Yad Vashem: Where Holocaust victims’ memories live

Designed by Moshe Safdie, Yad Vashem is Israel’s official memorial centre for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The museum was established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Also referred to as ‘The Holocaust Martyrs’ and ‘Heroes Remembrance Authority,’ the museum is built in the form of a […]

Designed by Moshe Safdie, Yad Vashem is Israel’s official memorial centre for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The museum was established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
Also referred to as ‘The Holocaust Martyrs’ and ‘Heroes Remembrance Authority,’ the museum is built in the form of a prism made of glass and grey concrete. The structure cuts through to the top of the Mount of Remembrance.
Thinking about the Holocaust, the pictures that come to one’s mind are those of black and white horror photographs as well as video clips of mountains of skeletons of victims, who died of starvation, illnesses or were executed. Others are those of half dead people barely able to stand upright with blank expressions on their faces, as they dreadfully and painfully walk about in their camps with barely enough skin to cover their backs. These are the pitiful impressions many have of that period.
Other recollections are of anonymous piles of corpses and people standing with arms and legs akimbo, waiting to be forced into gas chambers and their corpses dumped in mass graves. Remembering these images, it is hard to come to terms with the fact that these were once living beings.
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. The photographs exhibited at Yad Vashem speak uncountable words. 
Filing into Yad Vashem’s dark hallway, which is lit up by small starry-like lights representing the children of the Holocaust, one is first welcomed by the names of children followed by their ages and nationalities accompanied by very solemn music that puts one in a funeral mood. The children, whose names are on display, were a few months’ of age and in their teens. This is the Children’s Auditorium which shows photos of some of the children who were killed; some with smiling faces, others with oblique expressions, unaware of the bizarre situation they were to face.
The children were considered unproductive and a continuity of the Jewish existence. They were usually among the first victims who were eliminated by the Germans during Hitler’s regime, as a way of ensuring the complete extermination of the Jews. 
Going further are photos showing hundreds of Jews in their regular daily lives before the Holocaust. Photos of a people, whom like every other human being, have families, friends to play as well as laugh with.  “These,” an anonymous author aptly said, “are photos of people, now frozen in time, who stopped to capture a special moment for posterity – a beloved child, a happy family gathering and the hopeful faces of a newly married couple. None of the people in these photos could have imagined the horrific fate that awaited them. None of them could have known that these snapshots would remain the last, and sole, testaments to the full lives they led; indeed, the only proof that these people once really existed at all.”
Sadly, not all these faces have been identified, because the photographers and those who knew them were most often killed along with them.
Looking into their eyes in the photographs, makes one ponder for a while what pains they must have faced and the freedom taken away from them suddenly as well as their forced regimented and hostile life in a camp.
The premises are adorned with obelisks symbolizing the persecution and endurance the Jews bore. It also carries plaques with names of people who helped save Jews from being killed. One of such is the Famous Oscar and Emilie Schindler in whose memories the movie, ‘Schindler’s List’ was made.
The museum is covered with archival footage sound recordings and original photographs from Jewish life before World War ll. Photos of children playing, communal life, folk dance and weddings, which shows what it feels to be free in a land you call home.
Museum records inform that before the Soviet army liberated victims at Kluger Camp in Estonia, the Germans and their Estonian collaborators murdered more than 2,000 Jews. They attempted to cover up all the traces of the killings but did not have enough time to burn most of the bodies. Pictures, papers and other personal effects, some of them partially burnt, remained in the inmates’ pockets.
The pictures and certificates are exhibited in the museum, in their original state as they were retrieved from corpses.
According to records, during public assemblies held from March 15, 1933 throughout German cities, books written by Jews leftists and those considered enemies of Germany were burnt. These actions were aimed at instilling the Nazi spirit within German culture, thus preventing Jewish influence.
Books displayed at the museum were on the list to be burned.  One of such is a prayer book owned by a girl, Hannah Weiss, who was in Soemmerda, a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. The book, written in Hebrew but in Hungarian letters, gives insight into religious life in the camp.
There are also two metal pins with names of the concentration camps engraved on them. These were secretly created by prisoners in the camps, who traded in them for food portions. The pins carry a silent documentation of what their owners went through on the camps.
Chaim Yablonskly is said to have donated his father, Yaakov’s pin. Yaakov is said to have passed through six camps, including Buchenwald, before reaching Nickelsdorf, where he was liberated. A shred of the prisoner’s outfit was found with his pin on it. He had gone through eight camps before being transported to Nickelsdorf.
In the autumn of 1935, a Dutch motorcyclist who rode from Netherlands to Berlin photographed anti Semitic signs posted in the cities along the way. There was one which read: “Jews, take note the road to Palestine does not pass through here. The Jew is our disaster; they should get out of here. Jews entering this place are in danger.”
There is a photograph taken in Hamburg, Germany, in 1935, showing the humiliation that some of them went through for mix-marriages. A woman carried a sign around her neck which read: “I am the biggest fool in town and only have dealings with Jews.” The sign around the man’s neck read: “As a Jew boy, I always invite only German girls up to my room.”
The Nazi regime victimized and persecuted various groups considered to be its enemies. Jesuits (Catholic Congregation of Priests founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)) were regarded as racially inferior and anti-social due to their way of life, while the Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted because of their beliefs.
At the Hall of Names, names of victims are permanently preserved. The victims, most of whom never received a Jewish burial, are said to have commanded that their names be remembered. This, Yad Vashem has fulfilled since its establishment by providing them with a name and making it possible for them to be remembered in the Hall of Names’ archives. It also contains the testimonies and biographical details of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. 
According to records in the museum, six million Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust and over one million of them children and teenagers.