RICHMOND, Va. — Monday, January 27 is recognized internationally as Holocaust Remembrance Day as designated by the United Nations.
The 2025 observance marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the largest Nazi concentration camp complex, and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.
Virginia Holocaust Museum’s president and executive director, Sam Asher, gave CBS 6 a tour of the vast East Cary Street museum in Shockoe Bottom.
The museum includes eye-opening and profound exhibits that detail the horrors and tragedies suffered by the Jewish people and other vulnerable populations.
“If you go downstairs you can also see, here in the museum and exhibit, about the million and a half children who were murdered by the Nazis, and they intentionally murdered children so that the next generation would be taken away,” Asher explained.
Asher has spent nearly 50 professional years working with the Jewish community as the leader of several Jewish Federations and, now, as museum president.
“Antisemitism has never been worse in the United States. It's tripled and quadrupled over the last few years, and that's why our work is so important,” he stated.
He said the work at the museum is intentional about teaching the next generations never to forget.
“We can keep telling the story of what happened during the Holocaust and making sure that we tell people when we see hate to call it out,” Asher stated. ”How we teach about how not to hate is by explaining what happened during the Holocaust and what's going on with the rise of antisemitism and how to combat that.”
Museum employees work with Longwood University to hold classes in their Teacher Education Resource Center. Another teaching element includes an interactive Dimensions in Testimony from the USC Shoah Foundation, a collection of biographies enabling museum visitors to engage in conversations with pre-recorded video interviews of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide.
January’s speaker is Alan Moskin, a veteran of World War II and liberator of the Gunskirchen Concentration Camp.
The theater is open seven days a week with showings on the hour starting at 11 a.m. with the last showing beginning at 3 p.m. Allow 30 to 45 minutes for the experience and seating is by reservation only. The museum asks you to inquire at the front desk to reserve your seat(s).
If you cannot make it to the museum, you are encouraged to light a candle at 8 p.m. for the “Light the Darkness” initiative to observe a moment of reflection.
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