Mobile Museum of Tolerance makes its inaugural visit to the Bay Area
The Simon Wiesenthal Center now has a mobile Museum of Tolerance that is touring across California for those who can't visit the center in Los Angeles.
The mobile museum made its debut in the Bay Area during the first week of March. Educational leaders said they are looking forward to expanding its Holocaust education outreach to other parts of California in the coming weeks.
"Here it says, 'Education is key to breaking the cycle of hatred.' It's from Simon Wiesenthal, who is the namesake of our organization. He was a Holocaust survivor and later became a Nazi hunter. And I think the key to this is just understanding that through knowledge, through education, understanding what is going on, we really can bring these cycles of hatred and discrimination that is happening in our world," Elizabeth Blair, an education associate with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told CBS News Bay Area.
There are 10 mobile museum buses that are taking the message of the Museum of Tolerance on the road. The California bus is the newest addition, making stops across the state beginning this year.
Officials with the center are collaborating with communities and school districts across the state.
"Looking at fact versus fiction, misinformation, disinformation," Blair said.
Students from the Piedmont School District stepped into the bus, and stepped back into history last week. Blair led a session about the life of Anne Frank inside the bus.
Vlad Khaykin, the executive vice president of social impact and partnerships at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said expanding the outreach is important now more than ever.
"They help them understand how to live in a multiethnic, multiracial democracy and these lessons help them to be better citizens, global citizens, global netizens," Khaykin said.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in California there were more than 2,100 cases of hate crimes reported in 2023. Of that, more than 430 cases were bias against religion. Officials said hate crimes against race, ethnicity or ancestry topped the list with more than 1,100 reports.
"This is a critical moment in our country, in our world today. Hate is rising, a lot of communities are being targeted by hateful rhetoric both online and offline. And so this is one intervention, we really feel that education is one of the best schools we have to fight hate and build tolerance," Khaykin said.
"If we can use this exhibit as a tool to connect those topics to students' own lives, for students to use those lessons and to make a difference in a world around them, we've really achieved our goal with this," Blair said.
Officials also said that the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles sees more than 100,000 visitors every year. And they are looking forward to making stops across the Golden State, with the next stop in San Francisco.
