Friday, January 19, 2007

Yad Vashem

Yesterday, Jen and I visited Yad Vashem's (the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority) new Holocaust History Museum here in Jerusalem. It was our first trip to Yad Vashem and the huge campus is breathtaking in its size and number of memorials. The new museum itself is architecturally outstanding and beautiful. The visitor takes a chronological path from Jewish life before the Holocaust through the rise of Nazism and murder of 6 million to the post-Holocaust years and the founding of the State of Israel.

While we were visiting, there were many groups of Israeli soldiers visiting as part of an IDF member's training is to visit Yad Vashem to understand what Israel is fighting for. The museum makes a strong point toward the need for the Jewish state throughout as one is regularly reminded through the exhibits that the Jews of Europe had no where to go to avoid persecution and murder.

Yad Vashem is an incredible place but, unfortunately, we should have walked the grounds and seen all the memorials before having visited the museum as we visited on a Thursday afternoon when the museum is open until 8 p.m. but by the time we finished the museum, the grounds were growing dark. We'll definitely go back as we also need to visit Yad Vashem's neighbor, Har Herzl.

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