The past, present and future at the Museum

Susan Suarez President & CEO

This past year, we set another education program milestone, bringing our Holocaust education programs to 20,000 students and teachers throughout Southwest Florida! We are grateful for the support of our donors and volunteers who are dedicated to our mission to “teach the lessons of the Holocaust to inspire action against hatred and to promote mutual respect.”

Our education programs are free to schools, including field trips; PopUp Museum exhibits; survivor talks; the Boxcar Exhibit, on loan from Jack and F.E. Nortman and the Boxcar Foundation; and complete lesson plans and activities that teachers can deliver in their own classrooms. Our public programs of museum exhibits, films, lectures, Zoom programs and special events, brought in visitors from across the state, U.S. and foreign countries.

This year, in addition to the increased square footage of our new North Wing, we also grew behind the scenes. We added new programs and new staff members, totally updated our website and were honored to add a unique artifact to the Liberation Exhibit.

The Nordhausen Flag is on now on permanent loan to the Museum from American Legion Post 38 in Fort Myers. The flag was created by the survivors of the Nordhausen camp, who presented it in gratitude to their American G.I. liberators. An interpretation of the 1945 U.S. flag, they used six-pointed stars in the field of stars, representing the stars the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear during the Holocaust.

Year-End giving

I hope you will make a year-end gift to the Museum to help us continue our work. There are a variety of options available, including donating through our secure website.

Another option is to join The Legacy Society, created to celebrate friends who affirm their commitment through their will or other planned gift. Your generosity demonstrates an investment in the future of our Museum and its mission. Gifts from Legacy Society members will offer continuing support to provide exhibits, educational programs, artifact conservation, museum admission for students and more.

The most common way to make a legacy gift is to include a gift to the Holocaust Museum in your will. You can leave a specific sum of money or a percentage of the remainder of your estate. Other common options include naming the Museum as a partial or full beneficiary of a retirement plan or life insurance policy. Please contact me at 239-263-9200 x203 or Susan@hmcec.org for more information.

Exhibits

Our current exhibit, “Witness to the Memory of Oradour – The Photography of Martin Graf,” will be on display through Dec. 15. in the Estelle and Stuart Price Gallery. We were so pleased to host Martin Graf for the recent “An Evening with the Artist” event. He discussed learning about the tragic WWII history of this small French town, and why photographing its ruins became his passion.

He also spoke about meeting the last remaining survivor of the Nazi massacre and how together they created a program to bring the story and important lessons of Oradour to students around France. We are grateful we had the opportunity to do the same with students and visitors here in Southwest Florida.

Our next exhibit, “Convincing the Masses: Propaganda Home and Abroad,” was developed in-house by Curator Cody Rademacher and will be on display from Jan. 2 through June 1, 2025. The exhibit will cover how the Nazis deployed propaganda within Germany, targeting its own population, and outside the country, targeting supporters in other nations. Another portion of the exhibit will focus on how allies used propaganda and how propaganda continues to be used today.

The Luncheon is a sell out!

Our annual winter fundraising event, The Luncheon, will be held at Vineyards Country Club in Naples. The sold-out event’s program will feature Dr. Jud Newborn’s multimedia “To Life” presentation. Expect him toskillfully blend several stories from different eras, which eventually intersect, culminating in the important message about having hope through the darkest times.

Our thanks to Dr. Newborn and these Luncheon Sponsors (as of press time):

Remembrance Sponsors: Shelley and Steven Einhorn

Testimony Sponsors: Maureen and Arnold Lerner, Estelle and Stuart Price

Hope Sponsors: Rissa Grossman, Fran and Rob Nossen

Inspire Sponsors: Sandy and Fred Roth, Anne Schuchman and Stephen Light

Patron Sponsors: Shirley and Marshall Besikof, Nina and Michael Diamond, Fern Jaffe, Paula and Ronald Filler.

Coming in 2025

We have a number of interesting programs and events lined up. These include complimentary admission for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, lectures by GenShoah of SWFL members, the spring Movies That Matter Zoom discussion, and our 2025 Triumph event at the Arthrex Conference Center.

To keep up to date about what’s happening at the Museum, please sign up for our monthly e-newsletter on our website (hmcec.org) and follow up on Facebook and Instagram.

On behalf of our Board of Directors and staff, we wish you and your families a Happy Hannukah, and a healthy and Happy New Year! We hope to see you soon at the Museum!