I have been hemming and hawing about going to Yad Vashem (Isaiah, 56:5 -- a memorial). The last time I visited a Holocaust site was in 1996 in Dachau, Germany. It was among the most disturbing experiences of my life to that point. Seeing where people had lived, crammed into bunks, worked to the bone, and ultimately, ended up in gas chambers. Horrifying. But, I felt, really important. Reading about history is one thing, going to the sites, it's something different. Yad Vashem is a unique and important commemoration for the individuals who were victims of the Holocaust; its mission is to ensure those who were lost are never forgotten.
Getting to Yad Vashem is a bit of a commitment - it's at the far end of the light rail and it's only open during the week, and Friday until 14h (because of Shabbat). So, you have to commit an early morning to get out there and give up an errand-running day. Or, know that you will run around like crazy at the busiest time of the day at the shuk to get your groceries. If this seems slightly lame, I apologize, but it's the truth -- in Jerusalem, you really only have a half day of a weekend to get your errands done otherwise they must be done during the week. Once at Mount Herzl it's about a 10 minute walk to Yad Vashem through the glorious pine forest. Today was sunny (again, amazing!) and the smell of pine wasn't exactly thick in the air, but it was lovely.
The entrance to Yad Vashem is through a large main plaza -- this is where visitors are welcomed, you can get a map, and an audio guide, check your backpack, and grab a coffee or pastry. Then you pass through the plaza, walk over a bridge and enter the Holocaust History Museum, designed by Moshe Safdie (Habitat 67 in Montreal, downtown VPL). The museum is described as a "triangular concrete prism" and that's about right.
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| Yad Vashem -- on the left is the Holocaust History Museum; on the right the Visitors Centre |
There's a skylight that runs along the apex of the triangle, but there is no continuous footpath below the skylight. You cannot walk straight through the museum. Visitors are forced to cross back and forth as they move through exhibits. This is a cleverly designed and curated museum. The design forces people into cramped quarters together and you never quite know where the exit or entrance is. The museum catalogues events throughout Europe, from Lithuania to Greece; it is a full documentation of the Nazi program of ethnic cleansing from the 1930s through WWII, from badges to ghettos to camps -- The Final Solution. It is of course, appalling. Many of the camp names and events are familiar, but the egregiousness of the events and actions are not lessened by their familiarity.
The museum was very busy today and there are so many exhibits that it is all a bit overwhelming. Two things stood out for me after I left. One, a haunting picture of Hitler with his deputies, in full winter overcoats striding down a Parisian avenue with the Eiffel Tower behind them. Two, Treblinka (one of the most famous camps) was only operational for 15 months -- but nearly 1 million people were killed, about 800,000 Jews and an uncertain number of Romani people. That's over 2000 people a day. That is staggering.
Besides the museum, Yad Vashem includes the Hall of Names - a disorienting room where the names and personal details of millions of victims have been recorded. The Children's Memorial is also disorienting, walking down and into a black tunnel where a candle light is reflected in what seems like hundreds of mirrors while a woman's voice reads out the name and hometown of the killed children (some 1.5 million of the 6 million exterminated Jews were children). The campus grounds are extensive and include memorials to the Righteous Among the Nations -- the non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews (e.g., Schindler) -- and the Valley of the Communities -- a monument to the over 5000 Jewish communities that were decimated during the Holocaust. And, monuments to Partisans -- Jews that were Allied soldiers, or in the resistance movements and in the ghettos - that fought the Nazis.
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| Partisan's Panorama at Yad Vashem |
Sometime before one this afternoon, we retraced our steps back to the train station on Mt Herzl from Yad Vashem, back through the pine forest. An interesting thing about that pine forest. Apparently, the pine forest that encircles the western slopes of Jerusalem was planted in 1967. Why? Well, this being Israel, there are always at least two narratives. Both narratives say it was to cover the barren slopes. Only one says that the slopes were barren because until 1948, those barren slopes had been the site of Palestinian villages. You can still see the terraces that were made by Palestinian landowners.
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