The Holocaust Museum LA has received a $1 million grant from the Jack and Goldie Nomberg Foundation to support free educational tours for students, officials announced Wednesday.
The grant comes during a recent rise in both antisemitic incidents nationwide and social media hate rhetoric.
The donation comes from the family foundation of Sandra Kanengiser, named for Kanengiser’s uncle Jack Nomberg, a Holocaust survivor who died at age 101 in 2019, and his wife, Goldie.
The museum annually welcomes 30,000 fourth-grade through high school students, primarily from underserved communities, and will soon break ground on a major expansion project. Museum officials said that by 2030, they expect to welcome a half-million visitors annually, including 150,000 students.
As a result of participating in a tour of Holocaust Museum LA, 95% of students agreed that young people should learn about the Holocaust to stop something like it from happening again and 85% said they would say or do something if they heard negative comments or jokes about any religion, other races or ethnicities, according to the museum.
“My parents talked about the war frequently, and it was an important part of my children’s upbringing, too,” Kanengiser said in a statement. “Our goal in making this grant is to further education toward reducing and eliminating antisemitism and hate crimes.”
Jack and Goldie Nomberg met in Los Angeles in the 1950s and built a successful wholesale and retail textile business.
The grant is in memory of Kanengiser’s parents, Robert and Barbara Gerson, who were also survivors.
