SKOKIE, Ill. — Fritzie Fritzshall gazed up at the illuminated wall and scanned the rows of victim names engraved in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, when one jumped out: Bella.
Bittersweet memories flashed before her of the aunt who took care of her at age 13 when they were prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Her mother’s sister hugged her each night and reassured her things would someday be all right.
“She saved my life in Auschwitz,” Fritzshall said, standing in the “Room of Remembrance” at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. “If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here.”
Fritzshall, who lost her mother and both brothers at the camp, is among thousands of local Holocaust survivors whose solemn stories echo throughout the 65,000-square-foot facility that opens today.
The $45 million museum houses survivor testimonies and artifacts including a Nazi-era rail car, an original volume of the Nuremberg war-crimes trial transcripts and photographs.
The facility has unique architecture; half of the building is black, and the other half is white. Visitors enter in the dark half and leave through the light, a purposeful journey museum organizers intended. The inside of the museum has an industrial feel with steel and concrete, and many of the exhibits have narrow walkways.
“It’s more than a powerful walk through a terrible place in history,” said museum executive director Richard Hirschhart.
The museum’s mission is to help survivors heal, prevent future atrocities and tell the Holocaust story through narratives in a place rich with Jewish American history.
Though Skokie still has a large Jewish population — Jewish delis and synagogues pepper a main thoroughfare — the estimated number of Skokie Holocaust survivors has dwindled to 1,000 to 2,000.
Organizers say that shrinking number of survivors is the reason the museum, funded by a $6 million grant from the state and private donations, is needed.
Origins of the museum
Skokie was once home to thousands of Holocaust survivors who moved to the area in the 1950s after World War II. At its peak in the 1970s, historians estimate, 30,000 to 40,000 of Skokie’s residents — nearly 50 percent — were Jewish; up to an estimated 7,000 were Holocaust survivors.
In the late 1970s, Skokie gained international attention as neo-Nazis threatened to march through the community. The march was called off after pressure from activists and lawsuits, but the events ignited a spark among survivors. Several started the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois.
“We realized that this could happen again, this could happen here,” said Holocaust survivor Aaron Elster. “It was time to really speak up.”
