A groundbreaking institution is set to shape the educational landscape of Arizona: the Hilton Family Holocaust Education Center. The HFHEC broke ground in June 2025 and is scheduled to open its doors in Fall 2027. Designed to provide a transformative experience, this center will serve as a landmark in the city, welcoming 50,000 students and visitors each year. Its mission is clear — to inspire, educate, and empower individuals to stand against antisemitism, hate, and bigotry.
An Immersive Educational Experience
The Hilton Family Holocaust Education Center is being designed by C&G Partners, an internationally renowned museum and exhibition firm. With a primary focus on students in grades 7 to 12, the center will provide a deeply immersive journey through history, ensuring that young minds grasp the significance of the Holocaust and its enduring lessons. In addition, the center will extend its outreach to residents and tourists, expecting to attract 50,000 visitors each year.
Upon entering the center, visitors step into a reflective space—a setting crafted to deepen their understanding of the Holocaust while celebrating the resilience and courage of survivors. The center honors the memory of the six million Jewish victims, including 1.5 million children, and underscores the importance of standing against injustice.
A Journey Through History
The Education Center will feature three floors dedicated to different aspects of its mission:
- First Floor: Upstander Lab – Showcasing the impact of the civic choices we make every day, the Upstander Lab provides interactive (and sometimes collaborative) activities and spaces to practice critical thinking and introspection, connecting history to present by showing how individual choices can shape the our society.
- First Floor: Reflection Hall — This transitional and reflective area adorned with art, quotations, and audio testimony from local survivors, celebrates the resilience and strength of Jewish life despite unimaginable hardship, and provides a compelling, introspective space for students and other visitors.
- Second Floor: Holocaust Galleries – A comprehensive, chronological narrative of the Holocaust, viewed through the perspectives of victims, perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, and upstanders. Accompanying each group throughout the Holocaust Galleries will be audio and visual testimony from one of four local survivor ‘companions,’ providing deep personal context to Holocaust history.
The Garden level of the Center will showcase art, different exhibits, archives, and additional spaces for learning, reflection, and engagement.
Immersive and Interactive Exhibits
Visitors will experience history through a mix of media, artifacts, and digital storytelling, making the past come alive. Key exhibit highlights include:
- An immersive projection of Jewish life before the Holocaust, featuring family photos, home movies, and personal reflections.
- An interactive media experience tracing the Nazi rise to power, exploring the role of antisemitism, propaganda, legislation, social exclusion, and escalating violence. Visitors also learn about shrinking opportunities for escape, international inaction, forced identification, ghettos, deportations, and an increasingly restricted world experienced by Jewish families.
- An unflinching look at the transformation of persecution into systemic mass murder, pairing historical evidence with individual testimony
- An examination of the profound challenges survivors faced after the devastating losses of family and community, and the resilience required to rebuild their lives – often in brand new places
- Spaces that celebrate Jewish joy, culture, and the present day, preserving survivor voices and asking visitors what it means to listen and act as ‘memory keepers’
Following their Holocaust Galleries experience, visitors will connect history to how they show up against contemporary forces of antisemitism and hate in the Upstander Lab. The Upstander Lab examines:
- Genocides before and after WWII, examining how systems, institutions, and individual choices drive escalating harm
- How to connect history to the present, develop self-awareness, and strengthen critical thinking and media literacy
- Motives, social pressure, complicity, and the complicated spectrum of choices people make when others are being targeted
- Roles of family, peers, culture, institutions, authority, media, social media, laws, and personal experiences in shaping how people understand and respond to the world around them
The Hilton Family Holocaust Education Center will also feature a large, commissioned art installation, an outdoor mural, reflective spaces, temporary exhibits, and a commemorative gallery dedicated to work of local artist Robert Sutz. We look forward to sharing more as we approach our opening date!
A Call to Action
The Hilton Family Holocaust Education Center is about history, the present, and the future. Through its exhibits and programming, visitors will gain a greater understanding of the consequences of intolerance and inaction and renew their commitment to fighting injustice.
This center will be a landmark institution, one that will inspire and educate generations of Arizonans.
By remembering the past, embracing the present, and taking action for the future, the Hilton Family Holocaust Education Center ensures that the lessons of history will never be forgotten.
We invite you to join the Building a Legacy of Hope Campaign by clicking on the button below and making your capital campaign gift now.