Museum
It is ironic that the Los Angeles City Council’s exemption to the city’s anti-apartheid ordinance has been granted to help finance construction of the Museum of Tolerance focusing on the Holocaust (Metro, May 14). As Jews, we do not believe that commemorating past oppression excuses contemporary injustice. There must have been other companies not doing business in South Africa that could have underwritten the Wiesenthal Center’s project, despite Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s overly technical argument that the council rarely grants exemptions. The lesson of the Holocaust is not just that it was a tragedy for Jews, but that no people in any era should have to endure that kind of suffering.
The council wished to honor Jewish victims of the Holocaust. To do so truly, it should have applied Jewish values.
PETER L. REICH
ALISA S. REICH
Los Angeles
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