Museum of Tolerance

Museum of Tolerance

Location	9786 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, California
Type	Holocaust memorials
Website	http://www.museumoftolerance.com

The Museum of Tolerance (MOT), a multimedia museum in Los Angeles, California, USA, with an associated museum and professional development multi-media training facility in New York City, is designed to examine racism and prejudice in the United States and the world with a strong focus on the history of the Holocaust. The MOT has expanded to Jerusalem, where a "Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity" is currently under construction. It is sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Los Angeles

The original museum in Los Angeles, California opened in 1993. The museum receives 350,000 visitors annually, about a third of which are school-age children. The museum's most talked-about exhibit is "The Holocaust Section", where visitors are divided into groups to take their own place in some of the events of World War II. These experiences are then discussed afterwards. The museum also features testimonies of Holocaust survivors, often from live volunteers who tell their stories and answer questions. People also get cards with pictures of Jewish children on them and at the end of the museum trip, it is revealed whether the child on the card survived or died in the Holocaust.

In addition, the museum features a "Tolerancenter" that discusses issues of prejudice in everyday life, a Multimedia Learning Center, Finding Our Families-Finding Ourselves, a collection of archives and documents, various temporary exhibits, and an Arts and Lectures Program.

A classroom visit to the museum is featured in the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, based on the real-life story of high school teacher Erin Gruwell and her students. The museum was parodied in an episode of South Park called "The Death Camp of Tolerance".

Protesting L.A. museum expansion

Criticism

One of the primary criticisms of the Museum of Tolerance is that its exhibits use excessive multimedia technology to appeal to and manipulate the emotions of children. The museum uses fast-paced skits, dioramas, films, and interactive computer-controlled exhibits in an effort to make an emotional impact on visitors. For most of the tour, actual historical artifacts are absent, and a select few are shown at the end. Some critics have suggested that this is "hypocritical," likening the use of emotionally-charged media to the propaganda used by the Nazi Party during the Holocaust.

Jerusalem

In 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's (SWC) Rabbi Marvin Hier announced plans to construct a "Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity" in place of Mamilla Cemetery, a Muslim burial ground that goes back hundreds of years and holds the memories and identity of Palestinian Jerusalem. The project aims to promote tolerance amongst Jewish populations within Israel, including Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, Ethiopians, Russians, and others. Frank Gehry designed the new museum complex to resemble a fruit bowl; he pulled out of the project in January 2010.

Criticism

The MOT-Jerusalem has been criticized for being built on former Muslim cemetery grounds. The Mamilla Cemetery contains the graves of many important Islamic saints and scholars, as well as several Mamluk tombs. The SWC asserts that the cemetery was long ago deconsecrated by Islamic leaders, and that secular Arab leaders prior to the creation of the State of Israel had planned various development projects there. This argument has in turn been challenged in the Israeli legal system, but the argument was rejected by Israel's high court.

While the location of the MOT-Jerusalem has elicited the most media attention, architectural, archaeological and social critiques have accompanied the project throughout its course. Haaretz architecture critic Esther Zandberg has critiqued the location of an ostentatious Gehry design at the heart of Jerusalem, arguing that Jerusalem is not Bilbao. Others have expressed concern over the focus of the museum on tolerance amongst Jews, rather than tolerance between Jews and Arabs. The plan has been severely criticized by both Israelis and Palestinians. Construction had been stayed several times by the courts before allowing it to continue.

In autumn, 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court cleared "the way for L.A.'s Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a Holy Land counterpart to its Museum of Tolerance on Pico Boulevard."

On November 19, 2008 a group of US Jewish and Muslim leaders sent a letter to the Wiesenthal Center to halt the construction of the Museum of Tolerance on the historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.

On February 10, 2010 fifteen of the oldest families in Jerusalem filed a case before the United Nations in Geneva and held news conferences there, also in Los Angeles and Jerusalem. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University has members of his family buried there and calls it further desecration of a cemetery that they have been nibbling away at for over three decades, despite many protests: "The fact that it was desecrated in the ’60s doesn’t mean that it’s right to desecrate it further. What happened in the 1960s was that part of the cemetery was paved over for this parking lot. What they have now done is to dig down and disinter four layers, according to the chief archaeologist for the Israeli Archaeological Authority, four layers of graves."

See also

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

External links

• Experiencing the Jewish Holocaust in Los Angeles: The Beit Hashoah—Museum of Tolerance, review essay by Harold Marcuse, Other Voices, v2.1, Feb. 2000.

MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE

The Museum of Tolerance (MOT), a multimedia museum in Los Angeles, California, USA, with an associated museum and professional development multi-media training facility in New York City, is designed to examine racism and prejudice in the United States and the world with a strong focus on the history of the Holocaust. The MOT has expanded to Jerusalem, where a "Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity" is currently under construction. It is sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The Museum of Tolerance is the educational arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an internationally renowned human rights organization dedicated to promoting respect and mutual understanding, through education, community partnerships, and civic engagement.

Established in 1993, the MOT has welcomed over five million visitors, mostly middle and high school students. Visitors become witnesses to history and explore the dynamics of bigotry and discrimination that are still embedded in society today. Through interactive exhibits, special events, and customized programs for youths and adults, the Museum engages visitors’ hearts and minds, while challenging them to assume personal responsibility for positive change. Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center told the New York Times at the time of the Museum’s opening, “We’re talking to an American audience. We want the museum to be relevant to them, so we begin by talking about racism and prejudice.”

Museum Exhibits

The Museum of Tolerance has three permanent exhibitions: The Tolerancenter, the Holocaust Section and Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves.

In the Tolerancenter, visitors focus on the major issues of prejudice that are part of daily life. Some of the exhibits include:

• Point of View Diner, a recreation of a 1950's diner, red booths and all, that "serves" a menu of controversial topics on video jukeboxes. It uses the latest cutting edge technology to relay the overall message of personal responsibility. Following scenarios focusing on drunk driving and hate speech, this interactive exhibit allows visitors to input their opinions on what they have seen and question relevant characters. The results are then instantly tabulated.
• GlobalHate.com which is based on ongoing Simon Wiesenthal Center research and investigation of hate on the internet, Globalhate.com is equipped with touch screen computer terminals that unmask the dangerous proliferation of hate on the internet and introduce questions for critical thinking in a media saturated society.
• In Our Time, A powerful and gripping film on Bosnia, Rwanda and contemporary hate groups that pinpoints contemporary human rights violations going on throughout the world today.
  

The Holocaust Exhibit is a sound-and-light guided, 80-minute dramatic presentation that covers the period from the 1920s to 1945. Visitors are led back in time to become witnesses to events in Nazi-dominated Europe during World War II.

Each visitor receives a different photo passport card with the story of a child whose life was changed by the events of the Holocaust. Throughout the tour, the passport is updated and at the end, the ultimate fate of the child is revealed. Some of the exhibits include:

• Outdoor Café Scene a re-creation of a 1930's pre-war Berlin Street café where people are discussing their concerns over the impending Nazi takeover of Germany. Subsequent events and the final destiny of these people are projected overhead.

• Wannsee Conference, a re-enactment of the infamous January 1942 meeting where top Nazi officials planned the Holocaust.

• Hall of Testimony A specially designed room of witness where visitors can see and hear unforgettable stories of the courage and sacrifice of Holocaust victims and survivors.

The third exhibit, Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves, showcases the diversity within the personal histories of several noted Americans: poet, best-selling author, historian and educator Dr. Maya Angelou; award-winning actor, comedian and director Billy Crystal; multiple Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Carlos Santana; and National League MVP and former Manager of the four-time World Series Champions, the New York Yankees, Joe Torre.

The exhibit, which also includes cameo appearances by NBA great Kareem Abdul Jabbar, author Sherman Alexie and TV personality Cristina Saralegui, among others, seeks to inspire visitors their own backgrounds.

Special Exhibits

The Museum of Tolerance also hosts special exhibitions, including:

*Stealing Home: How Jackie Robinson Changed America celebrated the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking baseball’s racial barrier.

*Courage: The Vision to End Segregation, The Guts to Fight for It and Para Todos Los Niños, two exhibits that highlight the fight for school desegregation in both the South and in Southern California.

*Liberation! Revealing the Unspeakable, an exhibition of photos and artifacts from liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945.

*Liu Kang at 90, a retrospective of the art of one of Singapore’s most celebrated painters. While the most of the exhibit featured paintings of life in his native country, a series of drawings titled Chop Suey, his eyewitness depictions of atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers who invaded Singapore during WWII.

Notable Visitors

The Museum’s success and high profile has made it an important venue for visiting dignitaries, politicians and celebrities. In 1996, His Holiness The Dalai Lama was given the Museum’s Peace Award and was praised as a rodef shalom (a “pursuer of peace” in Hebrew). He called the Museum’s mission “noble work and very, very important work.” Not long after signing a peace treaty with Israel, the late King Hussein of Jordan also visited the Museum, the first time a Muslim leader has visited an American Jewish museum. The King was visibly moved by the Museum, saying that it was “a haunting reminder of man’s despicable cruelty toward his fellow man,” and that all “must continue to rid our world of such inhumane aberrations.” The King and Queen Noor also became Museum members and a year later, when the King was in Los Angeles, Rabbi Hier presented him with a membership card.

Freedom Writers

Based on the true story, the film “Freedom Writers” (Richard LaGravenese, dir. 2007) details the work of Erin Gruwell, a high school teacher who inspired her at-risk students to fight the racism and prejudice that plagued their school. In one of the key moments in the film, Gruwell brings her students to the Museum of Tolerance.

Special Speakers at the Museum

Speakers, eyewitnesses to some of the worst acts of inhumanity in the 20th Century, speak every day at the Museum. They include Holocaust survivors who, by sharing their unique and tragic experiences, have been an integral part of the Museum of Tolerance since its inception. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people have heard survivor testimonies which are a tribute to the human spirit. The Museum also periodically hosts survivors of the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda as well as peoples whose lives were directly changed during the Civil Rights struggles in the United States.

Once a month, the Museum features “Hate to Hope”—the the remarkable story of reconciliation between the perpetrator and the victim of a hate crime. Matthew Boger, a manager at the Museum of Tolerance, was asked by teachers at an area school to show the Museum to some students whio they suspected were neo-Nazis. He approached Tim Zaal, a Museum staffer who was once a racist skinhead who had served jail time for a hate crime, for advice. As they were spoke, they both realized that they had crossed paths before. In the early 80s, Matthew was living on the streets of Los Angeles after being kicked out of his home because he was gay. One night he was attacked, severely beaten and left for dead by a group of violent skinheads. The skinhead who kicked him unconscious was Tim Zaal. Tim remembers that looked him in the eye as he, “…kicked him the forehead with my boot and that was it….He was out like a light….in the back of my mind I was thinking, we killed this person.” Fast forward to the Museum meeting and the moment Matthew realized who Tim was. “Looking into his eyes is how I recognized him….The eyes are what I remembered that night.”

"Boger peppered Zaal with questions about that night—details to confirm that he was the one who left him bruised and bloodied. Once he knew for sure, Boger said, “You realize who I am, right?”

After their shock, the two became friends and now work together, speaking at the Museum and traveling to schools, universities, juvenile facilities. They have appeared on CNN and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

In 2009, Freaks and Revelations a young adult book based on Matt and Tim’s story, was written by Davida Hurwitz and published by Little, Brown.

Tools for Tolerance®

In 1996, the Museum created Tools for Tolerance®, a diversity training program designed to bridge personal, local and global issues, and challenge participants to redefine professional roles in an increasingly complex and diverse world, all while using the setting of the Museum of Tolerance and its New York Tolerancenter. Specialized courses are designed for educators, human resourced professionals, corporate executives, among other professions. The Tools programs have provided vital training to law enforcement professionals across the country, helping to better understand ethnic and cultural differences in order to better serve their communities. These professionals have described the program as emotionally draining but sobering. One officer was grateful the training made him a “better police officer and a better person.”