<P> After a unanimous vote by the United States Congress in 1980 to establish the museum, the federal government made available 1.9 acres (0.77 ha) of land adjacent to the Washington Monument for construction . Under the original Director Richard Krieger, and subsequent Director Jeshajahu Weinberg and Chairman Miles Lerman, nearly $190 million was raised from private sources for building design, artifact acquisition, and exhibition creation . In October 1988, President Ronald Reagan helped lay the cornerstone of the building, designed by the architect James Ingo Freed . Dedication ceremonies on April 22, 1993 included speeches by American President Bill Clinton, Israeli President Chaim Herzog, Chairman Harvey Meyerhoff, and Elie Wiesel . On April 26, 1993, the Museum opened to the general public . Its first visitor was the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet . </P> <P> The museum has been the target of a planned attack and a fatal shooting . In 2002, a federal jury convicted White supremacists Leo Felton and Erica Chase of planning to bomb a series of institutions associated with American black and Jewish communities, including the USHMM . On June 10, 2009, 88 - year - old James von Brunn, an anti-Semite, shot Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns . Special Police Officer Johns and von Brunn were both seriously wounded and transported by ambulance to the George Washington University Hospital . Special Police Officer Johns later died of his injuries; he is permanently honored in an official memorial at the USHMM . Von Brunn, who had a previous criminal record, had been disowned by his family . He was being tried in federal court when he died on January 6, 2010 in Butner federal prison in North Carolina . </P> <P> Designed by the architect James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in association with Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc, the USHMM is created to be a "resonator of memory". (Born to a Jewish family in Germany, Freed came to the United States at the age of nine in 1939 with his parents, who fled the Nazi regime .) The outside of the building disappears into the neoclassical, Georgian, and modern architecture of Washington, D.C. Upon entering, each architectural feature becomes a new element of allusion to the Holocaust . In designing the building, Freed researched post-World War II German architecture and visited Holocaust sites throughout Europe . The Museum building and the exhibitions within are intended to evoke deception, fear, and solemnity, in contrast to the comfort and grandiosity usually associated with Washington, D.C. public buildings . </P> <P> Other partners in the construction of the USHMM included Weiskopf & Pickworth, Cosentini Associates LLP, Jules Fisher, and Paul Marantz, all from New York City . The structural engineering firm that was chosen for this project was Severud Associates . The Museum's Meyerhoff Theatre and Rubenstein Auditorium were constructed by Jules Fisher Associates of New York City . The Permanent Exhibition was designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates . </P>

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