Today, in class, we took a mini field trip to an archeological park to do a “dig for the day.” The lecturer spoke about Mount Moriah, where Temple Mount once stood. The focus of this program was to collect the archeological objects from this area. Actually, all the dump were removed from the site so we were not actually on Temple Mount. This was a bit of a controversy between the Jews and the Arabs because Temple Mount is now a mosque for them. The Muslims didn't want their cultural icon to be examined and touched because of the cultural signifiance. I agreed with the Muslims- it's the same idea that the U.S. had with the Native Americans- did we have the right to remove parts of their cultural history? As pretty the objects might be in a museum, I just don't feel comfortable. That's why I don't really go into the Native American Museum in DC very often- only with friends who want to check out the cafeteria.
What was interesting was that the lecturer switched back and forth from Hebrew to English to help us learn Hebrew. Afterwards, we went into another part of the tent to see a huge area of tables and buckets filled with digs from the site. We broke up into groups and each took a bucket. Essentially, we were helping the archeologists to find pieces of glass, pottery, bones, mosaics, and so forth within these small rubbles of stones. It was obvious that the site held beautiful architecture because the stones were of different colors ranging from white to reddish to pinkish. This is what people call the Jerusalem Stone- very hard to touch but beautiful to look at. You cannot quite find anything else like this elsewhere. I worked with Melissa, who enjoyed the whole process very much. I had already done this in the Negev on my birthright trip- that was a lot more exciting because we got to go into caves. Here, it was just in a tent! The park is situated in south of Hebrew University campus in the valley. We did have to climb down the muddy valley to get here- our shoes were caked with mud. I got a good laugh in watching people in front of me trying to pick up their now-heavy sneakers. I wore my rain shoes, fortunately.
The weather here certainly is not any better than what my loved ones are experiencing in New York. We get a lot of rain here and it’s just awful to walk around in because everything is slippery. I have been wearing my raincoat and rain shoes since Sunday. Not only do we get damp weather but also bone chilling winds. I should not be surprised that we get a lot of wind up here because we are on a hill. Same situation as Colgate! I do question myself sometimes if I really want to go to the downtown… if the wind would be any better to walk around in…
After class, Melissa and I dashed off to catch Bus 23 to Yad Vashem. It was a 45 minute ride- very uneventful. When we arrived at Yad Vashem’s gates, a cab driver offered to give us a free lift to the museum since it’s about a ½ mile walk to the actual building.
Yad Vashem is a complex filled with memorials. While the history museum did go through major renovations in 2005, it is not quite the center of the place’s attention. This is Israel- this state rose out of the ashes of the Holocaust. There is a Children’s Memorial, Partisans’ Panorama, Monument to the Jewish Soldiers and Partisans who fought against Germany, the Garden of Righteous Among the Nations, the Cattle Car as a memorial to the deportees, and my favorite and the most powerful memorial I have ever experienced- the Valley of Communities. The Valley of Communities is literally dug out of the bedrock to create canyons with its walls engraved in all Jewish towns and cities that were affected during the Holocaust- including those that disappeared off the map. The extensive list of places is mind-bogging because it is difficult to believe that the Germans really came and conquered all these little towns, effectively destroying the Jewish life there. Even if a Jewish victim’s name was not recovered but it is at least a memorial to all Jews. Yad Vashem sits atop Mount Herzl, overlooking a valley of settlements. The view is just breathtaking and brings the person to reality that they are in Israel, a Jewish homeland, a Jewish haven.
The history museum was certainly not what I expected. The building is shaped like a triangle. When I entered, I immediately felt a bit disoriented with the walls coming to an upside down “V” shape with a skylight for the narrow ceiling. The view to the other side was there but a person cannot go straight to it until she makes a zig-zag between exhibits that branch out from the sides. There are different obstacles in the middle such as tv screens displaying the start of the Nazi regime and a display of banned books. Basically, visitors weave in and out of the exhibits. The set up told a narrative story of the Holocaust starting with the President Hindenburg’s appointment of Adolf Hitler in 1933. The aesthetics of the museum surprised me since all the exhibits were very well light- no darkening spots to lower the visitors’ morale. There were a lot of pictures and tvs showing video clips from those days speaking in Hebrew with English subtitles. I was very much drawn to the testimonies and new information that I had not seen at the US Holocaust Museum. Yad Vashem’s design reflects its concern for the arts as many images of the ghettos and concentration camps were actually pieces of artwork done by the victims. Everything from the photographs to artifacts to drawings to information boards were arranged carefully in an artistic fashion with lots of thoughts put in. While the visual effects were very pleasing and reflective of the museum’s modernization, the content and choices of testimonies overwhelmed me. I was not bothered by pre-1939 material but once I browsed through the ghettos’ beginnings, I started feeling the pain. I must say upfront that there were very graphic pictures of starving children in the Lodz ghetto and testimonies of how the survivors’ family members died of hunger. I felt absolutely disgusted by the descriptions and images- the children’s frail bodies rivaled those who are starving elsewhere in the world today. The exhibit on the Germans’ march in the Soviet Union left me slightly speechless as one woman described her near death experience of the pit. As a seven year old watching her grandmother and aunt getting shot, she could not forget how the Germans could still hear the screaming and crying from those they missed while firing with automatic machine guns and proceeded to shoot down the pit until all were quiet. If anything, these parts were the museum’s biggest strength.
The concentration camps were not as bad. The exhibit displayed a great wall of names as an example of a roll-call roster. Posters of different countries reminded the visitor of the sheer number of countries affected by the deportation process. In the beginning of this particular exhibit, to your right, a display of 16 different artworks depicting the concentration camp life by various artists (created in 1943-1944). They were absolutely beautifully done and well-preserved that they could have been done recently. In addition, the museum had portraits of different people’s lives and told of how they lived during the Holocaust. For this particular artistic section, it used the artists’ self-portraits for pictures and told of how the artists hid their artwork, mostly burying underground, from the Nazis and to save for the future generations. More than often, the artists or their spouses survived to return to find these pieces. As an artist, I could very much appreciate their efforts and artwork. Yad Vashem also has an art museum devoted to the Holocaust art in which I shall return to see it. I simply had never seen so many original artworks in a Holocaust museum. Anyway, in the later part of the concentration camps area opened my eyes as there were several small television screens with testimonies and different walls representing the major camps. I stood there for quite some time to watch the survivors talk about their experience when they got off the train to the separation line. One survivor talked of how she and her sister attempted to hold their siblings and to stay together. One guard stopped her and gave her a long, gazing look and then separated her from her family. She was sent to labor while her family perished- such a close call. As I made my way around, I stopped halfway through my step when I looked down to see a pit with glass over it. The pit was filled with shoes.
The next exhibit was about liberation and the end of the war. Yad Vashem did not show anything about the actual concentration camp experience- no stories of back breaking labor and food stealing before the next room displayed the death march. Yad Vashem set up the death marches area like a cemetery with black headstones blocking your way through. You had to dodge like you would on a death march around fallen bodies. There were also testimonies about it. I thought the presentation was terrific- emphasizing the horrors of these desperate attempts to survive to see the war’s end and to kill before the war’s end. It made me feel like I have really overlooked this particular subject.
By the last room, I was seriously speechless and overwhelmed by the museum’s power to drain all the life out of the visitor. The last exhibit, while supposedly joyful with liberation and freedom after the war, struck home for me. I watched this large screen television of a woman describing how the Holocaust deeply affected her. She said, “I went to the gynecologist and he told me that I was three months pregnant. I jumped off the table like a madman and asked him if I was really pregnant. The doctor told me yes and then I broke down crying and pleaded him to do an abortion. I would pay him anything to have one. He said that he did not do abortion. I told him that I could not bear to hear a baby cry. I heard so many babies cry at Auschwitz. Then I went home and put a towel over my belly and then put a hot iron over it. It didn’t work. For the next few months, I did everything I could to have a miscarriage so I would not have to hear a baby cry. When my son, Moshe, was born, I told him that Mommy would tell him everything that happened to her. I never did tell him.” Just to hear this particular story of how deeply affected she was by her Auschwitz experience and how it made accepting her motherhood so difficult made me cry. How could you not want to have children after six million Jews were killed? She did go on to have some more children.
I found the Hall of Names on my way out. When I read about it in my guide, I gasped as I looked around the circular room. The bookshelves were lined with black binders filled with worksheets that Yad Vashem developed to record testimonies. I had no idea how many there were but somehow all the binders reminded me of how many people were involved in the Holocaust. I pretended that these binders were simply filled with names and imagined that all six million names were in there….
Not once did I look back as I walked my way out to the beautiful valley ahead of me. The scenery held a trance over me. You see a small civilization a bit ahead of you as an allusion to Israel’s birth after the Holocaust… a new beginning. Visions of the Holocaust overlapped in my brain as I stood outside… all the horrors, the screaming, the pain… How can that place be so intense inside when the outside is so tranquil? It felt like an adrenaline rush. How could “I” have survived those terrible years and then still be alive? That’s the feeling that I was experiencing.
Melissa and I headed back with our stomachs feeling like they’ve been punched hard. I was so overwhelmed with feelings that I could not describe my experience at Yad Vashem immediately. I rode the bus… then a cab (after a cranky, tired bus driver told everyone to get off after 10 minutes on the bus), then to my room where I laid there for 15 minutes. I did not feel hungry at all for dinner. I had never experienced this kind of heaviness, not even after my first and second trips through the Permanent Exhibition at the USHMM.
Later, I went to an Ethiopian event with my friends about the Ethiopian Jewry in Israel… I did not pay much attention as I was still distracted by my visit.
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