Is "tolerance" really our ultimate goal? I hope not.

Written in response to visiting the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, I thought I'd share because of how many of you are interested in my Holocaust studies and travels and how they have tainted me. It's long and a little heavy, but a few of you may be pleased I shared. Please leave comments!

My personal statement that I submitted to all the law schools where I applied included a description of the surprise on my friend’s faces my senior year of undergrad when I told them I planned to go to Auschwitz instead of joining their Caribbean cruise. After taking a course on the Social Conflict behind the Holocaust, taught from an interdisciplinary perspective, I went to Dachau, Flossenberg, Auschwitz-Birkenau. I visited The Anne Frank house, the Nuremburg Documentation Center, the Museum of Jewish History in Amsterdam, the Museum of Jewish History in Krakow, Poland, Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and read many books and watched many movies. I belabored this point because I recognize that I am not the average guest at the Museum of Tolerance, but I was surprised at just how “dumbed-down” much of the material felt. For a catastrophe that has so many aspects—religious, psychological, sociological, criminal, international, cultural—it hardly scratched the surface! Perhaps it was because we had a guided tour and didn't have the opportunity to explore on our own. I understand targeting young audiences, and ensuring that guests who have never been exposed to the Holocaust can learn the foundation, but like a church sermon delivered on Christmas you need to also target those who are well-versed and offer them something to learn too—particularly because there is SO much!! I hardly know anything by comparison to what there is to learn. To give one particular example, although not dramatic enough to overthrow the entire power structure of any concentration camp, there are thousands of stories of resistance that explain why the death toll wasn’t even higher. Prisoners at Auschwitz managed to blow up one of the crematoria, a huge victory, which I couldn’t believe wasn’t mentioned in the “Resistance” portion of the museum.

For these reasons, I absolutely loved the hour we spent with a Holocaust survivor. His story is so remarkable and will certainly stick with me until the day I die. I have to believe that to hear a survivor is to become one. It was Ellie Weisel who said in the preface of his book that to forget is to kill them again. I am happy that museums like this exist to educate and to stimulate thought on such terrible mass atrocities that are committed in our world. I will always remember him being drafted into the Korean War, him telling of his son dying, and that the pain he experienced was not at all concentrated in that camp. Indeed, I have been forever impacted by the hour he spent with us.

We had a long discussion in the car driving back to Santa Monica about how we felt it was two different museums. One half confronts hatred and discrimination in our culture, in our community, in our hometown – no matter where in the US you call home. The other speaks to what has happened and what is happening outside the US, bringing up buzzwords like genocide, crimes against humanity, which are terms of legal and political construction. Is education on these issues important? ABSOLUTELY. Is awareness and knowledge key to preventing such unspeakable horrors? I certainly think so. But it takes more than tolerance. To speak on something very relevant, it takes more than lack of hatred or discrimination to support US troops invading Syria. It takes legitimate concern for the humans involved. It takes recognizing not only that those Syrians are your brethren as fellow humans, but a willingness to put your tax money toward helping them. It takes political leaders to disregard the economic advisor, to say that international law is limiting them from taking humanitarian action and advocating for that law to be expanded, and standing up to be a bold voice for HELPING those people as their advocate. Speaking to the point—that I felt the museum was directed at junior high field trips—the average guest cannot make the logical leap from what the Civil Rights Movement has in common with the Armenian genocide.

I will gladly dedicate the majority of my legal career to organizations that help and aid the victims of these atrocities. But I do not think it will be enough until we have BOTH the educational aspect teaching people to CARE and a mechanism that deters the perpetrators. The Holocaust essentially gave birth to the entire concept of international law. Even under international law today, Hitler could likely get away with much of what he did. Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann potentially all could as well under the protective cloak of state immunity.

So, what will I do in response to what I learned and felt? I was inspired by the reactions of my classmates who have not been previously exposed to these things, their horror, their rage, their amazement. It reinforced the importance of education. But I was also reminded at a flawed international legal system that is not doing much to deter those in power to commit such disgusting crimes and does very little to protect their victims. And I am certainly more determined than ever that my entire legal career will be dedicated to these two concepts that will surely change the world for our generation and for seven generations to come.