Rosh Hashanah Message from the HMREC of Florida

As we approach Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish High Holy Days, the staff and board members at the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida wish you and your family a healthy 5783. We also want to extend our deep thanks for the warm welcome this community has shown to our new CEO Talli Dippold.

Dippold, who recently relocated from Charlotte, North Carolina, is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and is dedicated to keeping alive the legacy of survivors by telling their powerful stories of resilience and resistance, lessons that are more important today than ever.

One such story occurred in 1943 on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, when Danish resistance members exhibited remarkable heroism. After having been alerted by an area diplomat about an impending Nazi roundup that was to take place, Chief Rabbi Marcus Melchior canceled religious services scheduled for that evening in Copenhagen. Instead, he urged his community to hide or flee as a last chance effort to avoid being captured. In that moment, more than 7,000 Danish Jews were ferried to safety in Sweden by area fishermen, exemplifying what it means to be an upstander in action.

These are the kinds of moments in history that help teach the lessons of the Holocaust and why the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center is committed to making sure these stories are told again and again. It is here that we focus on the darkest and brightest moments in the history of the Holocaust to build a just and caring community free of antisemitism and all other forms of prejudice and bigotry. This is the mission crafted in 1981 by our founder Tess Wise, a local Holocaust survivor from Poland who began her mission with the Holocaust Project at Valencia Community College. Her work continues today and serves as the foundation for our future, as we lay the groundwork for the Holocaust Museum of Hope & Humanity, which will be the first Holocaust museum in the world designed around survivor and witness testimonies. As we begin to carve the path toward our community's new museum, which will be located in downtown Orlando, we invite all to visit our current location in Maitland next to the Roth JCC for our varied programs and exhibits.

The new museum will not be a history lesson in artifacts, timelines, and numbers, rather its strength will come from the manner in which Holocaust history is revealed through the survivors who tell of their experiences.

To learn more about this new initiative, please visit our website The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida (holocaustedu.org).