News

AX-SHARP CONSTRUCTION SERVICES CHOSEN AS CONTRACTOR FOR THE NEW HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTATION & EDUCATION CENTER & MUSEUM PROJECT!!

For Immediate release...

LET THE CONSTRUCTION BEGIN!

Holocaust Museum starting to take shape at Dania Beach location

DANIA BEACH, FLA. (October 14, 2015) – The Holocaust Documentation & Education Center (HDEC), a non-denominational, nonprofit organization founded in 1980, announced that it has received final permitting to finish the construction on its long-awaited museum.  The existing building which will be the new home of the HDEC is located at 303 N. Federal Highway, in Dania Beach, Florida.  The shell of the building has been in place, and construction is now underway to build out the interior of the building. The organization has selected Ax-Sharp Construction as its contractor of choice to provide construction services for the development of its museum,   including its offices, State of the Art Library and Media Center and the Travelling Exhibition Gallery. The Museum will be the first Holocaust Museum in South Florida.  The creation of such a Museum has been a goal of the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center since its inception.

Senator Steve Geller, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the HDEC, expressed relief that the planning was over, and construction had begun.  “We have been working on this project for years, dealing with the legal, permitting, planning, and fundraising issues.  We have been promising the Survivors that the Museum would soon be a reality.  Now that there are shovels in the ground and construction workers in place, this reality is coming much closer.  We would also like to thank the City of Dania Beach for their strong support.”

 “We are humbled by the HDEC’s confidence in us and we are honored to be a part of this monumental and important project. From the first moment I was briefed on the project in 2010, I knew if they would have me, I would do whatever I could to help make it happen. After meeting with the HDEC leadership and hearing the story of their mission, combined with my own family's personal experiences and connections to the cause, I was emotionally moved and so deeply touched, while being so passionate about it, that the weight and importance seemed to take my breath away like no other project in my 30 + year career," said Steve Aks, President of Ax- Sharp Construction Services LLC of Palm Beach Gardens.

The Museum property, located at 303 North Federal Highway, is a 26,000 sq. ft. facility, is within one mile of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and two miles from Port Everglades, a major cruise line port, making it a natural attraction for South Florida’s residents and a tourist attraction for national and international visitors. The museum will tell the story of the Holocaust in both English and Spanish, the first Holocaust Museum in North America to do so. 

"We must educate this and future generations of the lessons and legacy of the Holocaust, so that Never Again will any generation witness such hatred, prejudice and evil.  Our beloved Survivors implore us to teach the Holocaust not repeat it, because they don’t want their past to become our future,” says the HDEC’s President Rositta E. Kenigsberg, a daughter of a Holocaust Survivor, who was appointed by former President Clinton to The United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

“Now more than ever the legacy of the stories of Holocaust Survivors are an extremely important tool in engaging the next generations in a modern dialogue of human rights atrocities around the globe.  The power of these stories are protected and treasured at this institution and will stand as an enduring representation of those Survivors who ultimately made South Florida their home.  The community should be extremely proud to have such an important institution and collection available for learning and research”, says world renowned and award-winning museum and memorial designer Patrick Gallagher of Gallagher & Associates, which is providing its exemplary design services and concepts for the first South Florida’s Holocaust Museum.

Architectural firm Synalovski Romanik Saye of Fort Lauderdale will lead the Construction Documents Design Team whose plans have been prepared for and coordinated with The City of Dania Beach’s Community Economic Development department and additional Broward County agencies.

The Museum fundraising has benefited from the generous donations of many private donors, foundations, businesses, and Holocaust Survivors and their children. These generous benefactors include, but are not limited to, JM Family Enterprises, the Jewish Community Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Broward County, the Sam Berman Charitable Foundation, the Scherr Family Fund and the Eleanor M. and Herbert D. Katz Family Foundation.

The Museum’s Phase 1 buildout will include an actual Holocaust Rail car that delivered prisoners to concentration camps. This car was acquired  from the Polish government, brought to the U.S. and has undergone an arduous,  methodical, detailed restoration process and is today the only Holocaust Railcar worldwide that has been identified with a classification number. This will enable the HDEC to eventually trace the actual manifests, and see exactly which prisoners were carried on this railcar, which went from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka Death Camp.  In addition, the HDEC is also in the process of acquiring a U.S. Sherman Tank, similar to the ones that liberated the concentration camps.  The Phase 1 and 2 buildout will also include a state-of-the-art videotaping facility to continue interviewing Survivors and their children, a Media Research and Reference Library, thousands of eyewitness testimonies of Survivors, Liberators and Rescuers, more than 6,000 artifacts, documents and photographs, and an Exhibition Gallery to host temporary/traveling exhibits on related Holocaust topics such as the Nazi Olympics.

For further info please feel free to contact:

Rositta E. Kenigsberg, President

Holocaust Documentation & Education Center Inc.,

Phone: 954-929-5690954-929-5690 or email: Rositta@hdec.org