Museum Of Tolerance Research Paper

Sandra
ESL 33B
Mr. Brock Klein
December 2, 2009

Los Angeles is a busy city that has a lot of great places to visit. For example, restaurants, little places to shop and most important educational places like the Museum of Tolerance. I chose the museum of tolerance to write my new assignment for my class because the name fascinated me and it is a place where I can go with my family. This museum gives examples of tolerance to its visitors by the setups it has inside. The museum is located on the west side of Los Angeles on Pico Boulevard. To enter this museum is not easy, they have checked by security two times before you go inside the building. They check you at the entrance of the parking lot and again after you pay for your tickets
to get inside. A lot of people come to this museum. On my first visit to this museum I saw a lot of families and students listening to live presentations. This museum has two floors. The one on the top is about history of American Indians, African Americans, and their ability to make artifacts or animal figures with simple materials like banana trees and bamboo. The other floor takes you to see a completely different and shocking environment. Los Angeles is hell. First of all, going to the first floor is like going to a secret room down the earth, just as going down to hell. The first impression I got when I saw the setup of the first room was fear. The pictures on the walls, the video tapes on the big screen televisions showing images of black and white people being discriminated, and others being killed was shocking to me. Original videos of women and kids being separated to kill them in different ways by Nazi soldiers. Example, letting them die in a concentration camp by hunger, in freezing temperatures with no clothes on them and burning them up alive it was just like dieing in hell. Videos of dead bodies everywhere and most cruel to see, dead bodies of babies on the dirt like just ordinary dead animals. The concrete floor, the naked walls wearing nothing but the rich color of red brick and coolness that it feels in these rooms is frightening . Continuing walking with my family in these dark hallways, I saw on my left side a showcase on the wall. In this showcase there were many important artifacts, but I got interested in one in specific, it was a rifle that was used in World War Two in the 1940s.
This rifle is about three feet long and it is located in one of the hallways in the Museum of Tolerance. It is in a showcase, between the corner and a Nazi uniform. On the bottom of it, there is a small gun, some insignias with German logos on it. All these artifacts including the rifle were facing south like going to hell. The part where you hold this weapon in position to shoot is wide and the part where the bullets come out is long. This weapon was made with three kinds of materials. These are metal, leather and wood. It has screws on the sides to attach the metal, and the leather to the wood to make this rifle stable. On the top side of this German rifle, close to the bottom there is a metal part that help the soldier aim and shoot in the right target. Also, this rifle has an interesting piece of metal with the shape of two key rings ant the end of it, called bayonet. The bayonet was used as a second choice weapon by connecting to it a knife in the metal ring, making this way the rifle long and creating like an Indian lance for soldiers when they run out of bullets. Besides that this old rifle has a couple of small pieces of leathers on the side, in the long part of the rifle which it seams that they have being affected through the years having this look of soft material, and a long piece of leather nailed each end to the long and bottom of the rifle forming like a hanger of a woman’s purse. Making this weapon an easy artifact to be holding all the time. Through all these years the rifle’s color has faded. I can tell by some areas of the rifle that had once a shining light brown color on it. Talking about another important detail from this rifle, is that it has a long crack in the middle of the bottom part of the rifle. It almost looks like an angry lightning when it is raining. Looking at this rifle closely I noticed that every little open line in the wood it has a dangerous pointing pieces.
I believe weapons are one of the most terrible inventions that human mind has created in this world.
Human technology of weapons keeps improving, and I am afraid that could be the cause of the end of the world one day. In my opinion weapons should had never be invented because it makes human destroy each other. This old specific rifle that was used for Nazis soldiers to take away many human lives in the 1940s is an example of what humans do to each other with these dangerous artifacts. Thank God world war two is over. However, the problem with weapons like this rifle and racist people have continued all these years. Here in Los Angeles we have a serious problem with weapons like 45mm Beretta & 9mm Colt and very possible weapons like this rifle still being used for those people that like to kill innocent people. Most of the time news is about criminals transporting illegal weapons or people killing others for racial reasons. As Jewish people were killed by the Nazis group, many people are being killed today by these groups of gangsters from different cultures. Using artifacts like this rifle to keep doing atrocities to people that are vulnerable to them. It is sad to say but I think living around these violent gangs and their weapons is just living in the time of World War Two. The only difference is that today we have a government that do not support racist people, but the government does not have control of all the weapons that are being distributed by these gangs. Example, our kids are not safe in schools anymore because some of these kids bring weapons to their classrooms. I think the museum of tolerance shows the reality of what is our life living in L.A. with these evil people around us. I feel frightened to know that weapons like this rifle are being used out there with the same hate that Nazis soldiers used these weapons against Jewish people in the 1940s. Unfortunately, here in L.A we all have to suffer the evil activities of the gang
members, specially the new generation of Nazis. For example, on April 20, 2009 some Nazis now called ‘skinhead gang’ were arrested. “Investigators say there were at least eight victims, and they were targeted because of their ethnic back ground or nationality. Few details on the crimes were released, but investigators said one of the victims was a Jewish man. They added that the skinhead group was promoting its message of hate, by seeking to recruit new members at a local high school, inviting students to concert or barbecues.” This must be shocking for everybody, especially for one of the biggest communities that Los Angeles has, the Jewish community. They are more than 550,000 people. Only God knows what Jewish people feel living close to the museum of tolerance and see this rifle that only has bad memories to them. A place where people can see, hear and even feel the moments of hell Jewish people had in World War Two. People like Robert, whom I asked his opinion about the first floor of the museum, told me that he was shocked, uncomfortable to be in the gas chamber because it was cold, dark and he felt uninviting. Also, it was disturbing for him because of the atrocities displayed on the screen and stories told on the screen about babies being thrown out like rubber dolls. Also, he was touched to learn about the sad story of Solera, a Jewish little girl who was killed in September 1942 in the gas chamber. This old and broken rifle which probably got broken by being used from the barrel by Nazis to hit Jewish heads will make some people satisfied. These actions make humans learn to not replicate these atrocities. This rifle is part of the museum of tolerance. The rifle is behind a showcase, where everybody can see it and learn about its history. In addition, I think living in a place like L.A with all of these criminals make people be strong and ready to take any difficult moment in their lives. The Jewish community is an example to follow because they survived once living in a place where they had no rights to protect themselves and they have had to learn how to survive in this new century. I think we are going to have the problem of weapons and people with bad intensions to others for a long time. I think it is human nature to destroy each other. Especially, those people that live in the poor areas of L.A. where these gangs fight and kill each other. The people that live around them will always live in hell.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Skinheads…)
“Skinhead Arrested.” Abclocal.go.com. KABC-TV Los Angeles, CA. 20 Apr. 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2009.

“Greater Los Angeles.” Jewishla.org. The Jewish Federation-Greater Los Angeles. 21 Apr. 2009. Web. 29 Nov. 2009.