Three decades following their liberation from brutal Nazi oppression, a group of Holocaust Survivors met in their Dallas living rooms and spoke of building an educational center that would remember this awful past and teach it to everyone in order to reduce prejudice, hate, and intolerance in our community.
 

In 1984 they succeeded in finishing out 3,600 square feet in the lower level of the Jewish Community Center and, over a period of 20 years, some 500,000 visitors, mostly students, toured the exhibition and underwent a profound experience.  Although this facility has served us well, we have maximized our capacity to serve the needs of our growing audience and have had to turn away thousands each year because of a lack of physical space.

Like a butterfly bursting out of its small, dark cocoon, the Dallas Holocaust Museum is breaking out into larger quarters (5,200 square feet) and, from January 2005, will be spreading to a new, impactful, multi-sensory experience in a new location. Being located in the  center of Dallas’ historical district, adjacent to The Sixth Floor Museum and between the Old Red Museum (opening in 2006) and the West End will enable us to bring our messages to a much larger audience of residents and visitors. But the Museum at 211 N. Record Street is a transitional facility as an even larger one is currently being planned. It will be located directly north of the Sixth Floor Museum.
 

 

 

Our Permanent new home will be in an architecturally significant building whose powerful symbolic elements are designed to attract attention and to support the profound educational messages of the Museum. It could become one of the most recognized elements in downtown Dallas – a new icon for this city – that will be revered in the whole region, across the nation and even internationally.
 

Considerably larger and more sophisticated (35,000 square feet), it will contain up-to-date educational resources and state-of-the-art technology.  By going to “where the people are” we are confident that we will double, even triple, the number of visitors who come to us annually.

The fundamental beliefs of our society are neither automatic nor self-evident and they need to be taught anew to each generation. Historical memory can be transforming; and we have a responsibility to provide ourselves, our children and generations to come with the tools to make meaningful choices and to take compassionate stands that will make a difference in a complex and often challenging world.
 

A quote adorns the entrance to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC:
 

The Dallas Holocaust Museum is striving to help make these words ring true in the 21^st century.