ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Florida Holocaust Museum in downtown St. Petersburg reopens Monday, November 9, after the pandemic kept doors closed for about eight months.
Executive director Elizabeth Gelman says museum members will be the first wave of guests allowed to return. First responders will be included in the next group, followed by the general public in January.
BayCare Health helped the museum safely reopen with new social distancing floor markers, certain rooms closed to guests and a new self-guided tour available on your smartphone.
Monday's reopening will feature a commemoration of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, an infamous date in the Nazi genocide of Jewish people.
Gelman says this is an appropriate time in our history -- a divided angry nation -- for the museum to start welcoming guests back.
"It's not the division in the country that's the problem," she says. "It's the chaos that allows forces of hate and violence to rush in.....Everything we do here is to prevent another atrocity."
To take a virtual tour of the Florida Holocaust Museum, click here.