Sweden is allocating $1.1 million to prepare for the opening of the country’s first Holocaust museum.
The Ministry of Culture says that the government is giving the money to the Living History Forum, a Stockholm-based government agency that educates about the Holocaust, human rights and tolerance. The money will go toward collecting documents and interviewing Holocaust survivors to make up the museum’s exhibits.
In 2018, Sweden said it was planning to build a Holocaust museum with a focus on survivors from the Scandinavian country and a center devoted to Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.
A view of a memorial for victims of the Holocaust outside of Stockholm’s Great Synagogue, Jan. 27, 2019. (Michael Campanella/Getty Images)
Many of the details of the museum, including when it will open, its location and whether it will operate as an independent government agency, are still undecided. Lawmakers are debating whether the museum should be located in the capital, Stockholm, or in Malmö, a city that has seen intense anti-Semitism in recent years.
“The Holocaust is a crime against humanity that is unparalleled in our history,” the Culture Ministry says in its statement. “Its memory and lessons must continue to be preserved and communicated about. Never again must something similar to this happen.”
— JTA
We can't do this work alone.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this,please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
