How to Change Anti-Semitism

Museum of Tolerance on Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles

How do you change 12 Pacifica High School boys who are jokingly saluting a swastika before their athletics banquet?

You invite them to visit the Museum of Tolerance on Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles and let them talk with a Holocaust survivor.  

"The students were transformed," said Jordanna Gessler, director of education at the museum, who did just that.  See an article on the Nazi salute made last November in today's Los Angeles Times.

"Many wrote thank-you notes afterward explaining that they thought they were participating in a joke but now understood the seriousness of the topic," she continued.

Thank you to Joe Mozingo, Sonali Kohli, and Lilly Nguyen for interviewing her as well as a retired German teacher, a Mexican-American parent, a principal, and others regarding incidents of hatred and bigotry in Garden Grove and other parts of Orange County.  

Thank you also to the editor who placed this story on the front page, not in the B section.

But the headline and most of the story are about "Diversity and Hate in O.C."--not about the beautiful resolution you find out about if you read all the way to the end.

Other acts of hate and repentance:

1) Students saluted a swastika at a house party last March.  Some wrote letters of apology a day later:
"A parent who did not want to be identified said that on Sunday he invited a Holocaust scholar to his home to speak with nine students who had attended the party. Some teens who had defended the behavior at the gathering did not accept invitations to his home, but the students who did go expressed remorse and decided to write apology letters. 

"The parent released those letters Monday evening," reported a crew of Times journalists on March 5: ANH DO, MATTHEW ORMSETH, ALENE TCHEKMEDYIAN, JULIA SCLAFANI, LILLY NGUYEN, SARAH PARVINI.

2) A teen who was both gay and Jewish, Blaze Bernstein, was murdered by a neo-Nazi former classmate on Jan. 2, 2018, in Lake Forest in southern Orange County.  His attacker has not repented yet--he's in jail without bail, awaiting trial.

LAT Columnist Robin Abcarian wrote last March about the swastika salute at the house party and included commentary on the death of Bernstein and other acts of anti-Semitism.

Tracy Smith  reported on the Bernstein case for CBS's 48 Hours on July 20, 2019.