PHOENIX — Aided by survivors — and with police and private security nearby — the Jewish Historical Society and state and local officials broke ground Thursday on a museum they hope will become a destination for students to learn about the Holocaust.
The formal event comes a year after state lawmakers approved $7 million for the museum, to be built on the site of Phoenix’s first synagogue, and two years after Phoenix voters approved a bond package including $2 million for the facility.
Gov. Katie Hobbs greets Holocaust survivors Thursday at a groundbreaking for the Hilton Family Holocaust Center in Phoenix.
It also comes, as Gov. Katie Hobbs noted, on the heels of the May 21 killing of two staffers at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., as well as a June 1 attack on Jews by a Molotov cocktail-throwing assailant in Boulder, Colorado. Both are being investigated as hate crimes, authorities said.
“It makes what we are doing here today so important,’’ the governor said.
Steve Hilton, who spearheaded the fundraising effort for the museum that will bear his family name, said those recent events point up the importance of having people aware of history, and aware of the signs that led up to what happened in Nazi Germany.
“We are building a place where young people will learn not only the history of the Holocaust but the vital lessons we will teach right here in a beautiful new building to come, to stand up to hate, to be an upstander and not a bystander,’’ said Hilton. His father, who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, survived five concentration camps, but his grandparents perished.
“This place will be a center where students from every background will come to learn, to question, and to reflect,’’ Hilton said. “It will challenge them not only to remember but to act, to see the warning signs of antisemitism and bigotry in their own communities, and to speak out before hate has a chance to take root.’’
Hobbs to decide Friday on legislation
The groundbreaking came a day after Republican state lawmakers sent the Democratic governor a measure that would allow students and teachers to sue teachers personally over what they believe are antisemitic actions and words in classrooms.
Virtually every legislative Democrat voted against it. Some said they oppose the provisions allowing students and parents to sue teachers personally. Others said they fear that such a law, and its possible financial hits to teachers, would stifle frank discussions of current events, including how Israel is conducting the war in Gaza.
Hobbs said she will act on the measure Friday but has not made a decision on whether to sign or veto it.
The governor said she wants to know “whether the bill makes meaningful change.’’
“There’s a lot of bills I get that sound really great,’’ Hobbs said. “But when you get into them, they don’t actually do anything.’’
She said she also wants to familiarize herself with all the details.
One of those details is that the measure would enshrine into Arizona law a definition of antisemitism that was adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, including “contemporary examples of antisemitism identified in the adopted definition.’’ Those examples range from calling for the killing of Jews and making “stereotypical allegations’’ about Jews to “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’’
Several lawmakers said that could preclude teachers from mentioning the activities of Israel and its army in Gaza. But the final version of the bill includes a provision that its prohibitions do not cover speech protected by the state or federal constitutions.
Hobbs said Thursday she won’t comment on the definitions. “I’m not fully briefed on the bill,’’ she said.
Holocaust survivors help break ground Thursday for the Hilton Family Holocaust Center in Phoenix.
‘Make sure that nobody forgets’
The governor said the museum and the story it tells will help combat antisemitism.
“We have a responsibility to make sure that nobody forgets what happened,’’ she said. “And continued education about the Holocaust is pivotal to doing that and also in honoring the lives that were lost.’’
Arizona lawmakers approved legislation in 2021 requiring that students be taught about the Holocaust and other genocides at least twice between the 7th and 12th grades. That was amended last year to be more specific, requiring three class periods or the equivalent on two separate occasions during those grades.
That is a start, Hobbs said.
“Students and their families and visitors will have this additional resource,’’ she said of the museum. That kind of personal interaction will have “a profound effect that can not be felt in the classroom,” she said.
The governor said she has experienced that herself, once while visiting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington, and at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust victims.
