Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem

This group of soldiers has just finished visiting Yad Vashem museum.
Yad Vashem is a mandatory stop for whom wants to understand the roots of Israeli. In the museum it is told not only the shoah but also the whole history of oppression and abuses suffered by jews in the centuries.
The architecture of the museum is also meaningful: it is a tunnel with a shape of an acute triangle, that is half of the star of david, the other half has been annihilated in the WWII. But at the end of the tunnel, oppressive as it must be, you exit in a terrace, full of light overlooking the hills around Jerusalem. It is a moving, intense experience, enhanced by the absence of a wall, there is just a transparent protection.

Yad Vashem remembers the evil because the evil should never happens again. Never again is the motto here. Jews wanted strongly their home here because this would never happen again.

For this reason the soldiers, during their service, must visit the museum at least once, because here they can find the strenght and the motivation they need for their service that can possibly be hard and challanging.

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This is my second visit and after my first visit I realize that its better organized.
A little beyond Mt. Herzl is the Israeli Holocaust museum. Yad Vashem was established by Israeli Law in 1953 to commemorate the six million Jews and their communities wiped out in the Holocaust. It has the largest and the most comprehensive archive and information repositories on the Holocaust, housing more than 50 million pages of documents and hundreds of thousands of photographs and films.The Historical and Art Museums, as well as the Hall of Remembrance, the Valley of the Communities, the Children's Memorial, and other monuments attest to the tragic events that befell the Jewish people and instruct visitors to Yad Vashem on the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its universal lessons. The Hall of Names is part of an effort to collect the names of every Jewish man, woman and child murdered in the Shoah.
It's an honor for me of not seeing any thrace or any evidence of my country to be involve in this biggest shame of humanity....

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Yad Vashem means 'A Memorial and a Name' in Hebrew (a quote from Isaiah 56:5). This place is Israel's national Holocaust remembrance site.

Many people say you can't go to Israel withouth visiting Yad Vashem and they are right.

Visiting Yad Vashem is a very emotional experience and hard to describe in words.

There is a history museum, and also several different memorials and a visitor centre scattered across the complex.

Some of the memorials:

Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations: trees have been planted here to honour those non-Jews who saved Jewish people from the Nazi persecution. Among the trees is one for Oskar Schinder.

Children's Memorial: Dedicated to the 1.5 milion children who died in the Holocaust, this memorial consists of candles being reflected my mirrors in an otherwise dark space. The names of the dead children are read out by recorded voices.

Hall of Remembrance: An eternal flame burns here. This is the place where memorial ceremonies are held.

Valley of the Communities: Like a canyon carved out of the rock, the walls of this valley are inscribed with the names of the Jewish communities that were destroyed in the Holocaust.

Memorial to the Deportees: a cattle car (one of the trains used to take Jews to the concentration camps) stands at the edge of a severed track. A memorial to remember those who were deported to the exterminatino camps.

These are only a few examples. There is so much more to see at Yad Vashem.

Plan in at least half a day for your visit.

Entry is free of charge. Closed on Saturdays and Jewish Holidays.

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At the Yad VeShem Holocaust Museum they have added a new outdoor section called the Valley Of The Communities. This section is not devoted to the individuals, nor the families that were destroyed by Nazis in World War Two, but rather by entire COMMUNITIES that were totally wiped off the face of the earth. As you stand under each monolithic wall and read the names of towns and villages where the entire population of Jews in that community ceased to exist because of hate it brings a shiver to your spine to realize the depth of hatred the human spirit is capable of. During WWII it was the Jews, but time and time again in mans history we have destroyed entire populations if not civilizations...when will we learn

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Yad Vashem, the national Authority for the Remembrance of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust, was established in 1953 by act of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) to commemorate the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the years 1933-1945. The Authority also commemorates the heroism and fortitude of the Jewish partisans and the fighters in the Ghetto revolts, as well as the actions of the "Righteous Among the Nations" (non-Jews who saved the lives of Jews).

Located on Har Hazikaron (Heb., Hill of Remembrance), a ridge on the western outskirts of Jerusalem, the Yad Vashem Memorial and Institute includes several commemorative monuments, an historical museum, a central archive and a research center for the documentation of the Holocaust.

The task of Yad Vashem is to perpetuate the memory and lessons of the Holocaust for future generations.

Yad Va'shem is the museum to remember the horrible holocaust that 6 million jews died during WW2.

You will find here a lot of pictures and documents from this time.

The entrance is free and it is from 9:00-17:00 except saturday (the place is close).

The place is very exciting and with powerful emotions.

Yad Vashem - the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority - is a sprawling complex of museums, archives, monuments and sculptures connected by a maze of walkways. It is the world's largest repository of information about the Holocaust.. "Shem" means name. Six million Jews (along with a fair number of gypsies, homosexuals, disabled and people with the wrong ideology) were killed in a mind-boggling example of man's inhumanity to man. The goal of Yad Vashem is to give a name to every person who died, to personalize this faceless mass, branded like cattle, numbers burned onto their arms, packed into cattle cars, and shipped off to concentration camps and gas chambers.

“Over 100 people were packed into our…airless closed car. Everyone tried to push his way to a small air opening. I found a crack in one of the floorboards into which I pushed my nose to get a little air. The stench in the cattle car was unbearable. People were defecating in all four corners…After some time, the train suddenly stopped. A guard entered the car. He had come to rob us. He took everything that had not been well-hidden: money, watches, valuables…Water! We pleaded with the railroad workers. We would pay them well. I paid 500 zlotys and received a cup of water…I began to drink, a woman whose child had fainted attacked me. She was determined to make me leave her a little water. I did leave a bit at the bottom of the cup, and watched the child drink…The car was sweltering in the sun. The men lay half naked. Some of the women lay in their undergarments. People struggled to get some air, and some no longer moved…The train reached the camp. Many lay inert on the floor. Some were no longer alive” (from the testimony of a survivor).

The cattle car in this photo was used by the Nazis to transport Jews to the camps. It was given to Yad Vashem by the Polish authorities in 1990. Now part of a memorial designed by Moshe Safdie, it sits on a severed railroad track jutting out over the slope of a hill, suspended between heaven and earth.

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Yad Vashem is far from easy, but is a must for any visit to Jerusalem. Over a huge site spread over the hills of Jerusalem, it's a deeply (almost unbearably) moving memorial, 'lest we never forget' and an attempt to provide a name to every victim of the genocide.

Monuments such as the Valley of the Communities - a vast mass grave carved into the bedrock, a grave of alleys and walls towering 30' above you, walls which are carved with the names of cities, towns and villages of Europe and N. Africa from where Jews were deported. As you walk through these alleys and courtyards you feel trapped, insignificant and disorientated - a metaphorical journey through the european continent at a time of war.

The Children's Memorial will affect even the most hardened of souls - a memorial hollowed out of an underground cave. Simple in it's presentation - a darkened room, the use of candles and mirrors representing the 1.5 million children who were the victims of The Final Solution.

An original cattle car is at the centre of The Memorial of the Deportees, used in the transportation of millions of Jews across Europe to the death camps.

Garden of the Righteous Among Nations is the memorial to 000s of non-Jews who risked their lives in helping during the Shoah.

The centre piece is the Museum. This vast underground space presents an abbreviated history of anti-semitism leading up to the Holocaust and then provides a detailed history of events during the period 1930-1945. It is an extraordinary, overpowering display.

The new museum provides an extra dimension to Yad Vashem. Previously, 2-3 hours would have been the recommended time for a tour of the site. The new museum alone could take up more than this. Ideally, 2-3 visits would be the only way to give Yad Vashem any justice, but one recommendation is to break up your time in the new Museum - take it in 2-3 parts with 'breaks' outside.

Free entry.
Opening hours: Sun-Thurs 9am-5pm: Fri 9am-2pm