How about having the LA Genocide commemoration in front of the Museum of "Tolerance", to protest its deliberate exclusion of the Armenian story? See how deliberate it is in Harout Sassounian's column below.

Another Example of Intolerance
By the Museum of Tolerance

The Los Angeles Times recently disclosed that the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles has eliminated an exhibit dedicated to the Armenian Genocide and stopped showing to visitors a documentary that described the extermination of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. The museum officials gave the lame excuse that they had simply rearranged that particular exhibit and had replaced the documentary.

One of our readers just brought to our attention another piece of evidence indicating the great lengths that the Museum of Tolerance officials have gone to ensure that neither the museum nor its web site contain any reference whatsoever to the Armenian Genocide!

The web site of the Museum of Tolerance (http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x00/xr0080.html) includes a brief reference to the German author Armin T. Wegner who was placed in a concentration camp for five years for having written a letter to Hitler asking him to spare the Jews. The museum's web site indicates that the source of this information was the Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem.

A quick check of Yad Vashem's web site (http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/righteous/bycountry/germany/wegner_armin_t.html), however, reveals that the Museum of Tolerance has deleted Yad Vashem's reference to the Armenian Genocide which was witnessed by Wegner who had taken a large number of photos of the Turkish atrocities while serving with the German army in 1915-16.

The Yad Vashem web site includes the following important information which is left out of the web site of the Museum of Tolerance: "The history of the twentieth century provided Wegner with plenty of opportunity to speak out against evil and injustice. On the road to Baghdad in the spring of 1915, serving as an ensign on the staff of German Fieldmarshal von der Golz, he could observe first hand some of the worst atrocities perpetrated by the Turkish army against the Armenian people. The horrendous scenes of dead and emaciated people that he had witnessed in the Armenian refugee camps - visible proof of the first systematic genocide of the twentieth century - continued to haunt him long after. He protested against them in his Road of No Return: a Martyrdom in Letters and in an open letter, which was submitted to American President Woodrow Wilson at the peace conference of 1919."

The museum officials would probably justify their removal of the above paragraph by claiming that they condensed the information on Wegner. Nevertheless, if they wanted to, they could have provided a passing reference to Wegner's personal experiences with the Armenian Genocide which would have explained his sensitivity and outrage at the crimes subsequently committed by the Nazis against the Jews!

Armenian Americans are still waiting for the Museum of Tolerance officials to do the right thing by reinstating all references to the Armenian Genocide in the museum as well as on its web site.