Work on the first phase of an £8 million redevelopment of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Nottinghamshire will start this month.

This follows the award of an £800,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, completing the £4.2 million required to finance the first phase, the other lead donors being Arts Council England and the Pears Foundation.

The expansion includes an immediate upgrade to The Forever Project, the interactive feature enabling visitors to hold “conversations” with 11 Holocaust survivors, two of whom have died since recording their contributions.
Other enhancements will include a broadcast hub and an expanded version of The Journey exhibition. Extra staff will be recruited to expand the educational experience at the centre, also known as Beth Shalom.

The improvements will also enable the centre “to add the ‘why’ to the ‘what’ of the Holocaust”, with leaders explaining that conventional teaching focuses on the 1933-45 period.

“This allows the Holocaust to be seen as an inexplicable one-off, when it is in fact the darkest chapter of an ongoing story.

“Our exhibition and education programmes will join the dots, shedding more light on the perpetrators, as well as survivors and victims, highlighting that they were all ordinary people, motivated by a violent anti-Jewish belief system that began with the advent of Christianity. It has never gone away and is strongly evident today.”

It is hoped that the revamp will increase on-site footfall by 50 per cent and online outreach four-fold over three years.

After reopening following Covid in May 2021, the centre hosted 4,274 general visitors and 14,150 pupils over the next 12 months. The target for the current yearly period is 8,725 general visitors and 16,000 students.

Welcoming the Lottery funding, trustees’ chair Henry Grunwald described it as “an endorsement of what has been built here and of our plans to extend it.

“It’s a true community whose pillars are our remarkable Christian founders, the Smiths, and their extended family of Holocaust survivors, for whom we have now been a home-from-home for 27 years. Now we can make the lessons of the Holocaust relevant to more people in more places in present-day society.”

Survivor Janine Webber said that having visited the centre for 20 years, “the friendship, the warmth and the smiles give me a feeling of being with members of my family. It is our second home.

“I am delighted to learn that there will be an expansion. We can then welcome more people and transmit our experiences so that the Holocaust is never forgotten.”

Fellow survivor Steven Frank added: “Ask any refugee living in our country what they feel living here means to them and they will inevitably say ‘I feel safe here’. That is what I also say.
“But at Beth Shalom, I feel spiritually safe too.

“It is the only place where students can come to see what being a Jew meant in the 1930s and then hear a first-hand account from a survivor.

“But survivors only have a finite lifespan and that is why updated technology is essential for future students here. Beth Shalom is unique.”

Around Holocaust Memorial Day, the centre will be holding town-hall events around the country to demonstrate The Forever Project, with survivors interviewing their digital selves.

One of the participants will be Dr Agnes Kaposi, the latest survivor to be featured in the project.

Phase one of the redevelopment is due for completion in the spring of 2024.