While elite colleges across the nation host protests of America’s support of Israel, Florida Atlantic University to Vero’s south is busy designing a unique venue to educate scholars about the Holocaust and Jewish history, thanks to a $20 million donation from Grand Harbor resident Marilyn Wallach.
The university recently celebrated a ceremonial groundbreaking of the Kurt and Marilyn Wallach Institute for Holocaust and Jewish Studies to honor Wallach and her late husband for the largest gift in FAU’s history, with Vero’s Rabbi Michael Birnholz of Temple Beth Shalom attending the event. But the actual bulldozing of dirt will take place in December on the Boca Raton campus.
“Their gift to Florida Atlantic and the larger community is incredible,” FAU’s Executive Director of Advancement Communications Kristine Gabbo said. After construction begins on the project site, the building will take a year to 18 months to build, equip and furnish. Gabbo said FAU hopes to launch lectures and courses in the Wallach Institute in the Fall of 2025, or at the latest in the Spring of 2026.
“Our aim here is to teach the teachers,” Marilyn Wallach said last week. “With the way things are happening in the world today, this couldn’t be more important. Education is the answer.
Schools are mandated in Florida to teach the Holocaust, but a lot of teachers don’t know how to teach it.”
The Wallachs were founding members of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Kurt Wallach authored three books on the Holocaust and was sought after as a lecturer, she said. A savvy real estate entrepreneur and longtime CEO of Kurtell Growth Industries, Kurt Wallach died in 2021 at age 95.
At 94 years old, Kurt Wallach was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from FAU, the nomination saying, “He’s a model of ‘never giving up’ in educating against hate for students in the Holocaust and Jewish Studies program.”
The Wallach Institute will have a hall for traveling exhibits and will feature immersive Artificial Intelligence-assisted exhibits where people can virtually visit Auschwitz and other sites and even converse with survivors, Marilyn said. “Other people are now joining us in donating, and that has been very gratifying. I’m just sorry my husband didn’t live to see it,” she said.
More than 200 members of Kurt Wallach’s family died in the Holocaust, Marilyn said. Kurt’s father, Mark, was a successful businessman in Magdeburg, Germany, and was known as an anti-Nazi agitator.
In 1933, when Kurt was just 7, Mark got word that the Nazis were coming for him. Kurt and his siblings and mother were put on a train for Cologne, where Mark had previously stashed money and diamonds in a safe deposit box. The family eventually escaped to Scheveningen, Holland. Mark knew war was inevitable, so in 1937 he moved his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where two of his brothers had already emigrated.
When Kurt turned 18, he joined the U.S. Navy and was sent to Fort Pierce, where he trained for the Underwater Demolition Team; called “Frogmen” then, they eventually became the Navy SEALs. Kurt was stationed in the Pacific until the war ended.
Marilyn was working as a Realtor when she met Kurt in Houston. She went to his house to get a real estate listing. Though she didn’t get the listing, Kurt proposed after three dates, and the couple moved to Florida – first to Sarasota where they had a son, Mark, then to Miami for two years, and eventually to Vero Beach in 1986. Kurt continued investing in real estate, owning 12 mobile home parks, apartment buildings, medical office buildings, and other real estate.
In the 1990s, Wallach began speaking at colleges, high schools, and civic groups about the Holocaust, including delivering a six-part lecture series at Vero Beach Museum of Art as part of FAU’s Lifelong Learning program.
Half of the Wallach Family Foundation’s donation will go toward construction of a 22,000 square-foot building that will house a Holocaust museum, exhibition hall, recital and lecture hall, professional development and training room, a student multimedia studio, and classrooms devoted to training K-12 teachers how to create Holocaust educational materials that also memorialize the 6 million Jews and other Holocaust victims, while honoring the survivors.
The remaining $10 million gift establishes an endowment to fund faculty and staff, visiting scholars, lectures, scholarships and fellowships, study abroad opportunities, and equipment, capital improvements, and related activities designed to deter hate, bias, and discrimination.
The Wallach Institute will become part of FAU’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters.
“We are honored to have been chosen by Kurt and Marilyn as a site for their legacy,” said Schmidt College Dean Michael Horswell. “This building will be a living testament and example for thousands of students and community members who pass through its doors and are touched by its educational programs.”
