Day 53

Happy Father's Day Dad!!!

Today we went to the Holocaust Museum, Yad Veshem. The name comes from a verse in Isaiah, that talks about how they will be remembered, that their children will carry on their story. There were some parts of the museum that were really hard to see, and there were others that were really awesome. One of the good parts was at the entrance to the Museum, which is called the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations. They have a tree planted along the pathway for every non-Jewish person or family that helped Jews escape at the risk of their own lives or those of their family. There were 23,500 trees there, with a plaque at each one with the name of the person/family on it. There were other stories of people ("gentiles") who helped save Jewish people, sometimes strangers, just because it was the right thing to do. It was nice to see how good people could be, since most of the rest of the museum was showing how evil people could be. They also made a big deal about honoring the people who fought back against the Nazis, like in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, whom they saw as kind of modern Maccabees.

I don't feel like this is the place to talk about a lot of what I saw, no matter how respectfully I tried to do it. To briefly give an idea of what the museum was like, it was a concrete hall built into the mountain, with the walls sloping down on the sides and light coming in from windows above ground. We walked through rooms to the sides of the hall, that went in order. There were pictures of people before they entered the camps, and pictures of them in the camps. There were stories of people who survived and people who did not. There were stories of times that brought out the best in people, and some that brought out the worst. We got an idea of what it was like for the people who lived, and the hardships they still had to face. In the end, though, there was almost a hopeful feeling, or maybe more of a conviction, to never let anything like that happen again to people in the world.

One part that was really beautiful and sad at the same time was the memorial to the children, which was a room with panes and mirrors. It was all dark, except for 5 lighted candles that reflected through the glass to make a million little lights all over the room, while someone said the names of each of the children and how old they were. It was a really moving thing to see.

After Yad Veshem we went to Mt. Herzl, which is the site of Theodor Herzl's grave. Herzl was a leader in the Zionist movement in the late 1800's and early 1900's. When he died in 1904 in Vienna he asked that his body be moved to the Jewish State whenever it was established. The Zionists did just that in 1949, and now it is a really big deal to the people of Israel, and the mountain is now the site for many other graves of Zionists and early leaders of the State of Israel, as well as the military cemetery.

It was a really really long day with a lot of walking, and usually we all kind of space out around hour 5 or 6. Today was 8 hours, but amazingly I was able to stay focused, and it was really great because I learned SO much and I felt like I got a much better idea of what a Jewish State meant to the people, especially after the Holocaust left them as refugees, with nowhere else to go. It seems like the more we learn, the harder it is for me to form a real opinion on the Conflict here. I never realized before I came here just how complicated it is and how many events have transpired over the past few thousand years that make it seem impossible to ever find a solution that will work for everyone.

When I got home me and my roommate Natalie almost napped through dinner. We woke up at 6:51, ran up to the Oasis, and had about 8 minutes to eat. Since dinner I've mostly been hanging out, reading a little bit, and trying to decide what to do with our free day tomorrow. Yesterday was hump day. It is so crazy, we're already halfway done, and there is still so much to see and do! I think tomorrow I will try to hit up a handful of churches/museums, since I feel like I still haven't seen enough of those yet.