Fritzshall, who lost her mother and both brothers at the camp, is among thousands of local Holocaust survivors whose solemn stories echo throughout the 65,000-square-foot facility opening today.
The $45 million museum houses survivor testimonies and artifacts, including a Nazi-era rail car, an original volume of the Nuremberg war crime trial transcripts, and photographs.
The facility has unique architecture; half of the building is black and the other half is white. Visitors enter in the dark half and leave through the light, a purposeful journey museum organizers intended. The inside of the museum has an industrial feel with steel and concrete, and many of the exhibits have narrow walkways.
"It's more than a powerful walk through a terrible place in history," said museum executive director Richard Hirschhart.
The museum's mission is to help survivors heal, prevent atrocities, and tell the Holocaust story through narratives in a place rich with Jewish American history.
"It's important to have the museum in Skokie because it all started in Skokie," Holocaust survivor Aaron Elster said about the north Chicago suburb of about 67,000 people.
Skokie was once home to thousands like Elster, who moved to the area in the 1950s following World War II. He was drawn by affordability, a lack of restrictive convenants on housing, and the promise of good schools.
At peak in the 1970s, historians estimate 30,000 to 40,000 - nearly 50 percent - of Skokie's residents were Jewish; up to an estimated 7,000 were Holocaust survivors.
After arriving in the United States, he had a difficult time fitting in and didn't start sorting through his past until the late 1970s.
That was when Skokie gained international attention as neo-Nazis threatened to march through the community. The march was eventually called off, but the events ignited a spark among survivors.
Several started the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois. They began telling their stories, many for the first time.
