After exceeding its own ambitious annual attendance goals to the tune of over 50,000 visitors, Los Angeles’ Holocaust Museum is set to expand on its existing 28,000-square-foot facility with a new extension plan from its original designer Hagy Belzberg. 

Located in Pan Pacific Park at the edge of the city’s Fairfax neighborhood, the expanded museum hopes to eventually host around 500,000 visitors annually and greatly enhance the educational mission to which its founding traces.

Belzberg’s updated plan features a new rooftop pavilion atop the existing building that is meant to house a boxcar taken from the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. A new building will be introduced that includes space for a 200-seat theater, expanded gallery spaces, and a new educational center for the museum, which was founded by Holocaust survivors in 1961. An expansion of an interactive installation from the USC Shoah Foundation will provide a link for future generations of visitors. 

The museum's expansion is in a way a reflection on Eli Wiesel’s dictum that “human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”

“My father’s mother and father were able to escape Poland before the Nazis arrived. But, except for a few, his extended family were murdered during the Holocaust,” the architect said. "I was brought up with the saying 'never again.' But to me, this saying extends to all races, religions, cultures, and all human rights violations.”

“Yet we see it happening over and over,” he continued. “The museum of the Holocaust Los Angeles and the new Learning Pavilion try to teach the horrors of humanity, using the Holocaust as a case study (to the over 70,000/each year, Los Angeles Unified School District kids) to what happens when, as a society, we don't stand up and just say 'no,' and at all scales. Even starting with 'no' when we see bullying on the playground. As an architect, we only provide the container. But this container can assist in the experience by creating a more intimate environment.”

With the new building, the museum’s program will take on a new form representing past and future punctuated by a break provided by an outdoor courtyard and imbued in themes relating to darkness and light.

“Where the existing museum is dedicated to artifacts and 'unearthing' the past by being semi-submerged into the park landscape, the new learning pavilion is about looking forward and sits above the landscape,” Belzberg said. “It’s more of an optimistic building. It will not only contain a large flex gallery to invite traveling exhibits from around the world. It will also contain classrooms and two performance theaters.”

Thus far, the museum has raised around $22 million for its anticipated $45 million development goal. Groundbreaking on the new building is set to begin within the next year. Donations and other museum information can be found here.