Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie after 15-month renovation
During a recent walkthrough of the newly renovated Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, a docent told CEO Bernard Cherkasov that the place feels like it has “neshama,” the Hebrew word for “soul” or “spirit.”
“I don't think I could have asked for a more meaningful response because that is what we were hoping to create,” said Cherkasov during a press preview of the Skokie museum, 9603 Woods Dr., Tuesday.
After 15 months of construction and more than $10 million in public and private funds and donations, the Skokie museum reopens to the public on Wednesday. Most of the remodeling was done to improve “visitor experience,” Cherkasov said. Updates include accessible bathrooms on each floor, a new welcome center and lobby, a reflection gallery, several newly acquired objects and documents, wider walkways and the new 240-seat Lillian and Larry Goodman Auditorium.
During a short program in the new auditorium, nine museum members read aloud the stories of Holocaust survivors who pretended to be Catholic or used fake identity papers to escape Nazi-controlled Europe. Some readings included lines from journal entries and letters or quotes from old interviews.
“For years this museum has stood as a sanctuary of memory. A place where history is not merely preserved but lived,” said Kelley Szany, the museum’s senior vice president of education and exhibitions, on Tuesday morning. During construction, Szany reimagined the main exhibitions for the latest era of the Holocaust Museum, which holds about 30,000 artifacts in its collection.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has financially supported the museum since it opened in 2009, did not attend on Tuesday because of a medical procedure. But the museum screened a pre-recorded message from him as part of the opening ceremony.
Illinois was the first state in the U.S. to mandate Holocaust education in its schools, Pritzker said in the video. “We continue to stand behind that commitment because remembering is not passive. It is a responsibility we owe to the victims, to the survivors, and to every generation still to come,” he said.
Attendance at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center soared in the two years before renovations began last August. Annual attendance ranged from 60,000 to 80,000 visitors, but it grew to nearly 300,000 visitors in the 12 months before construction began, according to a museum spokesperson.
Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times
Upon entering the main doors, guests will see several spacious, single-occupancy restrooms and the Shapiro Family Foundation Welcome Center, equipped with comfortable seating, tissues and electrical outlets for charging devices.
According to a press release, the main Zev & Shifra Karkomi Holocaust Exhibition received “meaningful” additions during the update. One is an untitled oil painting that hung in the family home of the Rothschild banking and finance dynasty in Bad Homburg, Germany. It was slashed and looted by the Nazis during Kristallnacht, or the mass-organized attacks on Jewish families, in 1938. After the war, the painting was reunited with Marianne Rothschild Schwab, the sole survivor of her family (she was 19 when the Nazis broke into her home). Her cousin recovered it and brought it to her in the U.S., and she gifted it to the museum in 2016. Rothschild Schwab died in 2024 at 105.
The gallery updates also include portraits and the stories of victims of the Holocaust who were targeted not just for being Jewish. For example, Eve Adams was a Polish-Jewish immigrant who penned “Lesbian Love” in Chicago. She ran The Grey Cottage at 10 E. Chestnut St., a “tearoom for lesbians, intellectuals and nonconformists in 1920s Chicago,” according to a placard near her photo.
Adams is featured in the exhibition alongside 27 other individuals that Nazi Germany targeted on account of their race, ethnicity, religion, disability or political resistance. The site of her old tearoom is now a parking garage, said Leah Rauch, the museum’s director of education.
The Western Europe Gallery now holds three artifacts from children who survived in hiding, including a doll, a street sketch and a domino set. Another gallery traces the Nazi euthanasia program that killed hundreds of thousands of people with physical and intellectual disabilities and mental illness.
Last week, Cherkasov told a Sun-Times reporter that attendance had increased exponentially in the two years before renovations began last August. Annual attendance ranged from 60,000 to 80,000 visitors, but it grew to nearly 300,000 visitors in the 12 months before construction began, according to a museum spokesperson.
While the Skokie museum was closed for renovations, it operated a satellite location at 360 N. State St. The Downtown museum is open through Dec. 31.
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