HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 273 Offered January 23, 2008 Commending the Virginia Holocaust Museum. ---------- Patron-- Hall ----------

WHEREAS, founded in 1997, the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond celebrates 10 years of expanding its mission of teaching tolerance and acceptance through education; and

WHEREAS, the Virginia Holocaust Museum (VHM) was founded by Jay M. Ipson, a Holocaust survivor who resides in Richmond, as well as L. Al Rosenbaum and Mark E. Fetter, when they saw a need to teach children about the relevance of the horrific events of the Holocaust in the world today through the lives of the survivors and their stories; and

WHEREAS, the VHM offers survivors a venue to interact with the community to teach children and adults about their stories of struggle and triumph during the Holocaust; and

WHEREAS, the VHM began in a few small rooms in the rear of Temple Beth-El in Richmond, and as interest and support grew, the exhibits were relocated in 2003 to Richmond’s historic Shockoe Bottom neighborhood in an old tobacco warehouse built around 1899, which was generously donated by the Commonwealth; and

WHEREAS, the new VHM location is flanked by one of the oldest railway lines in the south, and when the trains pass by the museum their symbolic screeches and whistles are heard from speakers throughout the 28 poignant exhibits housed behind a replica of the electric fence of Auschwitz and an authentic German cattle car from the Nazi era; and

WHEREAS, the dramatic environment is maintained throughout the VHM, where visitors feel like they are in the places that the rooms attempt to recreate—ranging from a representation of the Dachau Concentration Camp to a reproduction of the Chor Shul Synagogue in Lithuania; and

WHEREAS, the Rule of Law is preserved in the Nuremberg Trials Courtroom, the newest exhibit depicting the horrific events of the Holocaust and the only exhibit of its type in the world; and

WHEREAS, the VHM offers teacher education and law-enforcement in-service training thereby educating the extended community; and

WHEREAS, the VHM and its outstanding exhibits reach out to the worldwide community through virtual educational programming; now, therefore, be, it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly commend and congratulate the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond on its outstanding mission of teaching tolerance through education; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to the Virginia Holocaust Museum as an expression of the General Assembly’s gratitude for the museum’s commitment to preserving the history of the Holocaust and the stories of survivors for future generations.