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.
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| 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