Jay M. Ipson
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Jay M. Ipson (born June 5, 1935 in Kaunas , Lithuania as Jakob Ipp ) is a Lithuanian- American survivor of the Holocaust and co-founder and director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond (Virginia) .
Life
Childhood during National Socialism
Jakob Ipp was born as the son of the Jewish couple Israel and Eta (Edna) Ipp in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. 1941 year 6 with his family in the by the then Nazi established ghetto Kaunas , later Kovno Ghetto brought. One day in 1943, Jakob and his mother were "selected" from the ghetto along with 5,000 other Jews. Thanks to a friend in the Jewish ghetto police, they were able to break away from the group and survived. Shortly afterwards, Jakob and his parents escaped from the ghetto one night.
They found shelter with the Catholic peasant family Paskauskas. They stayed for six months without daylight in a cave (approx. 3.5 m long, 2.7 m wide and 1 m high), which could be reached through a long tunnel, until they were liberated by the Russians. In the end, 13 people hid in this cave. Jacob was 8 years old at the time. The farmer and his wife, who had cared for them during the entire period, were posthumously recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial after the Second World War .
Emigration to the USA
After the end of the war, Jakob and his parents left Lithuania for Munich , where Jakob's father found a job with the United Nations Emergency Aid and Reconstruction Administration (UNRRA) . Related helped them to the United States to emigrate , where they arrived on June 12, 1947 in Richmond, Virginia. To better integrate into American society, they changed their family name from Ipp to Ipson . Jacob was 12 years old at the time.
Jay M. Ipson volunteered for the American Army when he was 18 and tried to lead a normal life. He studied accounting at Richmond University and in 1959 married the daughter of an auto repair shop owner and began working in the company. He later started his own business in Richmond with the American Parts Company .
Virginia Holocaust Museum
In the 1980s, Ipson began speaking in schools about his experiences during the Holocaust. He regularly left the house at 6 a.m. to give a lecture punctually for the start of school and then drove to work until friends suggested that it would be easier to let the school classes arrive.
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In 1997 Ipson organized a corresponding exhibition with Mark E. Fetter and Al Rosenbaum next to the local synagogue Temple Beth El . With that, the Virginia Holocaust Museum was born. Since the premises became too small due to the great interest, they looked for a larger building. With the support of Congressman Eric Cantor , a former tobacco factory was made available to Ipson in 2001 as the new location for the museum. The museum was only able to reopen in 2003 with great financial and time expenditure. Since then, the Virginia Holocaust Museum has expanded continuously and has seen more than 175,000 visitors since its inception. In 2007 it celebrated its 10th anniversary.
After several years of efforts, Ipson was able to obtain in 2009 that the Virginia Holocaust Museum received a Torah scroll hidden during the Holocaust in a church in Vilnius ( Vilnius ) . It has been in the museum's synagogue since its extensive restoration.
Awards
On January 16, 2001, Jay M. Ipson received a First Freedom Award from the First Freedom Center.
In 2005 he was honored with the Director's Community Leadership Award by the FBI in Richmond.
On May 11, 2010, Jay M. Ipson received the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award 2009 (AHMA) from the Austrian Ambassador Christian Prosl for his exemplary commitment to Tolerance Through Education (motto of the museum) .
literature
- Nancy Wright Beasley: Izzy's Fire. Finding Humanity in the Holocaust ; Brunswick Publishing Corp 2005 ISBN 1556182082 (English) Excerpts online
- Elisabeth Anne Custalow: To See, to Feel, to Know. Experiencing the Holocaust Through the Virginia Holocaust Museum , Donning Company Publishers 2005 ISBN 1578643058 (English)
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- ↑ Hanukkah and the 10th anniversary of the Virginia Holocaust Museum (English), accessed May 10, 2010
- ↑ Hand over the Holocaust Torah from the Kovno Ghetto to the Virginia Holocaust Museum ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. November 22, 2009, gedenkdienst.org, accessed: May 10, 2010
- ↑ Previous winners of the First Freedom Award ( memento of the original from February 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , firstfreedom.org, accessed May 10, 2010
- ↑ Director's Community Leadership Award ( Memento of May 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed: May 10, 2010
- ↑ Virginia Holocaust Museum co-founder honored by Austria ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2010 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 11, 2010
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See also
Web links
- Official site Virginia Holocaust Museum (English)
- Jay Ipson, Executive director and founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum , September 10, 2007, (English)
- Photo series of the official delivery of the Ipson Torah to the museum
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ipson, Jay M. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ipp, Jakob |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Lithuanian-American Holocaust survivor and founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 5, 1935 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kaunas |