Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

I visited Holocaust Museum LA in 2018. The exhibition combined documents, photographs and an audio guide; the American newspaper display, contrasting the scale of the tragedy with the limited coverage, stayed with me. Construction began after our visit. As checked in September 2026, the museum states that it is closed and offers online and off-site programmes. Check its official visitor page for reopening and admission information.

LAMOTH, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, was built by Holocaust survivors in 1961. In 2010 they moved to the current building near the Grove and the Old Farmers Market.

In the exhibition we saw in 2018: The displays have a chronological order, from the Jewish world before the Holocaust, through the rising of the Nazis to power in Germany, and then the persecution of Jews, Ghettos, extermination, and the last two rooms dealing with resistance, the response of the nations and the Jews life after liberation.

At the time of our visit: Most of the written content is on the six black columns standing outside the museum entrance. The visitors have to use an audio guide inside the museum to understand the exhibitions, consisting of primary images.

As the loyal readers of this blog already know, I have a particular interest in the Holocaust. I used to guide Israeli Students in their journey to Poland to visit the extermination camps and ghettos. I also recorded an album with my band El Hameshorer, dedicated to the poems of Wladyslaw Szlengel from Warsaw Ghetto. However, I found the newspaper's display most interesting – To see how this enormous tragedy got such minor headlines in Los Angeles. Unbelievable.

To the Museum Website