From Hate to Hope: Museum of Tolerance

"In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit." 

- Anne Frank

Upon my arrival to the Museum of Tolerance, I find out that I needed to make reservations to get inside, so I wandered around the city for two hours until I finally entered an experience worth sharing. I learned about the history of the center and their dedicated vision to educate and challenge visitors to understand the Holocaust in a contemporary context and to confront all forms of prejudice and discrimination in our world today.

It all started with Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor who was forced to work as a slave laborer in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and then dedicated his life to track down fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. With a reputation as a storyteller, he became a writer and the author of several memoirs containing tales of the actual event.

With a mission statement dedicated to repair the world one step at a time, the Simon Wiesenthal Center was established in 1977, and the Center’s educational arm became The Museum of Tolerance, which was founded in 1993. The program generates changes by confronting anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, and it promotes human rights and dignity. It fosters tolerance and understanding through community involvement, educational outreach and social action.

The building is a unique multimedia museum examining racism and prejudice around the world. The museum seems to attract people with troubling pasts. As I enter the center, the sites and the sounds of the city slowly diminish, and the unveiling of the museum quickly grabs my attention. Everybody coming to the museum gets an audio guide experience that enables visitors to seamlessly connect with exhibits throughout the journey in a personal way. I was able to get context about artifacts and themes on interactive screens throughout the exhibit space.

I knew that the Holocaust was a horrific event in Jewish history, one of the largest genocide in which approximately 6 millions Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, but I also learned that there was an additional 5 million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders, bringing the total to approximately 11 million killings, of which, 2 million were children. These people were thrown out of their houses to live like animals, 10 to 15 person per room, they worked hard slave labor seven days a week and obeyed the Nazis for survival, not knowing if their family members were alive or not, but knowing that they could die next:  People were dying every minute from disease and starvation.

Tibor Rubin is a Holocaust survivor who was awarded a Metal of Honor. He spent 14 months in a concentration camp where his parents, sister and brothers were killed. After the war, he moved to the U.S and joined the US army and he was able to save the lives of over 40 people during the Korean War using his survival skills that he learned during the Holocaust. He remembers his horrible childhood, but his story is courageous.

This center is a leading international Jewish NGO named in memory of the great Nazi hunters. Simon devoted his life to encourage people to learn the lessons from the horrors of World War II and the genocide against the Jewish people so it wouldn’t happen again. Everything that I saw at the museum of tolerance is really built to encourage us to learn from history and also to do some critical thinking and to take personal responsibility for our own actions. The good part about this museum is about contemporary issues, international terrorism, the plight of children around the world, as well as hate crimes right here in the United States. 

The museum is a tribute to The Holocaust Survivors and it is very important that we honor the lives of the families that didn’t survive the concentration camps and that we show respect to the ones that were able to escape. We must remember the past even though sometimes we don’t want to, but to make a difference in the world, we have to learn from previous mistakes.