Thursday, June 26, 2008
Destruction and Memory


Dear parents and friends,

We began our day on a solemn note, visiting the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem was recently remodeled and the new exhibits engender a lugubrious feeling. There was a minimal amount of talking during our visit because everything was deep in thought pondering the situation of the Holocaust. As soon as one walks into the main building of Yad Vashem, he/she is immediately hit with pictures of the Jewish community and fairly large size photo of dead Jewish bodies stacked along side with logs, as an attempt to create an illusion of a building created by the Nazis. This actual photo was the paradigm for the tone for the entire morning, serious, mournful, and deep in thought. Every part of Yad Vashem, including the structure of the building, was intricately designed with a purpose. The floors were steeping downwards until the turn of the War, since the walk through was in chronological order; the floor began slowly steeping upwards after that point, symbolizing a major turning point in the war.

After the walk through we got the amazing unique opportunity to visit the Room of Questions. The Room of Questions is reserved for certain groups, and we were lucky to be the group for the morning. The Room of Questions is a computer center that in holds computers filled with common yet unanswerable questions, such as: “Where was G-d during the Holocaust?” One can click on a question and listen to various answers by people of various backgrounds to receive a greater and wider understanding of how people felt during the Holocaust.

Our final stop at Yad Vashem was the Children’s Memorial. Like all the other parts of Yad Vashem, the Children’s Memorial was meticulously designed. Before one enters the memorial, there are many pillars cut short, to represent all the lives of the children cut short. When one walks into the memorial, one immediately sees pictures of the children who perished. As one continues on, they enter a room that is filled with candles. This is an illusion. There are actually only two candles, to serve as a metaphor for the two million children whose lives were ended so abruptly. While looking at the illusion of candles, the names, ages, and birthplace of all the children known to have died in the Holocaust are said in Hebrew and English. To listen to all the names, one would have to stay in the memorial for days.

We left Yad Vashem on an introspective note.  Rather than feeling lost, though, we were focused: we realized that we have a great responsibility and we have years of history to live up to.  With that in mind, we made our way to the Jaffa Institute (in Jaffa of course), a community-service organization that serves at-risk children.  There, we packed boxes of food that would be distributed to the city’s population of hungry kids.  It was fulfilling to know that we were making a difference in the lives of children in Israel – we had already performed service in America, and now we were taking our efforts international.  Next, we met some of the children who were in the after-school program.  We also met the founder of the Institute, Dr. David Portowicz, who talked with us for a long time about the work that he does and why he does it.  He was a great speaker, and very inspiring.  He answered our questions, and agreed to stay in touch – some of our Fellows want to work with him in the future.

Today’s events were thought-provoking and moving, and inspiring even more so.  We go to bed reflective and optimistic.

- Emilie Seckel and Eva Roben