Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH) is a museum located in Pan Pacific Park within the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1961 by Holocaust Survivors, LAMOTH is the oldest museum of its kind in the United States.
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust is open seven days a week, and admission to the Museum is free. The founding Survivors insisted that everyone be given the opportunity to learn and no visitor would ever be turned away because of an entry fee. Through programs that value intergenerational dialogue and artifact- based learning, LAMOTH continues its mission to commemorate, educate, and inspire.
“The relevancy and urgency of our mission has never been more critical than it is in today’s environment. We are creating a strategic plan that will ensure that we continue to provide free educational programming, opportunities for dialogue with Holocaust Survivors, and substantially grow our audience while teaching them the relevance of becoming stewards of this important history,†Beth Kean, Executive Director of LAMOTH.
“What we do, it’s about promoting empathy and fighting intolerance. It’s needed now more than ever,†Paul Nussebaum, LAMOTH Board President.
History
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust is the oldest Holocaust Survivor founded Museum in the United States. In 1961, a group of Holocaust Survivors taking English as a Second Language classes at Hollywood High School met and realized their deep connection and drive to steward the past. They began meeting to discuss their own personal experiences, the importance of commemorating their lost relatives and friends, and educating future generations. They each possessed precious primary sources, such as photographs, artifacts, documents and memories and decided that these objects needed a permanent home â€" a sanctuary for documentation, commemoration, preservation and education. The space would serve as a physical location where they could memorialize their lost loved ones and educate future generations about the Holocaust.
For over fifty-five years, LAMOTH’s mission of commemoration and free education has remained constant. The Museum continues to dedicate itself as a primary source institution, commemorating those who perished, honoring those who survived, and educating future generations.
The Museum opened its permanent award-winning subterranean building in Pan Pacific Park in October 2010, where it has since welcomed over 250,000 visitors. Many Survivors still remain active on the LAMOTH Board of Directors today.
Architecture
In 2010, led by board member, Randy Schoenberg (whose story of litigating the return of the Klimt painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, from Austria was featured in the film “Woman in Goldâ€), the Museum moved into its award winning permanent home designed by renowned architect Hagy Belzberg.
The Museum’s architecture allows the physical building to be fully integrated into the surrounding park landscape. The architecture of the main Museum building is also designed to immerse the visitor in the horror and darkness of the Holocaust, as the ceilings are lower and the rooms darker in the galleries discussing the concentration camps. While the visitor is submerged in the history of the Holocaust, park-life continues outside of the Museum. In a similar way, there were people outside the ghettos and camps, either neighbors or those halfway across the world, who either did not know or chose to ignore the ways Jews and other targeted groups were victimized and killed during the Holocaust. This juxtaposition is a key component in the architectural design of the building.
The building design received the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission Design Honor Award, the Green Building Design Award, and a Gold LEED rating â€" the national standard of sustainable architecture. The award-winning interior and exterior architecture reflects the poignant history covered in the Museum’s galleries. As visitors move through the Museum, light and space change, mirroring the time in history. The galleries are organized chronologically and cover Jewish life before the Holocaust as well as key historical events between 1933 and 1945. The Museum features a rich collection of primary sources, and LAMOTH holds one of the largest collections in the United States of artifacts from the Holocaust period.
The Museum is divided into three spaces: the internal Museum space, the Goldrich Family Foundation Children’s Memorial, and the outdoor Martyrs Memorial. The Children’s Memorial is an outdoor reflective space where the approximately 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust are remembered. There are 1.2 million holes of various sizes in the walls of the Children’s Memorial, and visitors can write messages to the children who perished. A small Garden of the Righteous pays homage to non-Jews who risked their lives to save.
The Museum’s design also incorporates the Martyr’s Memorial monument, which was built in the early 1990s. This monument consists of six 18-foot high, black, triangular, granite pillars, each one honoring the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. These pillars are also meant to symbolize the crematoria smoke stacks. These outdoor spaces provide students with opportunities for reflection and discussion.
Awards
The Museum has earned the following awards for its outstanding architectural design:
2016: The American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies
2015: Interior Design Best of Year “Best in 10â€: Institutional
2014: American Institute of Architects Institute Honor Award for Architecture
2014: American Institute of Architects Institute Honor Award for Interior Architecture
2013: Ontario Association of Architects (Canada) - Design Excellence Award
2013: International Space Design Award - Idea-Tops â€" Nomination Award, Best Design Nomination of Cultural Space
2012: Extraordinary Vision Award
2011: Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission Architecture Award
2011: AIA CC Design Award
2011: AIA | LA Honor Award
2011: Interior Design Magazine Best of the Year Award: Institutional
2011: Annual Design Review Award: Honorable Mention
2011: Architectural Foundation of Los Angeles Design/Green Honor Award
2011: The American Architecture Award by Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design
2011: Green Good Design Award
2009: City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission (CAC): Unbuilt Design Honor Award
2008: Allen Matkins Green Building Award presented by L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa
Exhibitions
LAMOTH has created a tour that enables curiosity, experiential learning, and reflection. Technology plays an important role in enhancing the visitor experience at the Museum. The Museum interactive technology, including video and audio exhibits, increase access to original historical artifacts and provide visitors with different layers of information and learning.
The Memory Pool in The World That Was Gallery
The Memory Pool interactive touch table holds thousands of photographs that float through a screen of electronically produced images. Visitors can touch an image on the screen and it will be brought to the foreground, with a brief history of the chosen artifact beside it. By exploring the table, visitors learn about the rich and diverse identity of Jewish communities before the Holocaust.
Tree of Testimony
In collaboration with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, LAMOTH installed a state-of-the-art, 70-screen video sculpture that displays the 52,000 survivor testimonies from the USC Shoah database. Visitors can use their audio guides to listen to any of the 70 testimonies that are being highlighted. Since there are over 50,000 stories and only 70 screens, each Survivor is guaranteed to be shown at least once a year, ensuring that each visitor experiences a different testimony. At any given time, there are survivors speaking in as many as 32 different languages, including Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Ladino, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sign, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Yiddish, which allows for visitors from around the world to understandâ€"no matter which languages they speak.
18 Camps Interactive
The 18 Camps interactive touch-screens provide an inside look at examples of transit, labor, and death camps throughout Europe. In Judaism, the number 18’s corresponding letters are the word “Chai,†for life. The screens allow visitors to access Holocaust survivor testimonies, along with photos and music, to enhance the visitor experience.
The Sobibor Model
Sobibor was one of the 6 main death camps established by the Nazis and was part of the Operation Reinhard program to murder all the Jews of Poland. Survivor Thomas Blatt built a model of the Sobibor Extermination camp solely from memory, and it is permanently displayed at LAMOTH. There is also a video screen above the model where Thomas talks about his experience in the camp. Thomas was a part of the 250 prisoners who carefully planned and executed their escape from Sobibor. Only about 50 survived, and Thomas was one of them.
Education and Resources
Audio-Guide Technology
Any visitor to the Museum is able to check out an audio-guide and headphones free of charge. Each audio-guide starts with a series of instructions for the unfamiliar user. Once the visitor has passed the introduction, s/he will reach a map of the Museum (the homepage). From this map, the visitor can navigate through by pressing on the room that s/he is in or by typing in the three-digit code seen on the photograph/video/artifact. Each artifact has a corresponding section in the audio-guide.
Share Our Stories
Share Our Stories is a program that connects kids from under-resourced schools with Holocaust Survivors for conversation, learning, and exploration. Students visit the Museum for a customized tour of LAMOTH, including personal exploration maps and breakout reflection sessions. Holocaust Survivors and Museum staff then visit the schools, giving students the opportunity to hear a Survivor's life story and engage with the survivor in the classroom. Finally, students participate in a reflective art workshop, working with survivors to create art responding to the survivor's narrative.
L’Dough V’Dough
L’Dough V’Dough comes from the Hebrew saying “l’dor v’dor,†which means “from generation to generation.†This program brings together students and Survivors to braid and bake challah while sharing stories. L’Dough V’Dough gives students the opportunity to form personal connections with Survivors while learning about the Survivors' life experiences. While the challah is baking, students and Survivors participate in an "Object Share," in which each participant shares a photo or object that is personally significant or reflects his or her family history.
Voices of History Programs
LAMOTH's Voices of History programs offer students the opportunity to create meaningful artistic reflections in various mediums. Students learn about the Holocaust through primary sources, informative sessions with Museum staff, and dialogue with Holocaust Survivors. Students then interview Survivors and collaborate with them to develop their ideas into short films, theater performances, music compositions, and photography exhibits.
The final projects capture the personal stories of the Survivors, the students' understanding of this history, and their dedication to shaping the future of Holocaust education.
The films students have created can be found on the Museum Vimeo page that is open to the public. https://vimeo.com/lamothfilm/videos
B’nai Mitzvah: Acts of Memory
LAMOTH’s B’nai Mitzvah: Acts of Memory project pairs a child preparing for their bar/bat mitzvah with a child who perished in the Holocaust before reaching bar/bat mitzvah age. The student participating in this project receives the name of the child, some information about them, and suggestions for how they can remember the child, such as mentioning him or her in their speech from the bimah, or doing mitzvot in the name of the child.
Those who wish to devote more time to the B’nai Mitzvah: Acts of Memory project can do additional research on the child, or raise money to donate to Holocaust education as a Mitzvah Project.
The Museum offers a number of special opportunities for those living in the Los Angeles area or those who can travel to Los Angeles.
- Customized Museum Tour: As the child is preparing for their bar/bat mitzvah, LAMOTH invites their family to the Museum for a customized tour. The tour includes an introduction to Holocaust history, as well as to Jewish life prior to the Holocaust, personalized to focus on the experiences of Jewish children, like the one the child is remembering.
- Research Assistance: LAMOTH staff can help with additional research on the child being remembered.
- Children’s Memorial: The child can visit the Goldrich Family Foundation Children’s Memorial and add the remembered child’s name.
- L’Dough V’Dough: A L’Dough V’Dough session can be organized for friends and family, with donations going to support bus transportation to the Museum for underfunded schools. Family and friends can have a good time braiding challah, talking with a Survivor, and raising money to bring students- many of whom have never been on a field trip- to the Museum to learn about the Holocaust.
- Fundraising: Families participating in the B’nai Mitzvah program can organize a fundraiser for the Museum. Just $500 can pay for bus transportation for one school with no field trip budget. LAMOTH staff can also help families get started on a 4-week LeftOverCash for Good fundraiser, which involves turning friends’ and neighbors’ unused foreign cash into funds for the Museum.
Mission Statement
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH) has a two-fold mission that has remained constant since its inception in 1961: commemoration and education.
- Commemoration: LAMOTH dedicates itself as a primary source institution, one that commemorates those who perished and those who survived by housing the precious artifacts that miraculously weathered the Holocaust.
- Education: LAMOTH provides free Holocaust education to the public, particularly students from under-funded schools and underserved communities. We are committed to providing opportunities for dialogue with Holocaust Survivors, who are the living embodiment of history.
See also
- History of the Jews in Los Angeles
- Jews and Judaism in Los Angeles, California topics
- Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service of Austrian Service Abroad â€" LAMOTH participates.
References
External links
- Official Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust website
- Shapedscape.com: Green Roof Project at Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust