I Took My Pals to the Holocaust Museum — and I Cried
It’s Saturday morning in Los Angeles. Let’s see, we may a. take a hike to the Bat Collapse Griffith Park and convey the canines, b. see the chainsaw juggler or another crazed acrobat on the Venice Boardwalk, or c. perhaps go to considered one of two museums in L.A. stuffed with mementos of man’s cruelty to fellow man.
It’s not a vacation spot you’d often suppose to deliver your pals to on a Saturday morning.
And surprisingly, the Holocaust Museum will not be the one place you possibly can see symbols of Nazi terrorism and representations of man’s inhumanity in the direction of others in Los Angeles. However the spectacular Museum of Tolerance (also called the Simon Wiesenthal Middle) will not be open on Saturdays. The Holocaust Museum is.
I’ve by no means been to the Holocaust Museum, despite the fact that I really like Pan Pacific Park. It’s the positioning of the Streamline Moderne Nineteen Thirties Pan Pacific Auditorium the place the horrible Eighties film “Xanadu” was filmed starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly. Yeah, you learn that proper. It was his final film, and it concerned curler skates.
I bear in mind how unhappy I used to be when it burned down in 1989, and I saved a bit of its sickly-green facade as a memento. (A recreation of it exists on the Disney California Journey Park in Anaheim.)
So, I knew that Holocaust Museum LA was there, however I by no means went. It’s sort-of like having the film “Schindler’s Checklist” nonetheless within the authentic VHS cellophane wrapping on my video shelf unopened. I do know it’s there, nevertheless it’s not a film I need to sit down and watch after I come house after a traumatic day. Proper?
I invited a choose group of associates. One from bowling, one from the canine park, a number of from my senior middle appearing class. Some I’ve recognized for greater than half my life, others I met solely weeks in the past. A comic, a restauranteur, a designer, an activist, a singer, a playwright. Some Jewish, some not. Some Jewish-ish.
Our docent taking the group is a brand new pal, Alicia Bleier, who was instructing in Israel when the October 7 bloodbath occurred final 12 months. She needed to flee to a different nation earlier than returning right here, and he or she by no means completed her mission.
An impeccable, exact, no-nonsense particular person, Alicia doesn’t endure fools frivolously, and he or she knew this was a delicate time, with a bunch of associates who instructed me personally they had been triggered by occasions on this planet, and considerably threatened, too.
It’s unbelievable that proper right here in supposedly superficial LA, this Holocaust Museum is the primary survivor-founded and oldest Holocaust museum in america. A bunch of survivors met and located they every had a doc, photograph or another merchandise from earlier than the struggle and determined to offer these artifacts a everlasting house. It additionally helped memorialize their misplaced members of the family and educate folks to always remember.
That is the one cultural establishment in LA that’s free for all college students with its solely deal with the horrific impression and enormity of the Holocaust. The museum gives customized excursions, talks with survivors, on-line discussions and extra.
The Pan Pacific website is an architectural masterpiece virtually hidden inside part of a hill, and it’s present process a large growth that may maintain it closed till this coming November.
You might be first struck by the six tall black 18-foot columns on the entrance known as the Martyr’s Memorial. Each honors the 6 million Jews murdered within the Holocaust and symbolizes the cremation smokestacks.
Across the facet is the heart-wrenching Youngsters’s Memorial, and out of doors reflective area the place there are 1.2 million holes drilled within the wall representing the kids murdered within the Holocaust. You’ll be able to decide up a slip with a photograph and title of a kid sufferer and write a message and place it into one of many holes within the wall.
It’s arduous to imagine that they’ve collected an entire warehouse of 80,000 extra objects which have but to be displayed. That’s why they should broaden.
The constructing marketing campaign already raised $43 million of its $50 million building aim, which has trusted many household grants, in addition to $8.5 million from the California state authorities.
The museum is aware of disinformation and misinformation that pervades social media, saying “On this second, this concern will not be summary for Muslims, Jews and marginalized communities not solely in America, however all through the world. Certainly, hateful phrases can have actual world penalties.”
For me, the tour was overwhelmingly emotional. Alicia bravely spoke concerning the atrocities dedicated, in room after room. Once we all sat down collectively in a duplicate of a practice automotive, I felt a bit claustrophobic because the doorways closed on us. Then, she instructed us that 100 others would have been crammed in the identical space as they had been transported to the camps.
Room after room, the tales obtained worse. Jews had been stripped of their citizenship, they had been dubbed a “race” reasonably than faith, and so they weren’t allowed to have pets. Our group of all pet-lovers had a collective gasp as Alicia defined how the Nazis shot the pets in entrance of the households.
After which, we entered a room with child garments in a show case. I out of the blue couldn’t breathe, needed to sit down, and started sobbing. I used to be fully embarrassed, however I couldn’t cease.
“I can’t imagine I’ve subjected my associates to this,” I mentioned between my sobs.
Not shocking, the half-dozen Jewish mamas within the group got here as much as consolation me, and the oldest and funniest, a Brooklynite mentioned, “Oh darling, we knew what we had been in for coming to this. We didn’t suppose it was simply going to be a picnic.”
But it surely was a picnic. I deliberate to have a sturdy dialogue outdoors within the grassy enviornment down the hill from the museum. Jackie Canter introduced her favourite turkey sandwiches and pickles from her well-known Canter’s Deli.
And I ordered kosher pizza.
And I declared, “Let there be pizza on Earth.”
You’ll be able to take a digital tour of the Holocaust Museum LA, and likewise donate to the constructing enjoyable by going to www.holocaustmuseumla.org.
You’ll be able to attain Mike at mikeszy@aol.com.
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