Mobile Museum Of Tolerance Headed To Highland Park

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — The Midwest Mobile Museum of Tolerance, which offers educational programming about the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, is coming to Highland Park.

A project of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, the museum first took to the road in late February and has since visited more than 40 Illinois sites, including schools, police stations, district offices, fairs and other events.

More than 3,300 students, teachers and visitors have taken part in the rolling museum's workshops exploring issues such as racism, antisemitism and equality. The workshops encourage participants to actively stand up against hate and support tolerance in their communities.

Though the bus costs nearly $900,000 a year to operate, private donations allow it to perform its mission without having to charge any school districts or other public bodies, according to spokesperson Michelle Bernstein.

Bernstein said she was disappointed by the lack of response by some North Shore municipal leaders to recent reports of an uptick in antisemitic incidents.

"American Jews are getting attacked on the street and everybody is very quiet, nobody is saying anything,"Bernstein told Patch. "So I think it's important, even in the Jewish community, to have this come here."

According to the most recent data available from the FBI, there were a total of 8,559 hate crime offenses in 2019. Of those, 56 percent were motivated by racism, while 19 percent were motivated by religion.

Antisemitic hate crimes made up more than 60 percent of the religiously motivated offenses, with a 14 percent increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes compared to the prior year, according to the FBI data.

In recent months, Patch has reported on several incidents of antisemitism in the Chicago suburbs coinciding with recent military conflict in Israel, including the snatching and burning of an Israeli flag in Naperville and the smashing of a window at a synagogue in Skokie. The following week, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the village to denounce hate.

"People do not separate foreign policy in Israel to American Jews, which leads to the uptick in antisemitism," Bernstein said.

Bernstein also pointed to a May 21 statement from the incoming Undergraduate Student Government, or USG, at the University of Chicago another expression of anti-Semitism. The statement expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement and called for an end to study abroad and other university travel to Israel.

"We stand against the ideology of Zionism that has been used as a justification for the murder, displacement, and traumatization of Palestinian people," it said. "From the river to the sea, USG supports a Palestine that is free."

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The mobile museum is modeled on the "Tour for Humanity" bus, a project of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center that launched in 2013 and has visited hundreds of schools across Canada since 2013.

Organizers hope the new bus will visit about 150 schools and communities every year in an effort to inspire Illinois residents to oppose hate and support positive social change.

State Sen. Julie Morrison is hosting the mobile museum's visit, which is scheduled to be open to the public from noon to 6 p.m. on Monday through Friday at the 1207 Park Avenue West parking lot.