The Museum of Tolerance

I, for one, find it ironic that the Museum of Tolerance, which was just handed $5 million of state taxpayers’ money by Gov. George Deukmejian and Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles), is finding it difficult to decide just who were the victims of Hitler’s Holocaust.

The Jews were the first victims--at least 6 million of them perished--but by no means were they the only ones. Tens of thousands of homosexual men were also systematically exterminated or brutally worked to death in productive enterprises attached to various concentration camps.

But what’s different about the gays is the deliberate suppression of this fact by almost everyone promoting the so-called Museum of Tolerance. A query to Sen. Roberti’s office about excluding gays brought this response from a spokesman: “To include others would water down the whole event.”

He suggested I write to the Wiesenthal Center before he put me on hold and then the line went dead. Instead, I phoned and was told by Rabbi May: “I can’t say for sure. Our plans aren’t complete.” And then he said he couldn’t talk further because he had urgent business to discuss with Roberti’s office.

Is this really what a state-funded Museum of Tolerance is all about? Makes a person wonder if the primary victims of Nazi intolerance can really tolerate the uncomfortable fact that many others beside Jews were also the victims of one of history’s most intolerant periods. Museum of Tolerance indeed!

MARSHAL A. PHILLIPS

Los Angeles

Phillips is legislative chair of the West Hollywood Democratic Club.