Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Illinois Holocaust Museum is the third-largest Holocaust museum in the world, telling first-hand narratives of the Holocaust and inspiring visitors to use the lessons of the past to transform the future. With three permanent exhibitions and five changing exhibitions annually that delve deeper into Holocaust topics or human rights issues, there is always something new to experience.

TEMPORARY EXHIBITIONS

“Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross” will close out 2019, offering a rare glimpse of life inside the Lodz ghetto, in all its horror and ordinariness. Nearly 300 of photojournalist Henryk Ross’ photographs, buried during the Holocaust and “unearthed” after liberation, tell the story of life in the Lodz ghetto in the 1940s. Open through January 12, 2020.
In 2020, the Museum will open “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg”, the first-ever museum exhibition focused solely on the judicial icon’s life and her often-simultaneous roles as a student, wife, mother, lawyer, judge, women’s rights pioneer, and Internet/pop culture phenomenon. Open February 9 through August 16, 2020.

PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS

In the award-winning Take a Stand Center, visitors can talk to a 3D interactive Survivor hologram and ask questions about their life in the “Abe & Ida Cooper Survivor Stories Experience” theater. What will you ask them?

After exiting the holographic theater, visitors enter four interactive galleries which guide them through contemporary social justice issues, empowering them with knowledge and tools to stand up against hatred in all its forms.

In the permanent “Zev and Shifra Karkomi Holocaust Exhibition”, visitors explore pre-war European life, the rise of Nazism, ghettoization, concentration camps, liberation and resettlement through more than 500 artifacts, documents, photographs, and a German rail car of the type used in Nazi deportations. This exhibit is recommended for visitors ages 13 and up.

The Museum also offers a number of experiences appropriate for a family visit, including interactive galleries in the Take a Stand Center. “Make a Difference! The Harvey L. Miller Family Youth Exhibition” is an engaging and interactive exhibit with hands-on activities for visitors ages 8-12, inspiring them to use their voices and make choices to stand up for themselves and for others in their community.

“Abe & Ida Cooper Survivor Stories Experience” features Dimensions in Testimony, developed by USC Shoah Foundation in association with Illinois Holocaust Museum.