U.S. Holocaust Museum Collections Center Opens In Maryland
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A storehouse of memories is open in Maryland, with the goal of making sure the world never forgets the nightmare of the Holocaust.
The industrial murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II is remembered most vividly by those who survived.
"It's terribly, terribly important for the world not to forget," says Ruth Cohen, a survivor.
A new $40 million, 100,000-square-foot facility in Bowie is dedicated to that cause. The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections, Conservation and Research Center will house donations from families whose loved ones endured that dark time.
The Capital Gazette reports it will house 99 percent of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's artifacts that are not on display in the D.C. building.
Documents, photos and other objects all convey a piece of the horrifying tale.
The numbers are very abstract, but when you see the materials that we collect, each of them tells a story," says Michael Grunberger, director of collections.
Those touchstones to the past come from around the world, with new donations every week. So far, more than 16,000 artifacts.
"Anything from one small photograph or an individual object to items full of personal pages and documents," says Travis Roxlau, collections services director.
Louise Lawrence-Israel's donated the doll chair her parents gave her while hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam.
"I was so little I could sit in it," she says.
It was a gift for her second birthday, over 70 years ago.
"They were able, during that dark time when we were hungry and cold all the time, to have happy children, because that's what they worked on."
And she wants others, through her donation, to keep a past of suffering and loss from fading away in the future.
The Shapell Family Center expects the number of donations in the collection to double over the next decade.
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