if they know you care,” she said. “Fifty years ago, there was little that I could do about the Holocaust, but now there is something.”
Doris Lazarus, Reva Nathan and Judy Shiffman are all daughters of Holocaust survivors. They co-hosted one of the museum’s early fundraisers in 1990 and raised $90,000 in one evening. “People were very moved by the video and our families’ history,” said Lazarus of Long Grove. She also donated the striped jacket her father wore while at Auschwitz to the Holocaust Museum, though she said it was difficult to give up.
“My father often wore this jacket as a symbol of what he went through,” Lazarus said. “I never wanted to part with it, but I knew it belonged somewhere. When we became involved with the museum, my mother and I presented it.”
Judy Shiffman still remembers how lonely she felt growing up without her maternal grandparents, who died in Auschwitz, and paternal grandfather, who was killed during the occupation of Hungary by the Nazis.
The Arlington Heights resident was pleased to see how generously people gave to the Holocaust Museum at their fundraiser. “It was a wonderful feeling to see so much support out here,” she said. “Everyone really opened their hearts. Those who say the Holocaust didn’t happen are trying to change history; this museum stands as proof that it did happen.”
“Every survivor’s story is incredible; I don’t believe any of us can imagine what they went through,” added Nathan, who lives in Deerfield. “The Holocaust Museum shows the world what happened and will make people more sensitive to what could happen again.”
James Ingo Freed, the museum’s architect, was a Jewish refugee from Germany. He left his homeland in the early 1940s with his parents and came to Chicago. Eventually, Freed moved to New York.
While pondering a design for the museum, Freed found little inspiration in what he had read about the Holocaust, so he decided to visit Auschwitz, Birkenau, Dachau, Treblinka and other concentration camps.
His award-winning design blends with the surrounding buildings on the National Mall, but the interior is symbolic of the horror suffered by millions. There are walls that don’t meet, staircases and rooms that intentionally narrow as visitors move deeper into the 36,000-square-foot permanent exhibit. Between floors are elevators with oven-shaped doors that slam shut without warning and an original cattle car, one of hundreds that transported millions to their deaths.
Farther along, enormous glass cases filled with everyday objects such as shoes and hairbrushes that once belonged to men, women and children murdered by the Nazis defy words.
In its first year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum attracted more than 2 million visitors, 63 percent of them non-Jews, from around the world, yet, Weinberg and her staff say, their work has just begun.
“One of the museum’s most important missions is to educate future generations about the Holocaust so that it will not be repeated,” said Miller, assistant to the regional director.
“But this job is very expensive,” Weinberg added.
Educating future generations continues to rank as one of the most important tasks at hand, she said, and that job costs money. The U.S. government has agreed to an annual allocation to help pay for maintenance of the museum, but it is not nearly enough. Annually, $15 million must be raised, once again from private donations, to sustain the work of the museum.
“There are at least 80 other projects that, if properly funded, could be implemented,” Weinberg said, such as computer access to museum archives for schoolchildren.
“We’re very hopeful that this money will be raised, but ongoing commitments from current contributors and new gifts are much more difficult to obtain because the project looks complete,” Weinberg said.
“Our challenge now is to ensure the future and the quality of programs at the museum by maintaining public support and private contributions on an annual basis,” she said. “Because of the collective efforts of more than 300,000 people, the United States Holocaust Museum exists. But this is just the beginning of our efforts, not the end.”
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To contact the museum office in Highland Park, phone 708-433-8099, or write United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Box 1852, Highland Park, Ill. 60035.
