Eventually, the group involved others such as Thomas Keneally, the author of Schindler’s List, and Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, who became the honorary chair of the proposed Holocaust Center. The museum opened in 1992 in Madeira Beach at the Jewish Community Center of Pinellas County at the site of the former Kapok Tree Restaurant with one staff member and a small group of dedicated volunteers. Despite its less than central location, the center’s inaugural exhibit, “Anne Frank in the World,” drew more than 24,000 visitors during its first month. Over the next five years, visitors continued to flock to the museum’s internationally acclaimed exhibits, lectures, seminars and commemorative events. During that period, the center staff and survivors of the Holocaust supplied schools in the eight counties that comprise the Tampa Bay area with study guides, teacher training programs and personal presentations. 50 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 With only 4,000 square feet of space, the center quickly overflowed with a print and audiovisual library, a photographic archive and a growing collection of historic artifacts. It became a research facility for educators and scholars as the Tampa Bay Holocaust Memorial Museum and Education Center, the preeminent source of Holocaust information in the Southeast and one of the foremost Holocaust institutions in the country. In 1997, the museum purchased a 27,000-square-foot building in downtown St. Petersburg, and in February of 1998, the center in this renovated space opened to This railway car that was used to transport people to concentration camps during World War II is one of the artifacts housed in the Holocaust Museum that is a vivid reminder of the horrors of those days. Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, who died in 2016, became the honorary chair of the proposed Holocaust Center. FLORIDA HOLOCAUST MUSEUM
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