The Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, near Detroit, is Michigan's largest Holocaust museum. History The Zekelman Holocaust Center, found as the Holocaust Memorial Center (The HC), the first free-standing institution of its kind in the United States, was founded by CEO Rabbi Charles H. Rosenzveig with his fellow members of Shaarit Haplaytah ("the Remnant," survivors of the Holocaust). It took nearly twenty years of planning and grassroots fundraising before Shaarit Haplaytah was ready to build. Ground was broken for the Holocaust Memorial Center on the property of the Jewish Community Campus at Maple and Drake Roads in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on December 6, 1981. Almost three years later, in October 1984, the HC was dedicated and opened. When the organization outgrew its original location, it built a new museum on the grounds of the Old Orchard Theatre on Orchard Lake Road in Farmington Hills. The Center's new design received front-page coverage in the Wall Street Journal, with a headline asking, "Should a Museum Look as Disturbing as What it Portrays?". Since its inception, the HC has been visited by more than one million visitors from all over the world. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren tour the museum each year and speak with a survivor of the Holocaust. Rabbi Rosenzveig died on December 11, 2008, in Royal Oak, Michigan, at Beaumont Hospital as the result of heart failure. Steve Goldman served as CEO from 2009 until his retirement in February 2016, at which time he was succeeded by Rabbi Eli Mayerfeld. The expansion on the new site consists of an expanded Holocaust Center and two new museums, designed by Neumann/Smith Architecture. Mission The Holocaust Memorial Center's stated mission is to "engage, educate, and empower by remembering the Holocaust. In doing so, the Memorial Center engages in a number of community activities, hosts tours for public schools, universities, institutions and interested tour groups, curates an expansive library archive and a gallery dedicated to art and historical exhibits, hosts educational programs for different age groups, and curates eleven core exhibits across its vast space. The HC combats antisemitism through education and through its dedication to survivors and the active struggle of the global Jewish community during rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and well after the collapse of the Nazi Regime. By focusing on survivor stories and the history of this struggle, the HC educates visitors so that they understand the