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Jewish Museum leader is resigning

David Marwell, the chief executive and director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, is resigning from the Battery Park City museum and will give up his post at the end of the year.

David Marwell
David Marwell

Marwell, 63, in his resignation letter to Bruce Ratner, the museum’s chairperson, said he had many special memories in his 15 years, including the museum’s commencing construction on the massive Morgenthau Wing at the end of 2001, just after 9/11 when Lower at Manhattan was still reeling.

“I have had a book project in mind for some time that will detail my involvement with the Josef Mengele investigation, and I think that now is the time to sit down and write it,” Marwell wrote, referencing the notorious Nazi war criminal whose case Marwell worked on at the U.S. Justice Dept.

Ratner, in a memo to staff, said Marwell “has brilliantly guided the museum…To say that David has left his mark on the museum is an understatement and he will be greatly missed.”

Marwell has led the museum, also known as A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, since 2000.

Ratner has asked Marwell to remain as president of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, which owns and operates the Jewish center in Poland at the site of the former German Nazi concentration camp. He has also asked the museum board to give Marwell the title of director emeritus.

Neither museum leader responded to an interview request left through a spokesperson. Ratner did not mention the successor search in his memo.

— Josh Rogers