Al Rosenbaum (1926 – April 11, 2009) was an American artist and the co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in

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Personal life

Rosenbaum was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926. He and his wife, Sylvia Rosenbaum, moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1960. He earned his living from the janitorial business before his retirement in 1989.

Virginia Holocaust Museum

Rosenbaum co-founded the Virginia Holocaust Museum with Jay Ipson and

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in 1997. It was originally housed in several rooms at the Temple Beth El on Roseneath Road in Richmond between 1997 and 2003. A new, larger location within a renovated warehouse was dedicated in April 2003. Rosenbaum created the sculpture of a menorah with six candles that currently stands at the museum. Each of the six candles is intended to represent one million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Rosembaum's menorah sculpture also appears in the Virginia Holocaust Museum's official logo.

Artist

Rosenbaum's initial interest in

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led him to enroll in courses at Virginia Commonwealth University specifically for glass blowing and casting. One of his first major sculptures, a piece which he called ''

Shoah The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ar ...

'', was constructed of wrought iron meant to remind the viewer of concentration camp gates, glass intended to recall Kristallnacht, a rotating " searchlight," rocks and wood. Rosenbaum’s Shoah is now on permanent display at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. In an interview, Rosembaum said that he had seen a wide range of reactions to this specific sculpture, "from the little ones trying to climb inside to the tears of the elderly." Rosenbaum produced his first one-man art show at the Valentine Museum in 1997. His work had received awards from art shows as far from Virginia as Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Death

Al Rosenbaum died on April 11, 2009, at the age of 82. He was a resident of Richmond, Virginia, at the time.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenbaum, Al 1926 births 2009 deaths Museum founders 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists 20th-century American Jews Artists from Richmond, Virginia Artists from Brooklyn 21st-century American sculptors 21st-century American male artists American male sculptors Sculptors from New York (state) 20th-century American philanthropists 21st-century American Jews