Rothstein, Wecker (& Gruber) on Holocaust Museums

Los Angeles, Ca. Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. Photos: Samuel Gruber (2011)

Rothstein, Wecker (& Gruber) on Holocaust Museums
by Samuel D. Gruber

The New York Times recently ran a thoughtful and thorough review of the new Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles. Unlike several previous articles in other publications that deal mostly with the architecture – or architecture as landscape – Edward Rothstein mostly discusses the exhibitions, presentation and tries to find underlining themes and messages beyond the specifics of Holocaust chronology and the generalities that such an event should happen “Never Again.” In an on-line post-script to the times articles Menachem Wecker has posted related piece in the Houston Chronicle. Both articles ask the question are there too many Holocaust Museums? (and perhaps by extension, too much Holocaust?), and more delicately, what is the role of a Holocaust Museum so many years after the main event, and especially now as the last generation of survivors ages and dies.

Both authors see the continued need for Holocaust education, and the role museums can play. And yet as Rothstein says, despite all the new museums “at the same time exaggerated and wrong-headed Holocaust and Nazi analogies have proliferated at an even greater rate than the museums themselves. It is as if familiarity is breeding analogy, and analogy is unaffected by how many institutions.”

Of course it is foolish to think museums are going to stop intolerance. At best they can provide the information and narrative needs for individuals and groups to defend against ludicrous denials, and to take the offensive to teach a new generation. Even the best museums – as places one chooses to go to – are essentially passive and reactive. Museums need the response of the individual mind and heart to “turn on” what they offer. Museums can be repositories of memory, but they are not memory themselves any more than a hard drive full of stored data represents real intelligence and knowledge. But the need for such repositories is essential; they are the well to which thinking people must continually return to confront horrible truths.

Should Holocaust Museums be changing? The first were opened decades ago in a pre-digital age. Museums must, of course, keep up with the times in order to maintain and expand their audience. But unlike many museums, Holocaust museums were founded on a moral truth, with a moral center. They must not deviate from this, they must not dilute their story, they must not pander for audience and commercialize their content. Holocaust museums occupy a borderland on the edge of sacred space but dangerously close to entertainment centers. It is a line that is crossed at great peril. Our recent and ongoing wars have already been turned into video games. What next? Curators beware.

MUSEUM REVIEW; Bearing Witness Beyond the Witnesses

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN (March 24, 2011), The New York Times

LOS ANGELES -- Is the Holocaust too much with us? Or if not the Holocaust, then Holocaust museums?

It can sometimes seem so. The Association of Holocaust Organizations has 293 institutional members around the world, each at least partly devoted to commemoration. The association counts 16 major Holocaust museums in the United States, in Richmond, Houston, New York, Washington and other cities to which Jewish survivors immigrated after World War II. And they are still being built. Two years ago the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center opened near Chicago. And last fall the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust opened here in a new $15.5 million building. It is actually the city's second such museum; the other, the Museum of Tolerance, examines the Holocaust's connection to its main theme and welcomes 350,000 visitors a year.

But the answer to these questions is not easy for it seems that while almost all of these institutions have developed out of the desires of survivors to offer testimony, command remembrance, educate the young and ensure that nothing similar occurs, at the same time exaggerated and wrong-headed Holocaust and Nazi analogies have proliferated at an even greater rate than the museums themselves. It is as if familiarity is breeding analogy, and analogy is unaffected by how many institutions meticulously survey the horrors of calculated, systematic murder on a mass scale. The new museum here, in Pan Pacific Park, not far from the traditionally Jewish district of Fairfax Avenue, should not, of course, bear the brunt of these broodings. It does, however, in its successes and failures, indicate some of the challenges that will face Holocaust museums when there are no longer any remaining survivors and they commemorate a receding historical trauma.

The Holocaust museum here is a strange hybrid, for not only is it the country's newest, it is also, its literature asserts, the oldest, tracing its origins to 1961, when a group of survivors studying English as a Second Language at Hollywood High School decided it would be important to display some of the objects that had survived with them and that might, in a museum setting, bear witness.

Read the Whole Story Here

Skokie, Illinois. Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. Photos: Samuel Gruber (2010)

Experts: Don't say 'never again' to Holocaust museums

By Menachem Wecker (March 31, 2011) Houston Chronicle

Must Holocaust museums evolve as they approach an age without any living survivors? As the Nazis recede further into the past, is there a danger of museums devoted to Holocaust memory becoming static?A recent New York Times article by Edward Rothstein raised these provocative questions and has some experts worried about the view that Holocaust museums need to become more than one-trick ponies.

"When you say that a Holocaust museum must not be static you're implying, very strongly, that being static is bad," says Walter Reich, former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Stagnancy could mean bankruptcy for clothing designers, but what's true of fashion isn't true about the "catastrophic vulnerabilities of human nature," says Reich, now a professor at George Washington University.

"That history and those vulnerabilities are fundamentally static," he says. "It should be portrayed in a way that depicts exactly what happened. It should not become a vessel for current trends, concerns or fashions and should not stop being a museum about a discrete historical event."

Ira Perry, director of marketing and public relations at the Holocaust Museum Houston, agreed.

"Holocaust museums do not necessarily need to evolve into something else," he said. "They serve a distinct role in honoring the victims' histories and the survivors' legacies."

Read the whole story here.

Also Gavriel Rosenfeld's October 2010 review of the Los Angeles Museum's architecture, publishing the The Forward, before the official opening.

Stealth Museum

The New Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust Gives New Meaning to Green Architecture

Los Angeles Holocaust Museum. Photos: Belzberg Architects.
See more photos here.

USA: In Los Angeles, a New (and another) Holocaust Museum Opens

The Jewish journal.com reports that a new Holocaust museum will open in Los Angeles next week. While many people assume that the Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance serves as LA's memorial center for Shoah victims and educational center for Shoah victims, that is not really proved to be the case. The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust which traces its origins to 1961, really fills that role. It now finally has a permanent and notable home, designed by Hagy Belzberg and Belzberg Architects, a small (12) firm of unconventional designers committed to green design. Belzberg and the musuem already won the Design Concept Award from the 38th Annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards (2008). Belzberg is also the architect of the Southern California Center for Jewish Life now in the planning and fund raising stage in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Holocaust museums: L.A. and the rest of the world
by Jonah Lowenfeld

Next weekend, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust publicly opens the plate-glass doors of its brand-new home at the northwest corner of Pan Pacific Park for the first time. Observant visitors might be drawn to the building’s grass-covered roof, or the retro-futuristic shape of the windows, or the repeated use of triangles in a design that seems to nod to the six three-sided black pillars of the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument that sit just outside the museum.

Indeed, L.A.-based architect Hagy Belzberg’s design for the new museum does not look like many other buildings in Los Angeles. Belzberg’s design performs an admirable artistic and political feat: It has nestled a small museum inside a popular and much-utilized public park without raising many hackles among neighborhood residents. And the result is a handsome new home for the collections, with an unbeatable address.

Belzberg’s building doesn’t look much like other Holocaust museums, either. Over the past 20 years, cities around the world have erected structures that attempt to preserve and disseminate Holocaust memory through designs by some of the world’s most prominent architects. Each of these Holocaust museums and memorials bears the unique imprint of its architect, while responding to all the usual architectural challenges — relating to the site, budget and local politics, among others. And Belzberg’s museum is no exception. To best understand the new museum, though, it helps to be familiar with a few of its most influential predecessors.

Read the entire article here.

USA: More on Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Rabbi Magnin and Hugo Ballin

USA: More on Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Rabbi Magnin and Hugo Ballin

I'm happy that my blog entries and ISJM E-Report are beginning to draw responses - mostly positive and often informative. As readership expands, I hope that this will continue.

Historian George M. Goodwin (of the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Society and author of many significant articles on synagogues and other topics) contacted me about my piece on the upcoming restoration of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and its murals by Hugo Ballin. I am posting most photos of the synagogue, some are mine, and some are by Paul Rocheleau, who has given permission for their use. Paul photographed the synagogue for our book American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community (Rizzoli, 2003).



George Goodwin writes "...I grew up at WBT. Rabbi Magnin was my great-uncle (my mother's uncle). My siblings and I were very close to him. He and his wife Evelyn were almost a third set of grandparents. No doubt about it: he was a giant among congregational rabbis for much of the 20th century. I tend to think that his connections to Hollywood have been somewhat overemphasized, however. While the moguls provided some key gifts, they did not actively participate. Indeed, most WBT members had nothing to do with the world of entertainment. One of Rabbi Magnin's most important themes was the patriotism of American Jews. Unfortunately, in this regard, he was somewhat of a reactionary who supported a number of successful politicians, especially Nixon but also Reagan. Rabbi Magnin was a great orator, who also had a radio show and a newspaper column. Indeed, he was a celebrity among rabbis and other clergy. Part of Rabbi Magnin's success was due to his talented and loyal colleagues, many of whom remained at WBT their entire careers. The most obvious examples are his two rabbinic colleagues, but there were many others, including educators and camp directors.

Unfortunately, much of the recent publicity about the Temple has neglected Rabbi Magnin's immediate successor, Harvey Fields, who presided for about 20 years and only recently retired. He was responsible for the idea and construction of the new "campus" in west Los Angeles, which most significantly includes a day school. He was also the mentor of Rabbi Leder [the current rabbi].

As you know, the Wilshire Blvd. facility was never abandoned. Indeed, the western campus was built four or five decades after Jews had departed for the far suburbs. There was an unsuccessful attempt to merge with a Beverly Hills congregation. The first satellite was the summer and weekend camp in Malibu. Eventually a second camp was built nearby. I am not aware of comparable congregational facilities in this country.

It would seem that WBT has been thoroughly successful. Nobody knows how many younger generations have remained Jews, however. And of course Reform is no longer Classical. Indeed, there would be much about today's WBT that Rabbi Magnin would not accept. Indeed, my brother was not allowed to wear a kippah at his own wedding!

I have always loved Hugo Ballin's murals. Indeed, they always meant more to me than liturgy. I recently visited the Griffith Park Observatory and believe that his murals there are relatively insignificant. For the murals alone, WBT must be preserved."

To read more about Rabbi Magnin, see the series of articles by Reva Clar and William M. Kramer in Western States Jewish History vols 17 (1984) and 19 (1986).

"Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin in Stockton (1914-1915: Rehearsal for Los Angeles; Northern California)" (17/2)

"Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin and the Modernization of Los Angeles Jewry; Part 1" (19/3)

"Rabbi Edgar Magnin and the Modernizing of Los Angeles Jewry; Part 2; Los Angeles" (19/4)

Los Angeles's Famed Wilshire Boulevard Temple to be Restored

Los Angeles's Famed Wilshire Boulevard Temple to be Restored
by Samuel D. Gruber

The Wilshire Boulevard Temple (the third home of Congregation B’nai B’rith of Los Angeles), is about to undergo a massive multi-million dollar restoration. The project, which will probably cost more the $30 million is part of an ambitious program of the congregation to renew its historic sanctuary and campus, and to build a new facility that will flourish in the 21st century. In doing this, Wilshire is following a new trend in American synagogues – one that we might call back-to-roots, or at least back-to-the-city. After decades of expanding further and further into the suburbs and exurbs, American Reform and Conservative Jews are coming back in large numbers to urban areas. A t the very least, widely dispersed Jewish communities are finding that the historic locations of many synagogues in downtowns and early suburbs, are conveniently located at points central to the largest numbers of their congregants. Wilshire Boulevard already has expanded into in the exurbs, with two active campuses. The new project, for which the congregation is raising $100 million, will re-establish the site of the 1920s sanctuary as the heart and soul of the congregation.

To read more about the restoration plans, see recent stories in The Forward Newspaper, and a lengthy piece in The Los Angeles Times.

I have written at length in my book American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community, about the architecture of the building and its place in the inter-war synagogue building boom that seemed to transform American Judaism, until the trend was overcome and overwhelmed by the Great Depression and World War II. Many large synagogue centers of the 1920s never recovered and were forced to close their doors (at least for Jewish use) by the 1950s. Wilshire Boulevard Temple has managed to survive. Its triumphant and sometimes overwhelming sanctuayr inteiror is intact, though decades of LA pollution have dulled and darkened the once brilliant colors of the murals and rich gilding.

The restoration plans follow the successful c. $25 million restoration of the near-contemporary Temple Emanuel in New York, which has been returned that enormous synaoggue to glory. Simple cleaning now makes the richly decorated ceiling visible from belo, and the whole interior The Wilshire work also follows the completion of recent restoration of the Burbank City Hall and the Griffith Obervatory in the LA area, both of which house mural programs by Jewish artist and filmmaker Hugo Ballin (1879-1956), who created the tremendous narrative wall painting program for Wilshire Temple. Ballin was an admired artist who had painted the decorations in the State Capitol building in Madison Wisconsin in 1912, and had moved to Hollywood where he became a prolific and accomplished film artist, designer and silent film director. After the Wilshire Boulevard Temple commission he returned to painting and created the murals in the Griffith Park observatory and the Los Angeles Times Building (1934), and other works. Brenda Levin, the architect overseeing the Wilshire Temple project, is a longtime temple member who also headed the restoration of the Griffith Observatory, the Autry National Center and the Bradbury Building.

Wilshire Boulevard Temple was designed by Abram M. Edelman, S. Tilden Norton (honorary president of the Temple), and David C. Allison. Edelman was the son of the congregation’s first rabbi, and had designed the congregation’s previous building. Norton was a member of the congregation, and had built the first and second homes of Temple Sinai. The new Wilshire Temple (completed in 1929) was the dream of Rabbi Edgar Magnin who over a career of several decades, managed to meld a Jewish identity for Los Angeles that joined pioneers and Hollywood moguls. Magnin came to B’nai B’rith as assistant rabbi in 1915 and from that time on he championed a new synagogue building. It was the involvement of the Hollywood movie makers after World War I, the same time Magnin became senior rabbi (1919), that allowed the building to be erected and decorated. Mostly displaced New Yorkers with marginal religious interest, the Hollywood producers were attracted to the media-savvy Magnin’s image of a popular modern Judaism. Even his use of Ballin to create a representaiton narrative of Jewish history - which the Warner Brothers funded - domonstated his savvy. The mural, which encircles the sanctuary, can be seen as either an updated an illustrated history scroll, or as a unwinding "film" of the Jewish past.

Rabbi Magnin also foresaw the movement of the city, and especially its Jewish population, westward. In this, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple was both typical and precocious in anticipating the increased suburbanization of the American Jewish life. Because the new synagogue “was beyond the car line” it anticipated the soon near-total Los Angeles dependence on the automobile over the street-car, an urban-suburban transformation that would not affect most Jewish communities until after World War II. It remains to be seen if Rabbi Magin’s CEO-style successor Rabbi Steve Leder is as prescient a planner. If he is, then Los Angeles will have (again) a major and spectacular downtown Jewish center.