Beth Kean, CEO of Holocaust Museum LA, told the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills on Monday, Aug. 24, that the museum's $70 million expansion has drawn $66 million in fundraising, according to the Beverly Hills Courier. The expanded campus can now welcome 500,000 visitors a year.

The new complex, called the Goldrich Cultural Center, opened to the public June 14 in Pan Pacific Park. It doubles the museum's original footprint and includes a 200-seat theater, a rooftop garden, classroom spaces and a Boxcar Pavilion housing an authentic railway car unearthed near the Majdanek death camp in Poland.

Beverly Hills philanthropist Stanley Black, a Rotary Club member, was instrumental in acquiring that boxcar and bringing it to Los Angeles, Kean told the group. She described Black as one of the "best, best friends" of the late Jona Goldrich, the Holocaust survivor and real estate developer who co-founded the museum and secured the land lease from the city.

Kean said she had joined the two men for card games and Sunday brunches at Canter's Deli.

A museum born from survivors

Holocaust Museum LA was founded in 1961 by survivors who emigrated to Los Angeles and met at an adult education class at Hollywood High School in the late 1950s. They recognized one another from their arm tattoos and accents.

"We were turning away school groups, which was just heart-wrenching," Kean said of the years before the expansion.

The Los Angeles Times reported that before the expansion, the museum drew about 75,000 visitors a year, including 30,000 students. The Goldrich Cultural Center expects 500,000 annual visitors, with 150,000 students.

Hagy Belzberg, principal of Belzberg Architects and a Beverly Hills High School alumnus, led the expansion's design. The complex also features USC Shoah Foundation's Dimensions in Testimony holographic technology, giving visitors access to all 55,000 recorded survivor testimonies.

Antisemitism coalition

Kean told the Rotary audience that the museum participates in the Los Angeles Antisemitism Roundtable, a monthly coalition started in 2022. Members include Stand with Us, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

The museum received an $8.5 million state grant in 2020 after conducting a feasibility study in 2019. At the Goldrich Cultural Center's June 11 opening ceremony, Kean said the community had raised $63 million for the expansion.

The center's inaugural exhibit, "The Beautiful Game: The Untold Story," explores soccer's intersection with Jews and the Holocaust, timed to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Los Angeles.