Nick DiCeglie requests $750,000 for Florida Holocaust Museum

An emotional exhibit at the Florida Holocaust Museum displays a rail car used to transport Jewish detainees during the Holocaust.

Rep. Nick DiCeglie is requesting $750,000 from the state for the Florida Holocaust Museum in an appropriations request filed Tuesday, just before Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

The St. Petersburg-based museum remembers and educates visitors about the Holocaust, genocide and human rights. The Florida Holocaust Museum has one of the nation’s largest collections of digital resources, including interviews with Holocaust survivors, photographs and educational resources. 

It also reaches more than 150,000 people annually, according to the appropriations request. 

The museum successfully received the same amount through an appropriations request filed last year. 

The museum would use $75,000 of the state funding for the executive director salary and $258,000 for staff salaries. 

Of the remaining funds, $218,000 would be used for expenses related to artifact, testimony and art digitization and indexing, as well as other resources for exhibits, and $199,000 would go to conservation, care and photography of objects and art, speakers, research and marketing. 

The money requested from the state would account for about 32.6% of the museum’s funding, with another .7%, or $15,000, coming from local government and 66.7%, or $1.54 million coming from private donors, according to the request. 

The Florida Holocaust Museum receives support form regional and local universities, school districts, arts organizations such as Creative Pinellas and the African American History societies, museums, police and fire departments, and many corporate and private donors.

The museum, which was founded in 1992 and relocated to its current location in 1998, was named the number one museum to visit in the St Petersburg-Clearwater area by USA Today, according to the request.