Yad Vashem

Yesterday, May 5th, was the "Day of Remembrance" in the Jewish calendar. At 10 AM a loud horn sounded in Jerusalem for 1 minute. Most people in the city stood still for that minute, and most cars and buses stopped where they were. Those murdered during the Holocaust were honored and remembered, if only for a moment.

I was at a bus stop in West Jerusalem when the horn blew, and I also stood silently and motionless for a minute. About five minutes later the number 20 bus stopped, and I boarded to travel to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, which is located on the outskirts of West Jerusalem. The bus ride through the city took about twenty minutes, and then it was a ten-minute walk through a grove of pine trees to the memorial itself. I had been here twice before, but I wanted to see the new underground museum that opened last month.

As I paid admission, I was given a brochure on Yad Vashem. The introduction to the memorial in this brochure begins with three paragraphs that deserve to be quoted.

"The Holocaust is a pivotal chapter in Jewish history and an event of singular significance for all peoples."

"The annihilation of the Jews was an absolute and fundamental tenet of nazi racial anti-Semitism. On the basis of this ideology and using the framework and apparatus of the modern state, the Germans and their accomplices murdered six million Jews – men, women and children."

"The nations of the world and their governments stood indifferent to this unparalleled crime. The annihilation of the Jewish people put an end to the flourishing cultural Jewish centers in Europe. The Holocaust challenges the fundamental beliefs and values of human civilization – it is a warning sign for us and for future generations."

I’ll reflect on this statement at the end of this letter, but first I want to describe what I saw and my experience seeing it.

The History Museum

The place was packed with people, as might be expected on Remembrance Day. There were tours of groups of soldiers and school children, as well as many families visiting together. I saw two film crews following older persons, who I assumed to be Holocaust survivors, through the new history museum. At first I thought it would have been better to be there with fewer people pressing through the passageways. Yet, I soon realized that it was important for me to experience the living people, on Remembrance Day, as well as the memorial to their dead ancestors, who were murdered during World War II.

When I entered the new museum I immediately saw with all those coming into the building a large triangular screen, with a video running across it from right to left, which is the direction in which Hebrew is written and read. The video portrayed in considerable detail the life in Europe before the Holocaust. It was striking, and I stood with others and watched for several minutes.

Old photographs had been used in a computerized format that allowed movement, as if from an original video, as well as a merging and overlapping of images that was not possible before digital imaging became so sophisticated. All in black and white, the presentation was absorbing and compelling, and I could see that I wasn’t the only one who was captivated by the images passing slowly in front of all those entering the new museum.

Turning a corner away from this screen, I could see all the way to the end of the building. On either side of the high walls that form the sides of a giant A, there are doorways into galleries, and the path through the museum leads through each of these. The presentation of information in these galleries begins with the rise of Hitler in Germany before the war. Anti-Semitism characterizations are displayed along with a reminder of the laws passed by the German Parliament once the Nazi party gained control by winning the popular vote.

Each gallery took up another theme, or another place. The arrest of Jews, the transport of Jews, the ghettos that were created for Jews, the transport of Jews from ghettos to concentration camps and work camps, the extermination of Jews, the failure of Western countries to allow Jewish immigration both before and after the war, the resistance movements of Jews not only the Warsaw ghetto, but also fighting with partisan forces, the liberation of Jews, and their flight to established a new homeland here.

In a sense I had seen all this before in my visits to the previous Holocaust museum, yet I found experiencing the sad and terrifying story once again was just as overwhelming. It did seem to me that there was more material in the new museum, a greater number of photos and personal reflections, and also more information about what happened in the countries of Eastern Europe. The end of the Soviet Union has led to many documents being released by the new governments in Russia, the Ukraine, and elsewhere. Perhaps this explains my perception that there was now a greater emphasis in the presentation on the Jews of Eastern Europe, as well as on their resistance to the Nazis and to collaborating governments.

I didn’t take any photographs in the museum, because no photographs would do justice to what I saw and to all that I didn’t see. After finishing my walk through the galleries, I followed a path down to the Garden of the Righteous among the Nations, which remembers the Gentiles in Europe who helped Jews and therefore risked their lives to do what they thought was right.

Other Aspects of Yad Vashem

The Hall of Names contains the names and personal details of the millions of victims. These are presented in a circular room with a round stone-sided pit in the middle, with water at the bottom. The names are inscribed up on the circular walls that rise in rows to the ceiling.

The Holocaust Art Museum contains the world’s largest collection of art created in the ghettos, camps, and hideouts where Jews were before and during the Holocaust. In addition, the museum has a computerized archive with information on the art displayed here as well as other artists and their Holocaust art in other locations.

The Exhibitions Pavilion offers various displays, and the Visual Center provides computer access to information. The Learning Center allows visitors to explore historical, thematic and moral issues related to the Holocaust. There is also a new synagogue where visitors can say Kaddish for loved ones and hold memorial services for lost communities. Ritual artifacts rescued from destroyed synagogues in Europe are displayed around the walls of the synagogue.

A Children’s Memorial, hallowed out from an underground cavern, remembers the 1.5 million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust. While walking through the memorial, a visitor hears the names of the murdered children being read, along with their ages, and their countries of origin. The use of lights and mirrors in the darkened environment of the memorial gives the effect of walking through an infinite space filled with twinkling sparks of light.

Outside near the museum an original German cattle-car, which was given to the museum by Polish authorities, rests on a train track, reminding the visitor of all the Jews who were transported across Europe to concentration camps. And below on the hillside in the Valley of the Communities the names of over 5,000 communities that were destroyed (or barely survived in the Holocaust) are engraved on the beautiful, Jerusalem stone that is bedrock here. At the center of this memorial, there is a gallery with exhibitions and a short film depicting the world that was.

Tragic Irony

The Holocaust is incomparable, and cannot be summed up or explained. But the memorial’s brochure is correct to say that it is not only "a pivotal chapter in Jewish history," but also "an event of singular significance for all peoples." The Holocaust reveals that human beings can be murderers on a vast scale, deliberately and methodically, with no mercy or sense of shame. In this sense, as the brochure reminds us: "The Holocaust challenges the fundamental beliefs and values of human civilization – it is a warning sign for us and for future generations."

The "us" in this last statement is probably read by most visitors to refer to our generation, as it is followed by the words, "and for future generations." It might also be read, however, as referring to the Jews who come to this memorial. Or, if not explicitly read this way, at least the Jews that come are part of the "us" of this present generation.

And in this reading there is a tragic irony, for not far from this hill are the remains of Arab villages that were wiped out by Jewish fighters as part of what Palestinians remember as the Nakba, the disaster that befell their people in 1947-48.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not comparing the Nakba to the Holocaust. I agree that the Holocaust is incomparable. I am only pointing out the tragic irony that this memorial exists very near to where another group of people were terrorized and forced to leave their land, by those who are remembered in this memorial as freedom fighters and liberators.

To say that this happened simply because there was a war, or because the Arabs refused to accept the partition of the land that the UN tried to impose on them, is not an adequate response to the horror of the Nakba for Palestinians. For the Nakba remembers not merely a terrible war, with atrocities on both sides, and the UN decision to give 6 percent of the population 75 percent of the land. The Nakba also remembers what today we call "ethnic cleansing," for the Israeli freedom fighters intended not simply to win battles, but also to so terrorize civilians that they would flee.

Documents now available and studied by Israeli historians make it clear that this "Arab cleansing" was a policy implemented by the leaders of the Jewish independence movement. Moreover, this policy was carried out without mercy for the Palestinian men, women and children, who were threatened with death, if they did not leave their homes. Israeli historians have also documented how the Israeli government has leveled the Palestinian villages that were abandoned in the Nakba in order to built Jewish communities on top of them, or simply to hide the facts of prior Palestinian communities from the new Jewish settlers on the confiscated land.

I hope that someday this dark portion of Israeli history will be acknowledged by the Israeli government, will be adequately reflected in Israeli history textbooks, and will be remembered with remorse and perhaps even repentance by Jewish Israelis. Doing so, I believe, in no way would detract from the singular importance of Yad Vashem. Nor would it be any sort of comparison between the suffering of Jews in Europe, and the suffering of both Jews and Palestinians in the land that remains a source of contention between the two peoples.

This last fact, unfortunately, is not in the past, but defines the present and the foreseeable future. The suffering of Jewish Israelis and Palestinians is both very real and inescapable. Moreover, Arab Israelis, who are citizens of Israel but Palestinian by culture and religion, also suffer. And this suffering of Jews and Palestinians in the land they have to share must now be addressed, if there is to be a just and a peaceful resolution and the possibility of reconciliation.

The Palestinians must give up terrorist acts against civilians, although they have a right to continue to resist their occupation through other means. Yet, they will embrace nonviolence and a political solution only if Jewish Israelis give up their occupation of Palestinian land. Ending the Israeli occupation will mean dismantling checkpoints and tearing down the Separation Barrier within Palestinian areas, so that the only checkpoints and barriers will be at borders accepted by both Palestinians and Israelis, and confirmed by the international community.

We may hope, as well, for more, at least for future generations. We may hope not only for two distinct political states in this land, with fair and recognized borders, but for a sharing between Israelis and Palestinians that will make life more prosperous for both. And we may hope for a renewal of the shared culture that, at times in the past fifteen centuries, has marked the life of the Jews, Christians and Muslims living together in Jerusalem, in Galilee, and throughout this land.

Bob Traer, 6 May 2005

The views expressed above are personal and do not necessarily represent the World Council of Churches. If you wish to publish or disseminate this letter beyond personal friends, please contact the EAPPI Communications Officer (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission to do so. Thank you.

For other Letters from Jerusalem, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/lj.letters.2005.htm. 

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