Meet Your Neighbor
Holocaust Museum LA is curating a new exhibition, called Meet Your Neighbor, that aims to amplify the voices of the diverse communities who call Los Angeles home after they or their ancestors resettled, immigrated, or sought refuge from violence or persecution.
Visitors will interact with the exhibition by looking through peepholes to find photographs that tell a story or images of artifacts. Our goal is to provide a glimpse into how Angelenos view home, highlighting the various experiences of our diverse communities, humanizing our neighbors, and reflecting on how we all ended up here.
© LA Public Library
Eva Nathanson submitted this bus map from the 1950s. In 1957, Eva and her family immigrated to Los Angeles from Budapest, Hungary. As a Holocaust survivor, she spoke very little English. A few weeks after arriving in the U.S., Eva boarded a city bus headed to Downtown LA to buy groceries at the Grand Central Market. The bus driver, a Black man born in LA, immediately spoke to her in fluent Hungarian. He had been adopted by a Hungarian Jewish family and spoke the language at home. He helped her out and gave her his bus schedule. Eva only took the bus when he was driving, until she felt confident on her own.