Pan Pacific Park

Re the June 6 Morning Report: Now the celebrities are coming forth in an effort to get the fire-ravaged Pan Pacific Auditorium rebuilt. Where were they when the building was abandoned more than 15 years ago? With the city growing so rapidly in population, we don't need too many old buildings that stand in the way of progress as landmarks. Since Los Angels is in dire need of green space, I say bulldoze the rest of that old building and increase the size of the present park there.

A charity walk to raise money and awareness for survivors of genocide around the world will take place Sunday in the Fairfax district. The seventh annual Walk to End Genocide will start at Pan Pacific Park in the 7600 block of Beverly Boulevard. Events start at 9 a.m. and will end by 2 p.m. The walk is being sponsored by Jewish World Watch. The walk is a 5K (just over 3 miles) around the park on paved surfaces. Registration fees are $12 for students and $20 for adults. Money raised from the event goes toward helping survivors of genocide and mass atrocities rebuild their lives through various relief projects, which can include everything from education to medical aid. The people of the Sudan and Congo are among the beneficiaries.  The walk will be followed by a Global Village fair that will include food and craft booths, music and performances by spoken-word artists.

Survivors of the Holocaust will break ground today for a black granite monument in Pan Pacific Park marking the deaths of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Members of the American Congress of Jews from Poland and Survivors of the Concentration Camps will meet at 11 a.m. in the amphitheater at the northern end of Pan Pacific Park. After a brief ceremony, they will break ground at the nearby monument site.

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.

Responding to complaints from nearby homeowners about noise and graffiti, Los Angeles County authorities have assigned four security guards and two recreation directors to Pan Pacific Park in the Fairfax District. Plans are also under way to move the park's parking area from 1st Street, where it abuts a residential neighborhood, to a vacant lot just off Beverly Boulevard, county Supervisor Ed Edelman said last week.

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.

Sixty years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, some 2,000 people, many of them schoolchildren, gathered Thursday in Los Angeles's Pan Pacific Park to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. As with other recent Holocaust memorials, Thursday's was suffused with a sad urgency as the Jewish victims who survived the death camps dwindle in number. Nathan Shapell, 83, an Auschwitz survivor who helped build the Holocaust monument at the park, said Holocaust programs are a must.

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.

Two decades ago, they numbered in the hundreds. On Sunday, there were just a few dozen. But when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asked them to stand and be recognized, the Holocaust survivors in attendance for the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles were met with a standing ovation. "We ask you to stand up because of your courage, your perseverance and your memories," Villaraigosa said. "We honor you today because those memories of yours will make sure that this will never, ever happen again."

* "Nickelodeon's Big Help-a-Thon"--Rosie O'Donnell, Whoopi Goldberg, others will participate in a live broadcast to rally kids to nominate their towns for Nickelodeon Build-A-Park visits. Above, "the Big Helpmobile." Saturday at 9 a.m. at Pan Pacific Park. * "Harvest Festival"--An open marketplace featuring fine arts and crafts, food, craft demonstrations, entertainment. At the Anaheim Convention Center, Friday through Sunday.

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.

Two decades ago, they numbered in the hundreds. On Sunday, there were just a few dozen. But when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asked them to stand and be recognized, the Holocaust survivors in attendance for the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles were met with a standing ovation. "We ask you to stand up because of your courage, your perseverance and your memories," Villaraigosa said. "We honor you today because those memories of yours will make sure that this will never, ever happen again."

In downtown Los Angeles, it wasn't unusual to walk down the street and see ruins and old dustbins and people milling about aimlessly. Occasionally, slicing through this emptiness, there'd be the thumping bass of a boombox. A dozen or so years later, change and gentrification have taken away much of the ruins and dust, and people mill about with more purpose. As for that unexpected noise: On Thursday, "Unsilent Night," an ambient piece by composer Phil Kline for crowd, cassette tape and boombox, debuts in downtown L.A..

The phrases "never again" and "we must not remain silent" are themes of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and speakers at Sunday's commemoration in Pan Pacific Park reminded listeners of those messages. "On Yom Hashoah we come together to say 'never again.' Seventy years after Krystallnacht, we must make sure that those words are a promise," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. "Silence is never an acceptable response."

For Jona Goldrich, even the most painful moments in human events have much to teach future generations. And so this survivor of the Holocaust has become a chronicler of the past, to ensure that the suffering of his family and his people are never forgotten. "I'm obsessed with the Holocaust," Goldrich says. "This is something that happened only 66 years ago, and the next time it might not be the Jews."

He's been around a while. And he's been around. No wonder no one batted an eye as Haym Salomon was on the move again Tuesday -- this time to a new home in the Fairfax area. A 12 1/2 -ton statue honoring the Jewish financier credited with helping bankroll the American Revolution in 1776 was relocated to a busy street corner where it will help form a new gateway to Pan Pacific Park. It was the fourth time since its creation 62 years ago that the huge monument has been picked up and carted off.

The state will not allow commercial development on the site of the fire-gutted Pan Pacific Auditorium, according to Board of Supervisors Chairman Ed Edelman. Before the May 24 fire devastated the historic auditorium, the county was weighing a proposal to raise money for the restoration of the 100,000-square-foot auditorium by developing part of the site with office buildings, an ice skating rink and movie theaters.

With a massive storm drain in place and work virtually finished on the widening of Beverly Boulevard between Fairfax and La Brea avenues, contractor Steve Bubalo is about to pick up a half-million-dollar bonus for completing the job six months early. Scheduled for completion Aug. 16, the project involved installation of a $2.8-million storm drain on North Stanley Avenue that eventually will be tied into the flood control basin at Pan Pacific Park. At the same time, Beverly was expanded with $1.

Sixty years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, some 2,000 people, many of them schoolchildren, gathered Thursday in Los Angeles's Pan Pacific Park to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. As with other recent Holocaust memorials, Thursday's was suffused with a sad urgency as the Jewish victims who survived the death camps dwindle in number. Nathan Shapell, 83, an Auschwitz survivor who helped build the Holocaust monument at the park, said Holocaust programs are a must.

Invoking the battle against terrorism, political and religious leaders across California joined Sunday to remember the Holocaust and denounce the religious intolerance that led to the annihilation of 6 million Jews. Gov.