Yad Vashem

Today, some friends and I went to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial on the outskirts of Jerusalem, in order to pay our respects and honor the victims. Yad Vashem lies in a dense pine forest, and it looks over the western mountains outside of Jerusalem. First, we went into the museum itself. Inside were endless amounts of documentation and personal stories, allowing us to see the personal tragedy of the Holocaust instead of just being caught up in the massive numbers of people murdered by the Nazis. While the museum did have charts and raw data on the number of people murdered, it focused much more on individual survivors and their stories. The interviews of survivors and their experiences played on tv screens wherever you turned, and you couldn't help but stop and listen to each one. In front of the tv's, documents and personal belongings of people who did not survive are scattered around each room in glass display cases. Each room is devoted to a year (or years), and they go in chronological order, starting in the early 1930's and ending in 1945. In several rooms, Hitler's speeches are broadcast, to show the audience his exact words and ideas and to also show the devotion of the German people to these values. Every time you turn a corner, something shocks you. In one room, a full-sized rail car stands deserted on a pair of railroad tracks, as if it had just stopped transporting its victims the moment before you entered the room. In another room, a see-through floor looks down on a case filled with shoes, discarded by their owners as they were herded into the gas chambers. Next to this display was a full-scale model of a gas chamber. We followed a tour made up entirely of Israeli soldiers. Everywhere you looked there were soldiers, leading me to believe that coming here was part of their training, to remind them that they were all that stood in the way of the next Holocaust. The State of Israel was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust, and its founders were determined that the Jewish people would never be so defenseless again. This is the reason why everyone here is in the military. For the people that the world rejected, a home was found, the land of their ancestors. They will defend it to ensure that what transpired at Auschwitz, Dachau, and other extermination camps never happens again. The Jews have a state, yet they still aren't at peace. We westerners do a good job of looking horrified whenever we learn about the Holocaust, and we all say passionately "Never Again!" Yet lurking beneath the surface, antisemitism is alive and well. We see it blatantly displayed by the Iranian President, who still insists that the Holocaust didn't happen and called for Israel to be "Wiped off the map." We see it more subtly in the capitals of the West, as one by one Israel's old allies condemn it and vote against it in the general assembly. Even the United States, Israel's supposed best friend, is not entirely innocent of such behavior. Americans are quick to say we are "Supporters of Israel" or "Pro-Israel", yet we are quick to condemn the Jewish State for acts taken in self defense, such as Israel's attempts to take out Hamas's missiles after they were launched at Israeli schools and apartments. We say we love Israel, yet we consistently accuse the only successful democracy in the Middle East of murder, racism, and bigotry. Such attitudes disgust me. My countrymen need to come to this museum and hear its message. It's time for us to stop making snap judgments about Israel based off of thirty second soundbites on the evening news and actually educate ourselves about the real situation in the Middle East. It's time to quit stabbing Israel in the back and instead join hands in the fight against the real forces of murder, racism, and bigotry in our world. In short, it's time to remember the lessons of history, to ensure that they are never repeated.