The National Holocaust Museum occupies a distinctive place within the UK’s cultural and educational landscape. Unique in both name and rural location, we play a nationally significant role in Holocaust remembrance and education.

We are the only Holocaust museum in the world that grew out of the rural home of a Christian family. This deeply personal origin story infuses the Museum’s buildings, gardens and educational programmes with a spirit of compassion, solidarity and reflective learning - what many have described as a powerful example of ‘beautiful allyship’.

NHM spent its first decades as the Smith family’s homegrown learning centre and a sanctuary for survivors, as well as a repository for their belongings and memories - while also attracting world-leading scholars and leaders from across the UK and internationally. Its evolution into an accredited museum and outreach organisation reflects its ongoing approach to learning and understanding how prejudices of today echo those of the past. With its unusual origin story and the challenging moral questions posed by the founding family to its non-Jewish community, the Museum continues to break the mould of traditional Holocaust education. It explores the prevalence of conspiracy theories and racist tropes throughout the long history of anti-Jewish racism, while examining their wider impact on society today, without losing the specificity of the Jewish experience.

Over the past decade, the Museum has also established itself as a sector-leading innovator in learning, technology and creative practice. Groundbreaking initiatives include The Forever Project (AI), The Eye As Witness (VR), and award-winning film projects such as Edek. Educational programmes like the Racism Response Unit have pioneered contemporary pedagogies, while world-leading exhibitions such as The Journey and touring shows like The Vicious Circle and I Say British,You Say Jewish have gained international recognition for their impact and originality. The Museum is also completing a £5m redevelopment project, including a major upgrade of The Journey, with the full funding for this raised in under a year. These achievements are driven by a dynamic and innovative management team, whose creativity and ambition continue to shape the Museum’s future.

At the heart of this work lies the Museum’s clear and distinctive purpose: Critical Thinking. This principle, rather than simply remembrance, underpins the Museum’s mission and ensures that its work remains both timely and transformative.