SINCE THE Museum of Tolerance opened in 1993, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda and Darfur have been inscribed in the book of mass extermination.Clearly, there is no lack of work to do for an L.A. institution dedicated to documenting the human race's blood lust while fighting prejudice in hopes of remaking homo sapiens in a more humane image.
"I was not that naive to think that evil would be expunged," says Rabbi Marvin Hier, looking back on the 31 years since he founded the museum's parent human rights and Holocaust remembrance organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "But I never thought that so soon after the world became aware of the ovens of Auschwitz we would have places like these . . . that people would have the chutzpah to say, 'So what? We can do what we want,' and get away with it."
Images of the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein are among the attractions at the Museum of Tolerance's Youth Action Lab, a high-tech classroom and exhibition space for teaching elementary through high school kids about prejudice. The Los Angeles museum has just finished a $13-million makeover of its auditorium and several exhibits.
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