Museum Announces $2.5M Grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to Support Museum Programs on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust

WASHINGTON — The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today announced a $2.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. This grant builds on a 2022 $2.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment to support the Museum’s Programs on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust. New funding will help the Museum continue to grow its programs and resource development. 

“The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s decades-long work on religion and the Holocaust has garnered exciting new scholarship and understandings of individual and institutional responses to Nazism and the attempted annihilation of European Jews,” says Dr. Lisa Leff, director of the Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. “This investment ensures that our focus on the religious dimensions of the Holocaust will continue to be a core part of the Museum’s scholarly research and will allow us to  strengthen our engagement with faith-based institutions and thought leaders on these critical issues.” 

With this significant support, the Museum will establish an endowed fund to help facilitate and expand programming that seeks to foster greater understanding among the public, clergy, scholars and other religious thought leaders about the relationship between the Holocaust and faith-based traditions. The Museum will develop diverse thematic and topical educational and scholarly programs and digital resources to attract and broaden participation of clergy, interfaith leaders, as well as to create long-term structures for engagement on religious topics across the institution. 

These efforts include the expansion of the Museum’s Congregational Leadership Workshops, through which it gathers groups of Christian clergy, chaplains and other church leaders to examine the relationship between the Holocaust and Christian traditions. The Museum also offers an Interfaith Group Program, through which it invites groups of leaders from different religious traditions to participate in two-day educational experiences at the Museum that include guided tours, workshops and facilitated discussions about the Holocaust.  

The Museum is one of 72 organizations that have received grants through Lilly Endowment’s Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative. Its aim is to support museums and other cultural organizations as they strengthen their capacity to provide fair, accurate and balanced portrayals of the role religion has played and continues to play in the United States and around the world.

 “Museums and other cultural institutions are some of the most trusted organizations in American life today, and they play a vital role in teaching visitors about the world,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion. “These organizations will undertake efforts to help visitors understand and appreciate the religious beliefs and practices of diverse religious communities and the impact that religion has had and continues to have on society.”

About the Museum

A nonpartisan, federal educational institution, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America’s national memorial to the victims of the Holocaust dedicated to ensuring the permanence of Holocaust memory, understanding, and relevance. Through the power of Holocaust history, the Museum challenges leaders and individuals worldwide to think critically about their role in society and to confront antisemitism and other forms of hate, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity. For more information, visit ushmm.org.

About Lilly Endowment Inc.

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J. K. Lilly and his sons, Eli and J.K. Jr., through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, the Endowment is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. Although the Endowment maintains a special commitment to its founders’ hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana, it also funds programs throughout the United States, especially in the field of religion.  While the primary aim of its religion grantmaking focuses on strengthening the leadership and vitality of Christian congregations in the United States, the Endowment also seeks to foster public understanding about religion and lift up in fair, accurate and balanced ways the contributions that people of all faiths and diverse religious communities make to our greater civic well-being.