Holocaust Memorial Center

We operated our statewide educational outreach program in response to the state mandate that public schools provide six hours of holocaust and genocide education to students in grades 8-12. Since 2018, 2,400 teachers have participated in our holocaust education training seminars for middle and high school teachers. This year, 425 individual teachers representing 62 michigan counties received training. In 2024, these educators reached over 400,000 students. Our outreach empowers teachers to use the lessons of the holocaust to help students understand the dangers of unchecked hatred and antisemitism, and to recognize that their individual choices matter in combatting them.

We presented a wide array of public programs on evenings and weekends featuring movies, lectures, author presentations, and talks by holocaust survivors. Topics covered in 2024 included a musical program memorializing a holocaust victim, the story of a wwii-era jewish championship soccer team, a program about antisemitism yesterday and today, the history of the nazi persecution of lgbtq+ people, a presentation about a cookbook by auschwitz survivors, and a virtual guided tour of the auschwitz memorial in poland. Some programs were held virtually or as a hybrid, reaching 1,600 people from around the world, and others were in-person, reaching another 3,424 people.

In 2024, we presented a special exhibit, "sweet home sweet: a story of survival memory, and returns". This traveling exhibit, on loan from the galicia jewish museum in poland, featured the work of amateur photographer richard ores. His photos recorded his life before the holocaust, and his imprisonment in the krakow ghetto and plaszow labor and concentration camp. After the war, he unearthed his hidden photos, tactile reminders of the people and places he missed while he built and photographed his new life in america. The opening program for this exhibit featured tomasz strug, the chief curator of the galicia jewish museum. In response to the toxic uptick in antisemitic activity on u.s. College campuses following the october 7, 2023 attack by hamas on israel, we expanded our statewide college and university initiative in 2024. Its goal is to educate students and faculty on campuses across the state about the lessons of the holocaust, fostering a safe and inclusive learning environment. Holocaust education is a proven bulwark against antisemitism, as it significantly tracks with reduced belief in antisemitic tropes.