Yad Vashem
This morning EIE had the amazing opportunity to visit Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, literally meaning "Hand and Name" is a Holocaust museum and monument honoring both the people who were killed in the Holocaust and the people who did their part to help save a Jew from the horrors of the Nazis. Their mission is to commemorate, research, and educate people about the Holocaust. We were introduced to our tour guide, Tamara, who gave each one of us a headset to listen to her throughout the day. Before going in to the main museum we started our tour next to a tree with a plaque reading "Irena Sendler". Tamara told us Irena's story. Irena was a non-Jew living in Warsaw during the time of the Warsaw ghetto. Being a nurse, she got clearance to go in and out of the ghetto. Each day she would bring the Jews supplies that they needed, and when the "liquidating" of the ghetto began, she smuggled out children to get them to a safer place. She kept a record of each child she saved and even when she was arrested and tortured, she never once gave up a name. Irena Sendler is referred to as a righteous gentile. There are over 25 thousand other people like Irena, who risked the lives of themselves and their families to save others.
After learning about Irena Sendler, we entered the main building. The first thing we saw was a huge triangular screen playing real footage of Jews in their everyday life before the Holocaust. This was to create the context to show all that we lost during the Holocaust. Tamara showed us that the entire main part of the museum was in the shape of a triangle. There are multiple possible reasons why the museum was built this way. The triangle could represent half of the Star of David, showing that we lost half of out Jewish population. The triangle is also seen as a strong building structure, representing the resilience and hope that we had after the war. Tamara also pointed out that the walls were significantly narrowed towards the middle of the museum and that the middle was lower than the rest of the museum, representing where the lowest point of the Holocaust was located in the museum.
We began walking through the museum and Tamara spoke to us starting at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed by a German Jew. She spoke about the crumbling economy and morale of Germany. She walked through the museum, explaining the rise of Adolf Hitler to power, and the beginning of anti-Semitism. We saw propaganda posters showing how evil the Jews were seen.
We then walked into a small set up of an average Jewish home in Germany before the Holocaust. It had a menorah and some religion- related literature, but apart from that, it wasn't very different than any other house you could have seen back then. After this, we learned about how other countries including America, coldly turned the other cheek to the terrible thing being done to the Jews and other undesirables in the eyes of the Nazis. We walked through an exhibit on the different ghettos including the Lodz ghetto where Tamara told us the story of her father-in-law's experience in the ghetto. As we walked on the images displayed in the exhibits got increasingly more disturbing This elevated the most when we were in the exhibit on the concentration work and death camps.
Personally, it was extremely difficult to hold in the tears while passing under the replica of he sign that was up over the entrance of Auschwitz camp. It read "Arbeit Macht Frei." This translates to "Work will set you free." As we passed more and more difficult images, it became extremely difficult for me and some of my classmates to look at the footage of the death camps. As we exited the last of the exhibits, we came to the large triangular window, sometimes referred to as "the light at the end o the tunnel".
After leaving the main building, we wet to the Children's Memorial. In the Memorial there were five candles surrounded by many mirrors. As we walked through we could hear a list of children's names being read. It looked as if there were an infinite number of candles in the dark room. In my opinion this was on of the most meaningful exhibits in the museum. After we left, Tamara spoke to us about carrying the legacy of everyone that was killed in the Holocaust was our duty. This trip was extremely meaningful and the Museum was an amazing monument for all that was lost in the Holocaust. This trip gave me an even stronger desire to learn more about the Holocaust, and the people who died and the ones who lived through it.
Questions:
What part of the trip was the most meaningful to you? Why?
If you are comfortable with it, please share any personal family stories about something we learned about today.
Our tour guide emphasized the importance of how the museum was built. Do you agree with the set-up method? To you, what did the way the museum was built and organized mean to you?
How did you feel about going through the museum with a tour guide? Do you think it would have been more or less meaningful to go through without one?
Lana Kolchinsky
As much as I wish I could say Yad Vashem was super meaningful, something was missing. I felt as having a tour guide took away from the experience. It became to me like facts on plaques that I didn't have to read, and I felt lost trying to listen to our guide while making a connection. The was lots of artifacts that broke me down, the pile of shoes, and the personal feeling of each shoe had an owner and were real.
ReplyDeleteSo I also unfortunately have a person connection with some one in my family history with many of the horrible things that happened in the Shoah. My Grandpa happened to go around Poland, as he started in Lodz and was put by the Germans in one of the awful trains into the Warsaw ghetto, leaving his mother and 3 sisters behind, and, met up with his dad in the Ghetto. My great-grandpa was then taken to Auschwitz and was killed. My grandpa fought with the resistance and escaped threw the sewers of the Ghetto. My grandma lived in France, and she and her sisters were mostly safe, but her father was sent of but returned with not much harm.
The most meaningful part to me was reading excerpts from the letters people wrote to friends and families. since they did not know what was going on or where they were going, many of them had the idea that they would see their lovers or family members again, but then there was always a small piece of information telling how the writer died. this was really hard for me to read and had a huge impact on me. also, the entire children's memorial was so beautiful and I loved the way the tour guide described the metaphor of the candles. hearing names of people that were my age was especially meaningful and horrifying to me.
ReplyDeleteI loved the way the museum was set up. it was absolutely beautiful and complete genius by the architect. because I would not have been aware of details like this, I was happy we had a tour guide, but as I was looking through the museum, I found it much more interesting when I got to read the information and choose what I wanted to learn more about than to listen to her guide
through it and I had a much more meaningful experience after I turned the headset off and wandered around by myself.
I have been to Yad Vashem before, and the first time I went, I could not look at everything in the museum and I felt I had to rush through because I felt so overwhelmed. The layout of the museum was very constricting to me then, but this time, I really appreciated it. I enjoyed having the guide to take me through in order to process what I had been sick to look at my first time in the museum. It was still rather emotionally draining, but I'm glad we were led in such a way that presented some facts clearly enough for me to look at it from a more educational point of view.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the most meaningful part of Yad Vashem was the children’s memorial. The mirrors and the candles and the names and information of the children just got to me. I don’t really know what i was feeling, the sight kind of numbed me. I found the structure of the building to be interesting. I love when everything has a meaning, and to me it enhanced the experience. It put the events in a bit more perspective for me. Obviously, I had already learned a lot of what we were seeing, but I didn’t understand the severity of each event and even had the order mixed up in my head before. The fact that you have to walk through every room of the building and the lowest and narrowest part was the worst really made sense to me and made me understand. I personally enjoyed having a guide. That museum is so full of information that I think I would be too overwhelmed without someone guiding me through and explaining. I think it would have been less meaningful for me if we hadn’t had a guide because of this.
ReplyDelete-Rachael Coleman
Yad Vashem was an overpowering and meaningful expierience. I went into the tiyul having low expectations. The first time I went in the summer, I was unimpressed. It had been after being in Poland for a week, and it was a lot more factual and information based than emotional, like Auschwitz. This time it was a lot different for me. The way we were learning about it as we were experiencing it at Yad Vashem made it so much more real. The way the tour guide was telling us the information as we went along made think a lot deeper about the Shoah for the first time in my life. It made me apply it to myself more than I ever had before, which made the expierience so meaningful for me.
ReplyDeleteYad Vashem was extremely difficult for me to handle. Before coming to Israel I had learned a lot about the Shoa and had been to the Holocaust Museam in Washigton D.C. Throughout the entire Museam I had many emotions running through me. I was angry, upset, and most of all I could not comprehend how this could have occurred. When we walked into the room with the shoes of those who perished during the Holocaust the tour guide continued to say "one plus one plus one". Meaning that each shoe represented a life that was terminated because of religion. Thinking about who wore the shoes we walked over and the lines of families that would never be broke me. Like many others on our trip I have family who was killed in Auschwitz. For me personally seeing footage of lifeless bodies being wheel barreled to mass pits where they would be burned was so undemaginable. The Children's Memorial also caused me to have a hard time breathing. I cannot begin to comprehend how one person can manage to create such an uprising and to try to erase a people from this earth.
ReplyDeleteYad Vashem was an extremely meaningful experience for me. I wasn't really sure what to expect because I had seen the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. before but I knew that Yad Vashem would be different in some way. I think that the set up of the museum helped with telling the story of the Holocaust because of the different meanings of the triangular structure and also showing what life was life before the Holocaust at the beginning. I also thought that it was meaningful to have the triangle become lower and narrower at the lowest point in the Holocaust. I thought that having a tour guide was important for me because even though it is extremely difficult to understand the Holocaust, some of her explanations made it a little easier to wrap my head around the events of the Shoah.
ReplyDeleteTo me the most meaningful part was coming out at the end of the tunnel after seeing all the hardships. After expierncing so much and being emotionally drained it was so nice to emerge out of the darkness and to find that you were in the land of Israel was so great. I agree with how the building was set up and i thou it was really smart. the light resembling the little hope we had really touched me. Honestly i would like to go without the tour guide because with the tour guide it becomes too factual thats probably why i like going to the one in DC more because i went alone
ReplyDeleteThe part of the trip that I found most meaningful was in a colection of belongings from Hungarian Jews killed in Auschwitz. It was a little girls two long blonde braids that her mother cut off when they were deported. She loved her hair and had never cut it before. I also find great pride in my long hair and it was a story that I really connected with, especially seeing her actual hair that was once a part of her. I liked the way that the museum was constructed. It made you feel as if, in a way, you were walking in those Jews footsteps. I did not really listen to the tour guide because the first time I went I also had a tour guide. I liked getting to walk around on my own a bit more this time and see and read what was meaningful to me.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the most important aspect, and the most meaningful one, of our tour was the first film where we watched the life of Jews before the destruction. Everything was there--music, politics, artwork, family. If we have an understanding of the Churban as twelve years of destruction without any context for the hundreds of years of culture built before it, everything becomes a pit of death, rather than an annihilation of a culture. The film gave us a setting for Jewish life.
ReplyDeleteWhile I appreciated the brutalist architecture of the museum, I felt that it beat a little too hard over our heads. Its explanation made sense, but I didn't like the piece at the end about the "end of the tunnel", how we today are the future of the Jewish people and have an obligation to continue the civilization because of the Churban. We should continue Judaism because we want to, not because of what Hitler did to us.
I don't feel one way or another about having a tour guide for Yad Vashem. On one hand, there is so much more that we could have learned if we had the opportunity to go at our own pace, but on the other, I'm sure that we would have missed out on many of the finer details that she brought up in her tour. That being said, experiential learning tends to stick with us better than anything else, so it may have been best just to go in and let the museum swallow us, so to speak.
-Noah Arnold
The most important part for me was the Lodz ghetto piece. My grandfather was from there, which gives me a personal connection. While I appreciated the architecture, but I again feel like it's putting so much pressure on us to hold the memory in our heads. If we go to this museum, we are already planning to keep this in our head. I really disliked having the tour guide. It seemed as if because our teachers could not come on this tour with us, they decided to get this person to guide us through what we were going to look at anyways. There is only one way to go in the museum, so having a tour guide drag us around and skip some really interesting things angered me.
ReplyDeleteI think the most meaningful part of the trip to Yad Veshem for me was the room that had a constant repeat of quotes and ideas and thoughts of people that have a relation or connection to the Shoah. This room was very significant for me because to me it seemed like a rap up of the whole museum. The museum is beautiful but overwhelming at times. With this room Yad Veshem managed to put the overall idea of the museum into one exhibit. I very much respected and liked the architecture of the building. The way that the walls fold in and how there were only 3 sources of light was very symbolic to me. The walls folding in make me feel trapped almost which is what its supposed to make you feel as if you were hiding. The fact that there are only 3 sources of light symbolizes the 3 types of hope there was for the Jewish people. Another architectural part of the building that really stands out to me is the fact that it is underground. It is underground because a majority of the memories of the Holocaust and the people killed or traumatized in the holocaust are associated underground.
ReplyDeleteMany things stood out to me from our Yad Vashem tour. One of the things that stuck the most was a testimony of a woman who thought that because she had not gotten her period during her time in a camp, she could not have children. When she did get pregnant, she was horrified because she could not bear to hear the screams of a child. She begged her doctor to give her an abortion, but she had no money. The woman attempted to abort the fetus herself at home in a very painful way. When she finally did have the baby, she was so in love with her new child that she felt intense guilt for what she had tried to do. I thought that this reaction to her suffering was sad in so many ways; I was really touched by her story.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the architecture of the building, and I was very glad to have a tour guide with us. I thought that the architecture added a lot to the experience of Yad Vashem. Because the museum was so vast, I don't think I could have gotten much out of it without a guide.
I did not find the trip meaningful. I found it informative of what life was like for Jews leading to the course of the Holocaust, what it was during the Holocaust, and after. Although I learned so much there, I will never be able to understand what it was like. I learned, but I did not understand. The trip was important however even though I did not find meaning to the things I learned there. What I found there was the hate, the cruelty, the humiliation, and the desolation towards and of the Jewish people. I found that the world truly does not want us, or that they are just not ready for the knowledge that we are here to stay.
ReplyDeleteThe architecture of the building was greatly conceived. I applaud the architects and engineers. It emphasized the feeling of being trapped with the huge cement walls closing in on you. And the light that was coming through was only at the very end of the museum or at the top of the non-climbable walls. So as you make your way to the light at the end of the building since you can't get to the one from the ceiling, you find out that you have to go through every gallery and section of the museum whilst the walls slowly close in on you. So while learning about the feelings of the Jews going through the Holocaust, they give a sort of sense on how it felt to feel trapped and yet have hope of getting out.
The vibe I got wasn't exactly that of being meaningful but something educational about the history of our people. Even after learning there and even going to Poland I'll never truly understand how it felt to go through everything. I think the architecture and what it symbolizes was magnificently done and the concept was very profound. I thought it was a very accommodating idea for what the museum was for. I think the tour guide assisted our learning situation because she knows so much more than us and as I said I didn't really find it meaningful.
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