The Museum of Tolerance-Beit HaShoah (MOT, House of the Holocaust), a

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditio ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, California,

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

, is designed to examine

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race over another. It may also mean prejudice, d ...

and

prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perc ...

around the world with a strong focus on the history of

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ar ...

. The museum was established in 1993, as the educational arm of human rights organization, the

Simon Wiesenthal Center The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educa ...

. The museum also deals with atrocities in

Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand ...

and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

, along with issues like

bullying Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception (by the bully or by others) of an imbal ...

and

hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...

s. The museum has an associated museum and professional development multi-media training facility in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The Museum is closed on Saturdays, the Jewish day of rest and on all major

Jewish holidays Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' ( he, ימים טובים, , Good Days, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed in Judaism and by JewsThis article focuses on practices of mainstre ...

and United States public holidays.

Overview

The original museum in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

, opened in 1993. It was built at a cost of $50 million by the

, named after its founder

Simon Wiesenthal Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration ...

, a

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally acce ...

and

Nazi hunter A Nazi hunter is an individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, or SS members, and Nazi collaborators who were involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against hum ...

. 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. 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 was murdered 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 such as Los Angeles visual artist Bill Cormalis Jr's "A" Game In The B Leagues", which documents through paintings, the Civil Rights Movement during the segregation of colored people in

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

, and an Arts and Lectures Program. A classroom visit to the museum is featured in the 2007 movie ''

Freedom Writers ''Freedom Writers'' is a 2007 American drama film written and directed by Richard LaGravenese and starring Hilary Swank, Scott Glenn, Imelda Staunton, Patrick Dempsey and Mario. It is based on the 1999 book '' The Freedom Writers Diary'' by tea ...

'', 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 ''South Park'' is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Brian Graden for Comedy Central. The series revolves around four boysStan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormickand their ...

'' called "

The Death Camp of Tolerance "The Death Camp of Tolerance" is the fourteenth episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series ''South Park'', and the 93rd overall episode of the series. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on Novemb ...

". Over 350,000 people visit the Museum annually, including 110,000 children.

Education

The Museum runs a program called ''The Museums Tools for Tolerance (r) for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Professional''. Through its inception in 1996, it has trained over 75,000 law enforcement officers. The success of the program led to the creation of the New York Tolerance Center.

Criticism

In the past, some journalists and academics criticized the way the Museum of Tolerance dealt with its exhibits. Oren Baruch Stier, who specializes in Holocaust and Jewish studies, criticized the museum in 1996 for not contextualizing the Holocaust. He argued against the museum's separation of its Tolerance and Holocaust sections: In 2003, Christopher Reynolds wrote in the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' that the museum lacked any exhibit about the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through th ...

, despite Hier having promised that in 1985.

Political theorist A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be academics or independent scholars. Here the most notable political theorists are categorized by their ...

Wendy Brown critiqued the museum in a chapter of her 2009 book ''Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire''. Brown looked at "tolerance as a museum object" and made connections to the

Israeli–Palestinian conflict The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the world's most enduring conflicts, beginning in the mid-20th century. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, alongside other eff ...

and genocide directed at non-Jewish groups. She thought that the experience of the museum could make its visitors more vigilant against social prejudice and stereotyping.

References

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.

''

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'' {{Authority control Museums in Los Angeles Museums established in 1993 Museum of Tolerance Museum of Tolerance Holocaust museums in California Museum of Tolerance Simon Wiesenthal Center Museums and exhibits about antisemitism 1993 establishments in California Zionism in the United States

Overview

Education

Criticism

See also

References

External links