Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem is the memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem. It is truly an amazing and eye-opening place. The Children's Memorial was the exhibit that got to me the most. When I went inside the exhibit it wasn't like any other museum exhibit I'd ever seen. It was a dark room with hundreds of mirrors and just 5 candles. The candles reflected off the mirrors making the exhibit seem endless. While you walk through the exhibit a narrator's voice is saying the names of children who died, how old they were and where they were from. While my parents and aunt stayed for a few minutes but then were ready to move on, I wasn't ready to go yet. The exhibit really captured my feelings and made me truly realize what pain and fear these children had to feel. And why? Because of their religion. Something that they couldn't choose. Though my family doesn't know the names of our relatives that died in the Holocaust, we know they suffered because of something they couldn't control. Another exhibit that really amazed me was the Valley of the Communities. The Valley of the Communities is a 2.5 acre outdoor space that has 107 tall stone walls, creating room type spaces that connect to one another. On the stone walls are the names of over 5,000 cities that were annihilated during the Holocaust. Walking through the Valley of the Communities was fascinating and shocking. I knew that Jews died in many cities but I had no idea that the number was a high as 5,000. As I walked around the exhibit and read the names of the cities, I recognized a fair number of them. Greece had a wall or two, I had no idea that Hitler managed to have Jews killed all the way in Greece. After we were done with some of the exhibits we walked back to the entry building and talked to a man, named Yehuda, who we later found out was a Holocaust survivor. He was from Ukraine and managed to make it to Israel right after it had become a Jewish state. Talking to Yehuda really made me wonder what it would've been like living during a time like the Holocaust. Tons of people wanting you and your family dead. I could never imagine having people who used to be my friends, all of a sudden wanting me and my family dead. But that was how it was during the Holocaust. The Nuremberg Laws were passed to figure out who was Jewish. People were considered Jewish depending on what religion their four grandparents were. If a person had three or four Jewish grandparents, they were considered Jewish. But if they only had one or two Jewish grandparents they were considered mixed breed. In the beginning of Nazi Germany, mixed breed people weren't as hated as full out Jews. However, that quickly changed. When walking down to the Valley of the Communities you walk past a train car. The train car was one of the actual "cattle cars" that were used to transport the Jews from towns to the concentration or killing camps. Seeing the train was rather horrifying because it wasn't very nice looking and it was flat out tiny compared to the number of Jews that had to fit in it. Jews would have to ride in these train cars for days and nights. On the front of the car is a little platform that is higher than the rest of the car. A German soldier would stand on that platform to make sure that no Jews would escape, if a Jew did try to escape he would shoot them. The train car exhibit was a rather scary one for me. Everything at Yad Vashem is put together very tastefully and with lots of effort. That assures me that though the Holocaust is over, and that the new generation Germans are much different than the last one, the people and families who died and suffered in the Holocaust are not, and will never be, forgotten.