January 2017

COMMUNITY
HOLOCAUST
MUSEUM
in the Making in Dania
by Dale King
The inevitable passage of 72 years has
threatened to erase the nightmarish memories
of a horrific event with terrible results: Millions
killed, thousands more forced to live with
hunger, fear, and disease, trembling, wondering
if they would be killed by a Nazi soldier or
lethal gas from a deadly pipe.
For three score and 12 years, survivors of the Nazi-driven
Holocaust – the worst genocide in human history – have
carried their once-hidden messages outward into the
light of human understanding. Their cry of “Never Forget” has
rung out across the globe and into the hearts of all feeling
people, even as Holocaust deniers try to expunge
those recollections.
Broward County has taken a major step toward
creating a center that will resound with and amplify
survivors’ stories for all future generations. The
existing Holocaust Documentation & Education
Center, opened in 1980, officially moved in July
2016 to a 26,000-square-foot former warehouse at
303 North Federal Highway in Dania Beach. Here,
Phase 1 of the center’s two-part effort to become
a full-fledged museum has just been completed.
Julius Eisenstein kisses the Sherman Tank at the Holocaust
Documentation & Education Center in Dania Beach. A tank
of the same class liberated the Dachau concentration camp
where Eisenstein was held prisoner.
“We will be the first museum in North America
to tell their stories in English and Spanish,”
said the daughter of a Holocaust survivor,
Henry Ehrlich, a Polish citizen who endured the
rigors of 11 concentration camps, yet escaped
alive. “My late father represents the true
strength and courage of the human spirit.”
The planned Holocaust
Museum in Dania Beach.
"That second phase should be finished in 2017",
said Rositta Ehrlich Kenigsberg, the center’s
president who has spent more than 30 years
working to solidify Holocaust memories and
message. Completion is still $6 to $8 million away.
50
JANUARY 2017