I only have vague memories of Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem) from my first trip to Israel in the early 1990′s.  The monuments were quite impactful.  They focused on remembering using symbolic architecture as an artistic tool.  

These strategies contrast with the Washington DC museum greatly.  In Washington DC there is a greater focus on the atrocities themselves… the goal is seemingly to hit participants over the head with the horrors that permeated the Holocaust (some examples include: a piles of shoes, hair or glasses.)   

With this in mind I entered Yad Vashem not knowing what to expect as it had been renovated sense my last visit.  

From the outside, the museum looked like a gigantic triangular cylinder stabbed into a mountain.  The tip of the triangle was made of glass. 

When we entered, we quickly became silent… as if all of our conversation seemed insignificant.  The first movie clips were about the rich and cultured life of the Jews in Germany and the surrounding areas.  After viewing this introduction, we wove our way through various exhibits filled with factual information, recordings of personal testimonies alongside photos and objects.  The museum was set up chronologically, and told the story from the point of view of the Jewish people’s struggles. The end of the museum opened up to a view of Jerusalem and pathways to the more subtle memorials.  

We spent at least 4 and 1/2 hours pouring over the information, listening to peoples’ stories and visiting the more symbolic “memorial sites.”  By the end we all felt hungry, tired and sore… but also guilty for letting these trivial pains trouble us in the face of what we were visiting.  

A few exhibits were particularly memorable:throughout the entrance and exit courtyards there were trees planted for each of the righteous gentiles, the memorial for the children consisted of candles in a dark room with several mirrors (in the background, childrens’ names and ages were read out loud) and the story of a survivor meeting a soldier seeing what was really taking place for the first time as he stared in horror at the site of his starving body.  

I also found that the nations’ failure to destroy the concentration camps after learning about what was taking place was completely unacceptable and troubling.  Yes there is a war and resources need to be devoted to ending it as soon as possible, but there were many occasions in which war targets were close to concentration camps, there was no excuse not to bomb them.  

In 1942 one world leader wrote, “I don’t know what a Jew is, we only know what human being are.”

I still cling to a certain amount of optimism and hope for the future, but I know that it is going to take a lot of work.  

I think that this was the only piece missing, the next steps… how do we prevent future horrors?  how can we bring people together to move beyond their hatred and fear of each other?  How can we truly reach people?  

Any ideas?  What kind of exhibit would you build to address these concerns?  What would it look like?  What would you hope for it to achieve?  

I’ll be interested to read your thoughts and comments.

l’hit, 

Jessica