A Memorial and a Name

Note: no pictures were allowed at the two places that I went today, so there are only two photos in this post.

On Friday morning, we set out for Yad Vashem, or the Holocaust Museum of Israel.  

While I have been to others, such as those in Washington, D.C. and Berlin, this exhibit was quite different.  For example, the beginning of the exhibit is a history of anti-Semitism dating back thousands of years.  It features medieval paintings of Jews sacrificing Christian children and using their blood to make matzoh.  There has been some pretty sick stuff said about the Jewish people.  But perhaps the most surprising was this quote and its origins: "The Jews are our misfortune."  While this quote is attributed to Von Treitschke, one of Hitler's "favorite anti-Semites" (in the words of our guide, a cynical former prosecutor from New Jersey), it is actually a quote from Martin Luther, albeit out of context.  Luther was perplexed by the Catholic obsession with punishing Jews for killing Jesus, though later in his life he became quite anti-Semitic and advocated burning down all the synagogues in Europe.

Anyway, it would be impossible for me to do Yad Vashem justice through my description, especially without taking hours to do so, so I will simply share some facts and anecdotes that jumped out to me during the visit. Note: a lot of the information below is disturbing and depressing.

The building was designed in 2005 and is built in stark, bare concrete to look like a scar on the mountainside, since the Holocaust is a scar on the history of mankind.  A skylight runs the length of the building to remind people that these events happened in broad daylight.

A group of Polish Jews were taken by the Nazis and killed just before the Soviets could liberate them. The bodies were burned, but in a hurry, such that many of the documents in the victims' pockets survived.  One of the victims was Jakub Noach-Lewis, a young man who has been admitted to medical school in Switzerland for the fall of 1940 but who was sent away by the Nazis before he could matriculated.  Sadly, he would have been safe in Switzerland, if be had only reached it in time.

German Jews has one of the lowest mortality rates of any of the Nazi-controlled countries, because at first the government tried to force them to emigrate.  It was only later that more drastic measures were taken, and these measures were extended to other countries that were conquered.

Very few Italian Jews died, relatively, because the Italian population was not notably anti-Semitic.  Mussolini's first mistress was actually Jewish, and he protected her even after he abandoned her for a second, non-Jewish mistress.

One of the concentration camps, Sobibor, used carbon dioxide in the gas chambers.  This was fairly inefficient; it took 30-60 minutes for people to die and, since it rose, often left the young children alive.  They had to be killed afterward by the guards.

The name Yad Vashem comes from Isaac, 56:5, which reads: "I shall give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name."

We ended our tour with a visit to the Children's Museum, which was one of the first parts of the museum to be completed.  In a darkened room, give candles sit in a case in the middle and hundreds of mirrors on the walls reflect the light millions of times, creating stars above and beneath that sparkle. It is beautiful, and so simple.  I highly recommend visiting.

Since Friday evening marked the beginning of Shabbat, we joined a merry throng walking to the Western Wall to observe the Friday night rituals.  

Frustratingly, women have to stand to the sides or behind the main area, where men gather, socialize, dance, and generally work themselves into a holy ecstasy.  Women wait dutifully for their husbands, pray in silence, and peek over the divide.  As my mother irreverently put it, "I feel like I'm in a harem or some thing, peering from behind this screen."  Verdict: Not recommended for feminists.

We soon departed for a beautiful Shabbat dinner of song and, as usual, thousands of courses of food. The locals and a few brave guests partied long into the night, while the rest of us trudged off to bed, full of food and desirous of sleep.

Spotted: Jesse Owens in the Holocaust Museum.  In the 1936 Olympics when he won his record 4 golds in track and field at a single Olympics, he was entered in a race in which he was originally not slated to participate.  A pro-Nazi member of the American Olympic Committee convinced the rest of the Committee that having Jewish competitors win would be too much of an affront to Hitler, so Owens was out in to replace one of the Jewish members of the relay team.  The snubbed runner never got over it, despite a successful career.  But he and Owens were lifelong friends.

Spotted 2: Giant furry donut hats.  These are worn by the super ultra Orthodox and look terribly uncomfortable for a hot summer evening.