The Virginia Holocaust Museum (VHM) is a public history museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States. The museum is dedicated to depicting the Holocaust through the personal stories of its victims.
History
The VHM opened in 1997, founded by Mark Fetter, Devorah Ben David, Jay Ipson, and Al Rosenbaum. Housed in the former Education building at Temple Beth El, the museum became an attraction for school field trips. Within a few years, the museum outgrew the space at Temple Beth El and required additional space to handle the growing number of visitors and school groups. The Virginia General Assembly offered the American Tobacco Company Warehouse to relocate the museum. After the restoration and reconfiguration of the building, the expanded Virginia Holocaust Museum was dedicated to Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Day of Remembrance, 2003. Bed Bug Exterminator Richmond
The Virginia Holocaust Museum has grown steadily since 2003 and has an average of over 42,000 visitors yearly. In addition, the VHM remains an important location for Virginia field trips, with students from over 100 middle and high schools visiting yearly.
The museum began an extensive ongoing exhibition renovation project in 2015. Much of the permanent exhibition had never been updated since opening in 2003, and the renovations serve to update the information contained with newly uncovered facts and figures and update the core exhibition space to modern standards. The VHM hopes these renovations will be completed by 2020.
Exhibits
Core Exhibition
Located on the museum’s first floor, the core exhibits narrate the history of the Holocaust. As visitors progress through these exhibits—and chronologically through the events of the Holocaust—they are presented with a glimpse into the systematic destruction of European Jewry. Three hundred artifacts and the testimonies of local Holocaust survivors expand upon this history, representing this event’s tangible and personal realities.
German Güterwagen
In 2004, the VHM acquired an authentic “goods wagon,” or freight car, used during the Third Reich. Alexander Lebenstein, a local Holocaust survivor, worked with the museum to bring this important artifact to Richmond. Visitors can enter the artifact and imagine the conditions experienced by the people transported in this type of rail car.
Ipson Saga
At the center of the VHM’s core exhibits is the story of a single family, the Ipsons. The Ipson Saga exhibition shares the experience of a family of local Holocaust survivors whose confinement in the Kovno Ghetto and harried escape to a farm in the Lithuanian countryside highlight the constant dangers Jews faced during the Holocaust.
Nuremberg Courtroom
The Nuremberg Trials were the first international trials of major Nazi war criminals. As such, they served as a major source of documents and testimony for early Holocaust scholarship. The Nuremberg Courtroom exhibit allows visitors to see a full recreation of Room 600 at the Palace of Justice, used during the International Military Tribunals, and to experience the gravity of the trials. The Nuremberg Courtroom exhibit was opened to the public by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine during a ceremony in April 2008.
Address: 2000 E Cary St, Richmond, VA
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