<P> Researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have documented 42,500 ghettos and concentration camps erected by the Nazis throughout German - controlled areas of Europe from 1933 to 1945 . </P> <P> On November 1, 1978, President Jimmy Carter established the President's Commission on the Holocaust, chaired by Elie Wiesel, a prominent author and Holocaust survivor . Its mandate was to investigate the creation and maintenance of a memorial to victims of the Holocaust and an appropriate annual commemoration to them . The mandate was created in a joint effort by Elie Wiesel and Richard Krieger (the original papers are on display at the Jimmy Carter Museum). On September 27, 1979, the Commission presented its report to the President, recommending the establishment of a national Holocaust memorial museum in Washington, D.C. with three main components: a national museum / memorial, an educational foundation, and a Committee on Conscience . </P> <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>

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