A visit to the Museum of Tolerance

One example of an exhibit that I felt was effective in getting a message across to the visitor was the Holocaust exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Here, the focus of the exhibit was to put the visitor in the environment enabling them to feel compassion for those who went through extermination camps. By putting me in a mock extermination camp environment, I was able to nearly fully understand the extent and horror of those camps during WWII. The Museum of Tolerance set up the entrance to this exhibit like a prisoner would enter an extermination camp. Men and women (visitors) were initially split up and brought into 'shower' rooms. These life size rooms without windows, made of concrete were where the first videos of actual prisoners going to the shower rooms could be seen. Next, we walked into a dark, dimly lit hall with models, exhibits, videos, pictures, and diagrams lining it. The walls were made to look like barbed wire fences of the extermination camps. It was an erie experience. Another thing the exhibit did was make us take a baseball like card of an actual prisoner. As we walked through the exhibit, we were able to put our card into the diagrams where information would be revealed on our prisoners' biography. In some cases the prisoners died half way through the exhibits. The exhibit nearly gave me chills. I have images of the pictures and exhibit models vividly engrained into my mind. The history of the holocaust and details I learned that day will not be easily forgotten.