Los Angeles Museum Of The Holocaust

Music, song and storytelling celebrated the opening Sunday of the new Jewish Heritage Center on Los Angeles' Museum Row, bringing together the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the Jewish Community Library and Jewish Historical Society of Southern California.

Architectural symbols are rarely more layered, complex or self-aware than in a Holocaust museum, where the architect's nearly impossible job is to mark murder on a mass scale while at the same time providing some sense of resilience and hope. In some cases the resulting design takes on a slashing, dissonant form, as in Daniel Libeskind's 1999 Jewish Museum in Berlin. In others it tries to communicate at least a small part of the claustrophobia and confusion that awaited prisoners inside Nazi camps; that was among the central goals of James Ingo Freed, who designed the bluntly powerful 1993 United States Holocaust Museum on the National Mall in Washington.

Encouraged by attendance at a traveling exhibition on the persecution of gays by the Nazis, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust is trying to raise money for a permanent show on the subject. "We had 1,000 walk-ins last month," twice the usual number, said Rachel Jagoda, executive director of the Westside museum, where the exhibition opened in May. Jagoda estimates that it would cost $200,000 to create a show on gays and the Holocaust for the museum's permanent collection.

In grade school, Randy Schoenberg made a 12-foot-tall family tree. In college at Princeton, he led a Holocaust Remembrance Day. As a litigator, he argued all the way to the Supreme Court on behalf of Maria Altmann and ultimately recovered five Nazi-looted Klimt paintings from Austria for his client. "A psychiatrist from Vienna once gave me an article about this syndrome called the torchbearer syndrome," says Schoenberg, 44, who has the intense, heavy-lidded eyes of his paternal grandfather, composer Arnold Schoenberg.

Masha Loen had her share of close calls as a child--she was 14 when Nazis yanked her out of a boxcar and tossed her into a concentration camp, where her mother and two sisters were executed. Sixty years later she is facing another one: the threatened closure of a museum she helped create to honor victims of the Holocaust. Financial problems are jeopardizing the future of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the nation's oldest memorial of its type to victims of Adolf Hitler's atrocities.

Architectural symbols are rarely more layered, complex or self-aware than in a Holocaust museum, where the architect's nearly impossible job is to mark murder on a mass scale while at the same time providing some sense of resilience and hope. In some cases the resulting design takes on a slashing, dissonant form, as in Daniel Libeskind's 1999 Jewish Museum in Berlin. In others it tries to communicate at least a small part of the claustrophobia and confusion that awaited prisoners inside Nazi camps; that was among the central goals of James Ingo Freed, who designed the bluntly powerful 1993 United States Holocaust Museum on the National Mall in Washington.

In grade school, Randy Schoenberg made a 12-foot-tall family tree. In college at Princeton, he led a Holocaust Remembrance Day. As a litigator, he argued all the way to the Supreme Court on behalf of Maria Altmann and ultimately recovered five Nazi-looted Klimt paintings from Austria for his client. "A psychiatrist from Vienna once gave me an article about this syndrome called the torchbearer syndrome," says Schoenberg, 44, who has the intense, heavy-lidded eyes of his paternal grandfather, composer Arnold Schoenberg.

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust has moved to a location across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The move to 6006 Wilshire Blvd., at the southwest corner of Ogden Drive and Wilshire, was prompted by the need for earthquake repairs at its original location in the community building of the Jewish Federation. Museum Chairman Osias Goren said the new building should also make it easier to combine museum visits.

Theater Ron House heads the cast in Neil Simon's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor," a comedy about writers working for a maniacal comedian on his weekly TV show in 1953. It ends Sunday at the Laguna Playhouse, Moulton Theatre, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Today-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. $16-$35. (714) 497-ARTS.

Friends of the Santa Monica Public Library needs volunteers to help with planning for, and on the day of, its first Children's Book Festival on Nov. 18 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Information: (310) 458-8606. * Christmas in April, Pasadena needs volunteers to help repair the homes of low-income, elderly and disabled homeowners for Make a Difference Day in Pasadena on Oct. 28. Information: (626) 798-6176.

Encouraged by attendance at a traveling exhibition on the persecution of gays by the Nazis, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust is trying to raise money for a permanent show on the subject. "We had 1,000 walk-ins last month," twice the usual number, said Rachel Jagoda, executive director of the Westside museum, where the exhibition opened in May. Jagoda estimates that it would cost $200,000 to create a show on gays and the Holocaust for the museum's permanent collection.

Masha Loen had her share of close calls as a child--she was 14 when Nazis yanked her out of a boxcar and tossed her into a concentration camp, where her mother and two sisters were executed. Sixty years later she is facing another one: the threatened closure of a museum she helped create to honor victims of the Holocaust. Financial problems are jeopardizing the future of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the nation's oldest memorial of its type to victims of Adolf Hitler's atrocities.

Music, song and storytelling celebrated the opening Sunday of the new Jewish Heritage Center on Los Angeles' Museum Row, bringing together the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the Jewish Community Library and Jewish Historical Society of Southern California.

Thousands of Holocaust survivors and the families of those who perished may be eligible to receive term or total life insurance money thought lost in the war. The Jewish Federation will sponsor a workshop tonight at the Milken Community Campus to explain how to track down unknown or forgotten insurance policies. "This provides a broad picture of what's going on," said Marcia Reines Josephy, director and curator of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

Driving around Los Angeles, particularly around the UCLA campus, it's hard not to notice the hospitals and research centers that bear their name. The father-and-son team of Leslie and Louis Gonda made a fortune from the sale of their aircraft leasing business, and they weren't shy about spreading their wealth around, giving to charities and medical research throughout the city. "For years, they've given away a great deal of money," said Bob Safai of Madison Partners, a Los Angeles commercial real estate firm.