Yad Vashem -- Israel's Holocaust Memorial, Visit to Ethiopian Jews

The final four days of our trip were a flurry of activity. I’m amazed at how many meaningful experiences, and some fun ones also, we were able to cram into a short time. Most nights I got only four hours of sleep. I’m posting my comments and photos for each of these days from home and will do my best to recall the specifics of each day and the flavor of our experiences.

Sunday, August 10 was Tisha b’Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av), on which we commemorate the destruction of our first Temple, by the Babylonians, in 586 BCE, and our second Temple, by the Romans, in 70 CE. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain, in 1492, occurred on the same date. We began the day with a brief service. It was very subdued compared to our usual spirited singing.

The main event of the day was a trip to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and educational center. Although I’ve been reading about the Holocaust and watching movies and TV programs about it since I was a teenager, the exhibits at Yad Vashem gave me an increased sense of the monstrous evil which the Nazis and their collaborators committed against our people and the uniqueness of the systematic extermination which we suffered.

Among the most compelling aspects of Yad Vashem is the collection of video screens showing Holocaust survivors recounting their personal experiences: people being rounded up for deportation to death camps, parents hiding their children before being carried off themselves, Jewish ghettos officials committing suicide rather than fulfilling the Nazi demand to select people from among their fellow Jews for deportation and people whom firing squads missed crawling out of the mass graves. The survivors spoke about the Nazis’ collaborators: Poles, Latvians and others, who helped with the roundup and slaughter of Jews.

No indoor photos are allowed at Yad Vashem. We were allowed to take photos at the outdoor children’s memorial. Here is a wall sculpture, from that exhibit, of the face of a young boy who was exterminated.

From the same complex, here is a photo of the memorial to Janosz Korczak, a Polish Jew and world-renowned pediatrician and teacher, who revolutionized the education of children by empowering them and encouraging greater understanding of their individual needs and desires. Korczak set up many orphanages, which were known for their caring and sensitivity. When the children from the last of these, in the Warsaw ghetto, were scheduled for deportation to a death camp, Korczak was offered an opportunity to escape. He chose instead to stay with “his” children and provide them what comfort he could in their final days. He went to his death with them.

Here is an actual railroad boxcar of the sort used to transport Jews to the death camps. Note the guard booth which has been added on the end of the car.

The last exhibit I visited at Yad Vashem was the outdoor memorial to entire communities which were wiped out after all the Jews were exterminated. The town in Byelorus where my father was born, Dawidgrodek, is listed on a panel facing the one which lists the town in the Polish Ukraine where my mother was born, Korczek.

Yad Vashem was crowded during our visit. Of course, Tisha b’Av is a public holiday in Israel, so many Israelis were free to go there. But most people in the crowds we saw were tourists, including many Birthright groups of young people. We were told that Yad Vashem is a mandatory stop on every Birthright tour. We saw many Israeli soldiers, for whom a visit to Yad Vashem is also mandatory.

Next we traveled to the West Bank Jewish town of Ma’ale Adumim "red heights" (Joshua 18:17), to meet an Ethiopian Jew named Adina, who came to Israel with her family 22 years ago. She said that they didn’t leave Ethiopia due to persecution, but rather because they wanted to live in the Holy Land of the Jewish people. Adina and her family follow the Torah and an oral tradition which appears to have been influenced by rabbinic teachings. Here she is with our guide, Dr. Peter Abelow.

Ma’ale Adumim is a thriving community of 65,000 Jews which has been built on land that was ruled by Jordan prior to 1967. On the way to Ma’ale Adumim, we passed four Arab towns: two on the Jewish side of the security fence and two on the Palestinian side. If Israel ever makes a “land for peace” deal with the Arabs, it is likely that either Ma’ale Adumim will be on the Arab side of the line or at least two of the Arab towns will be on the Israeli side.

From Ma’ale Adumim we traveled to Arad, a desert town from which we would leave for our early morning climb to the ancient fortress of Masada. Our experiences on top of Masada and nearby will be the subjects of my next post.