Nearly 2,000 people from across the nation gathered at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago on March 8 to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie.

The event, which was also the foundation's 24th annual Humanitarian Awards dinner, was alternately joyous and somber, with presenters taking comfort in the museum's potential to educate amid the tragic reality of the Holocaust.

“We need to learn from the lessons of history,” said executive director Richard Hirschhaut. “This museum will help shape the values of young lives and ultimately our future. Antisemitism continues to be manifested and tolerated around the globe, but the existence of this museum teaches the importance of standing up and speaking out.”

Hirschhaut added that that the event had raised $2 million, a significant jump from the previous year.

“These are the kinds of events that make sense and mean something,” he said. “This museum is to help all of humanity.”

Hirschhaut invoked the genocides in Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda, reminding the audience of the need to attack genocide on a global scale.

The event marked a year of the $45 million museum’s opening in Skokie, a project that is a result of decades of effort from Holocaust survivors. In the 1970s, survivors formed the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois in reaction to the threat of an anti-Jewish march in Skokie by self-proclaimed neo-Nazis.

The foundation opened a small museum on Main Street, which has now been expanded to a 65,000 square-foot facility at 9603 Woods Drive in Skokie, filled with firsthand accounts and historical artifacts of the Holocaust.

The March 8 event featured a video with comments from people all over the world involved in the museum’s creation, including Rwandan activist Paul Rusesabagina and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. It also included a prayer from Rabbi Asher Lopatin of the Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation, a keynote speech by NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw and a tribute given by J. B. Pritzker to Holocaust survivor and 2009 museum president Sam Harris.

Pritzker likened Harris’s neverending commitment to eradicating genocide to the story of a man endlessly trying to sculpt a Crazy Horse replica out of a South Dakota mountain.

“Building a museum is an accomplishment,” Harris said, who was just a child when he was taken to a concentration camp. “Continuing its growth and vision is quite another.”

The bulk of the event, however, was set aside to honor three people with a Humanitarian Award from the foundation: David Speer, chairman and CEO of Illinois Tool Works; Jeffrey Aronin, chairman and CEO of Paragon Pharmaceuticals; and Holocaust survivor, educator and new museum president Fritzie Fritzshall.

Fritzshall was particularly affecting, bringing more than a handful of the audience to tears.

“I never talked about being a Holocaust survivor until I realized the importance of it,” she said. “We’re not going to be here forever. This museum is our legacy.”

Fritzshall took pains to mention every person who risked their lives in order for her to survive, including a Jew who told her at Auschwitz to lie about her age so she would not be sent to the gas chambers.

In his keynote speech, Brokaw recounted his experiences reporting on momentous events in history, such as the Iraq War, 9/11 and the falling of the Berlin Wall. He included his visit to Auschwitz as one of his most memorable, saying he was “staggered by the experience.”

Brokaw reminded the audience that the new generation will need to be engaged in historical struggles beyond the click of a mouse.

“There is a new generation coming of age with too little attention to history,” Brokaw said. “It’s important for us to remind them that they can’t get rid of genocide and racism just by hitting the delete button.”

--by Nona Willis Aronowitz, TribLocal.com reporter