United States: California: Southern California: Los Angeles County: Los Angeles: Museum Of Tolerance

worth the trip by kalavinka

I went when it first opened and have meant to go back ever since but just never have. I’m sure it has improved/changed over the years but even back then it was good and left quite an impression. There was a tunnel I walked through and there is audio running of people shouting insults and all sorts of slurs. I know these things said weren’t specifically at me and it was just a recording, but it still really got to me. That is in the portion for overall tolerance, then there is the WW2 Jewish Holocaust section and that is equally moving. There is a section where you can choose to walk through the “able-bodied” door or the “children and others”. I wasn’t really in a camp but I just couldn’t get my legs to walk through the other door. I don’t think anyone else in our group walked through the other door either.

over 6 years ago

Comments:

Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon
Los Angeles

I went in 1996 and then again a few years later. I also have intended to go back. I can only imagine that my dragging my feet is at least partly explained by a bit of hesitancy to re-experience the potency of the emotions the museum evokes. Did you walk through an entryway to exhibit on the camps and receive a little card with the name of someone who had been imprisoned … only to get to the end of the exhibit and receive a printout detailing their fate? My stomach knots itself even now after all these years, recalling the moment I read about 13 year-old Jacques Benguigui at Auschwitz. One of these days, I will write it up in 43places, just as soon as I am ready “to re-experience the potency of the emotions.”


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