Well, it’s July 7 and I made it to Israel yesterday. It’s a beautiful country and the food is amazing. We had dinner last night in the rooftop restaurant of our hotel where you can look over and see the walls of the old city – how cool is that!?!?!?!?! J
It’s quite the posh hotel with a real “modern meets ancient” look. When we arrived they greeted us with drinks (I was afraid it would be cocktails, but it turned out to be freshly-squeezed orange and grapefruit juice) and cookies. The restaurant cooks amazing food (so much for losing a few pounds due to all the walking!) and we are treated really well. The only problem is the pricey internet service so I may not post every day until I get somewhere with free internet access – we’ll see how long my scheckles hold out.
This morning we went to Yad Vashem – the Israeli Holocaust Museum. It was very impressive - however, I was very puzzled by the museum when I had finished the main exhibits just before lunch (I’ll explain later).
We went to the museum and went through some orientation by one of the instructors and then they turned us loose in the museum. We are one of the only groups that has permission to go through the museum as individuals. Yad Vashem policy is that each person goes through with a guide who tells them about the artifacts. This way they can “help” you learn the viewpoint of the museum. Evidently, Steve and Elaine fought pretty hard for the privilege of having us go through the museum on our own and draw our own conclusions. So, we did just that.
The museum is a series of rooms along a large triangular corridor that runs through the top of the mountain (hill) in Jerusalem. I had thought it was outside the city a ways, but it was really quite close to the hotel.
Each room has its own “theme” or time period and the artifacts that are displayed were very powerful. They showed the partially burned effects of Jews who had been murdered and then piled up and burned in the hopes of destroying the evidence before the Russians caught up (near the end of the war). But, the Russians got there pretty quickly and collected the belongings to document who died.
There was also a doll of a girl who was hidden in a basement while her mother worked. Her mother was injured while working so the mother had someone go and smuggle the girl out of the ghetto in a coal sack. After the rescue the girl realized that she had left the doll her mother had made for her behind in her hiding place. She made her rescuer take her back in the coal sack to retrieve the doll because, “No mother leaves her baby behind.” A great lesson she learned from her mother. They made it out a second time. Amazing.
The thing that confused me most was the lack of information on the camps themselves – especially the killing centers. It was as if the Holocaust went from the ghettos to the end. It was a little disjointed for me.
Later, I realized that the main mission of the museum is to humanize the victims. They don’t deal with the death and humiliation – I didn’t see mass amounts of hair, etc. Just a display of some shoes (fewer than at the USHMM) and then personal effects of individuals – no large piles as you see in other places and museums. Their goal is to give dignity where it was lost, names where they were taken and replaced by numbers, covering where there was nakedness.
In the Hall of Remembrance there is a large dome with photos of individuals – you stand under the dome. Then, around you in this circular room there are thousands of books containing the names of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust – or as many as they can individually document. I believe they are over 4 million at this point. It was awe-inspiring to see the books and think of all the names they contain.
But, I think my favorite place was the Children’s Memorial. It is underground and is so dark you have to hold on to a hand rail to keep from running into glass walls or mirrored walls. There are small lights reflecting off of every surface and you hear a voice speaking the names of the 1.5 million (or as many as they have been able to document) that were murdered in the Holocaust. I wish I could have stayed in their longer, but the line just kind of moves you along.
The museum also has other memorials but I haven’t had a chance to look at them – that’s on the agenda for tomorrow. Also, the museum has an exhibit on the 50th anniversary of the Adolf Eichmann trial. He was the one who was responsible for the logistics of deporting Jews to ghettos and then concentration camps and extermination camps. He fled to Argentina after the war, but was arrested and sent to Israel for trial where he was found guilty and sentenced to hang. He was executed on May 31, 1962. I am interested in seeing their exhibition on Eichmann’s trial.
Tonight after dinner there are several of us who are going to head back to Ben Yahuda Street to the shops to do some shopping. I guess I’d better get some more dollars exchanged into scheckles. J
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