"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."