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Entrepreneur Kurt Wallach and his wife Marilyn made a generous and historic donation to Florida Atlantic University to further the study of the Holocaust.
The $20 million donation is the largest in school history, the university announced on Tuesday, Nov. 17. FAU will be using the money to create an institute for Holocaust and Jewish studies and will name the school after the donors.
“We speak for those who cannot speak. We remember all the victims, including our family members who perished needlessly,” Wallach said in a statement. “No one should ever be subjected to such horror. We hope that through the education we can provide that lives will be saved, and history will not be repeated.”
The 94-year-old mogul fled Nazi Germany for Holland in 1933 with his family and later moved to New York in 1936.
Wallach subsequently served in the U.S Navy in World War II and later launched multiple businesses, including a real estate investment firm, Kurtell Growth Industries.
The donation comes especially important to the Boca Raton school because of the large Jewish population residing in the state.
According to worldpopulationreview.com, Florida ranks third in the country, with a Jewish population of about 630,000 as of 2020. The Sunshine State ranks behind New York and California as the only state with more Jewish residents. And South Florida, in specific, has the highest Jewish concentration outside of Israel, accounting for 13 percent of the population in the region.
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Chris began his writing as a hobby while attending Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. Today he and his wife live in the Orlando area with their three children and dog.
