A Museum of Hate

By James Willwerth/Los Angeles

"TALKIN' TO YOU, NIGGER," A voice hisses as the visitor walks through the gloomy passageway. "Faggot," taunts another. With every step comes a whispered insult, a mean murmur: "Loudmouthed kike! Lousy gook! Dumb Polack! Camel jockey! Red-neck bastard! Sexist pig! Goddam beaner! Get whitey!" A wolf whistle rings out and a leering voice calls, "Hey, baby." And with every message of hate, the feeling of alarm grows. "What you gonna do about it, Jew boy?"

For a few unsettling moments the visitor almost forgets where he is, almost forgets that this nightmare of multicultural hostility is taking place in something called the Whisper Gallery. The piercing experience is part of an extraordinary new museum that opens this week: the Beit Hashoah -- Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Built for $50 million by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human-rights and research organization named after the famed Austrian Jew who helped bring more than a thousand Nazi war criminals to justice, the museum aims to teach tolerance -- by holding a mirror up to visitors of every race and ethnic group, reflecting their prejudices and conflicts. In the giant hall, which covers half a city block, visitors will be able to walk through a multimedia history of hate, ranging from haunting ( scenes of a Nazi concentration camp to the present-day horrors of the Los Angeles riots.

The Beit Hashoah is special because it insists that spectators be part of the show, using the latest tricks of interactive technology generally found only in science museums. At computerized displays, visitors are challenged on their attitudes toward everything from affirmative action to homosexuality. At every turn they must make choices. Thus the museum becomes both an educational tool and a research tool that gauges public opinion.

When Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center's founder, began planning the Beit Hashoah in the early 1980s, he envisioned a rather conventional Holocaust museum. But he soon realized that it should be more. "We're talking about the eradication of hatred," he explains. "We have no guarantee that future Holocaust victims will be Jews." Karl Katz, a museum designer who helped plan the Beit Hashoah, recalls intense arguments about the plans: "You ask yourself what happens between the time a human being is born and the time he incinerates someone. How do you stop that attitude? We tried lots of things." The result is a series of exhibits with broad scope and clear relevance to modern society. "If people simply go to see a Holocaust museum, they'll be surprised," observes UCLA Asian-studies director Don Nakanishi. "This is about our present and future."

The surprises begin when visitors are greeted by a smarmy host provocateur, who gloats from a jumble of video screens. "Hey, there! You look like average people," he says. "I mean, you've gotta be above average or you wouldn't be in a museum in the first place, right?" Pause. "Of course, we all have our limits. And we should. There's no reason to accept the lousy way certain people drive, f'instance -- not to mention how the you-know-whos do business. But I can tell you're not like them!" The host, who pops up regularly throughout the exhibits, points to doors marked PREJUDICED and NOT PREJUDICED. "You know which to choose," he purrs. Predictably (and the museum can sometimes be a bit heavy-handed in its predictability), visitors who choose the NOT PREJUDICED door find it is locked.

Beyond the PREJUDICED door, a monitor shows a white doctor at a cocktail party confiding, "Guess who moved in next door?" The camera shifts to a second group. "I mean, right next door. Can you imagine?" exclaims a black businessman. The camera travels again. "These people, they live like animals!" complains a wealthy white matron. An Asian restaurant owner adds, "You know what they're like -- the way they raise their children." Contends a thirtyish white man: "Sure wouldn't want my daughter . . ." ". . . son . . ." says the Asian. ". . . sister . . ." says a Hispanic woman. The matron finishes: ". . . marrying one of them."

Further inside, visitors encounter historical exhibits on such episodes as the Turkish slaughter of Armenians and the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia. Displays about the U.S. include a map locating active hate groups and a multiscreen show on the hardships of Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights campaigns. A time line shows that the Iroquois were condemned to reservations two years before the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

One of the best uses of interactive technology is in the exhibit dealing with last year's riots in Los Angeles. Viewers can move through a time line detailing events before and during the disturbance as well as the media's role, heroic acts and the conflagration's aftermath. By hitting a few buttons, people can call up interviews with community residents, police, fire fighters and gang members. The computer asks visitors questions about their views of the episode, and those who answer can find out how other people responded.

Mounting a Holocaust exhibit that was distinctive from others around the world took some imagination. An eight-story Tower of Witness will be embedded with hundreds of photos found in death camps. Just as striking is the re- creation of a concentration camp. It begins with a tactile shock: the museum's soft carpeting suddenly gives way to rough concrete. The smells and shadings of stone and steel fill the room. To continue, visitors must choose between passageways labeled ABLE BODIED or CHILDREN AND OTHERS. They have been told the second door meant death for boys and girls and the infirm. The moment is almost paralyzing.

The passageways lead to another harsh stone room with gray video monitors on which scenes of horror are narrated by offstage voices. German soldiers surround a hospital and throw newborn babies out of the upper windows. Men and women stripped of even artificial limbs go to the gas chamber while an avuncular SS colonel insists they will not be harmed. At the exit, the backlighted words of Simon Wiesenthal offer the museum's justification for re- creating such pain: ONLY KNOW THAT HOPE LIVES WHEN PEOPLE REMEMBER.

. Along with admirers, the Beit Hashoah already has critics. Muslim organizations charge that the museum ignores the plight of Palestinians. New York Times senior writer Judith Miller, author of One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust, accuses the museum of "vulgarization," noting that some Jewish scholars consider the "sound and light" approach disrespectful.

One advantage of all the high-tech gimmickry, though, is that it will attract young people. "If you can communicate to a bright 17-year-old, you have communicated to everyone," says director Gerald Margolis. Without question, the museum's overall message comes through clearly. At the end of the tolerance exhibits, the host provocateur appears one last time. "That's it," he says, peering from behind a mask out of a big bank of monitors. "I am giving up all responsibility." The screens then dissolve into the words WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? YOU ARE!