William Daley, chief of staff to President Barack Obama from 2011 to 2012, spoke at the luncheon.

What started as a small women's luncheon in Chicago 17 years ago has grown into the country's biggest fundraiser for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

On Wednesday, 2,100 Holocaust Museum supporters from Washington and Chicago, 100 Holocaust survivors and their families as well as local elected officials gathered at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers for the annual Risa K. Lambert luncheon, which this year doubled as a kickoff celebration of the museum's 20th anniversary next year.

At this event, the actual lunch — a brief affair of cold salad plate, fruit and Bundt cake — was almost an afterthought. The crowd was there for the 90-minute program and silent during it, most of all for Holocaust survivor Beatrice Muchman, whose parents hid her in Belgium during the war. Both were killed while being transported to Auschwitz. Ms. Muchman, now 79, came to the United States as a teenager and in 1997, wrote a memoir about her life as a hidden child.

Joshua Bolten, chief of staff to President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, and William Daley, chief of staff to President Barack Obama from 2011 to 2012, offered their perspectives on the museum. “It is a dignified repository of memory that gives meaning to the words 'never again,' ” Mr. Bolten said.

Mr. Daley recalled his first visit to the museum, and said he kept the Holocaust victim I.D. that all visitors are issued upon entering. The museum, he said, “is a call to action that we all must make a difference” in preventing genocide.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, honorary chair of the event, showed up at the last minute to give closing remarks. In his brief talk, Mr. Emanuel recalled the walls of black-and-white photos at the museum, “and those eyes that stare upon you, that rush into your soul,” he said. Preventing another Holocaust “is about education,” he added, a reference lost on no one. “Responsibility comes with freedom.”

The luncheon also revealed a bit of news: “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda,” an exhibit at the Holocaust Museum, will go on the road next year. Its first stop: the Field Museum in Chicago.

The luncheon grossed almost $3.7 million, making it the most successful fundraiser in the museum's history. Jill Weinberg, director of the museum's Midwest regional office, credited the high gross to low event costs (event planner Tom Kehoe donated the potted azalea centerpieces) an at-event matching grant that raised $250,000, and plenty of local fundraising muscle.

“I don't need to tell you how fabulous Chicago is,” Ms. Weinberg said after the luncheon. “There's been amazing leadership from day one.”