New Holocaust Museum to Open

A Chicago suburb, with a deep history of tensions, recently broke ground on a new Holocaust Museum which will commemorate the lives of the areas many Holocaust survivors.

In the late 1970'?s, the National Socialist Party of America, an offshoot of the American Nazi Party announced that it wanted to hold a march and rally in the town of Skokie, Illinois. Skokie, which has been the traditional home of a large percentage of Chicagoland'?s Jewish population, and the home to a large number of Holocaust survivors, was deeply disturbed by the American Nazi Party's attempts to march in their city and made repeated efforts to block the rally. At the outset of a significant court battle in recent American history, the American Civil Liberties Union, led by a Jewish lawyer, represented the American Nazi Party in the case of National Socialist Party vs. Village of Skokie. Eventually, the Nazi party was allowed to march in Skokie, yet they were barred from showing or wearing the swastika. After the rally, the American Nazi Party started to disintegrate and its leader Frank Collin was later charged and convicted of sexually abusing young boys in 1980. It was also revealed that Collin himself had rejected his own Jewish ancestry.

With such a large number of Holocaust survivors, and their families, residing in Skokie, combined with the Chicago suburbs more recent history, it seems only natural that the town would decide to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, on which it broke ground on June 22nd.

Local ties to Chicago area residents stand to make this institution both unique and deeply powerful. The museum, which is set to open in June 2008, is scheduled to exhibit artifacts such as a brick from a gas chamber at Auschwitz, a forged ID card from a member of the Jewish Underground, a blanket used to hide a child while being smuggled out of a ghetto, and examples of ghetto money.

You can <ahref="http://www.chicagosuntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-holocaust22.html">read a full Chicago-Sun Times article on the museum here.

Also, you can visit the <ahref="http://www.chicagosuntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-holocaust22.html">Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center's web site here.

<ahref="http://museumhistorystudies.suite101.com/article.cfm/museums_and_politics">In an earlier article, I discussed various controversies surrounding museums and how it could potentially help museums be relevent.