Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education

Mission:

The mission of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is to interpret the Oregon Jewish experience, explore the lessons of the Holocaust and foster intercultural conversation. 

About Us:

The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education incorporates the archives of the Jewish Historical Society of Oregon. OJMCHE is a constituent agency of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland and an institutional member of the Council of American Jewish Museums and American Alliance of Museums.

The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, the Pacific Northwest’s only Jewish museum, was founded to examine and preserve the cultural heritage of one of Oregon’s earliest immigrant groups and to bring innovative traveling exhibitions to the region.

The Oregon Jewish Museum endeavors to build a dynamic institution that embraces Jewish identity and community, illustrating, by example, the ways in which a community with traditional roots preserves, teaches, and lives by its values as a distinct minority. We believe in the power of culture to build and engage community in a flexible and dynamic way, using the lens of culture to shape dialogue about historical and contemporary issues.

History:

Beginning July 1, 2014, the Oregon Jewish Museum merged with the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center to become the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. 

In 1996, the Museum acquired the archives of the Jewish Historical Society of Oregon, comprising major collections of organizational records, family papers, photographs and ephemeral materials dating from 1850 to the present—the largest collection of the documented and visual history of Oregon’s Jews. Today this collection forms the core of the museum archives and is available to researchers, students and scholars.