Some Thoughts on Yad Vashem

As part of our study of Judaism, we had the opportunity to go to Yad Vashem today. Yad Vashem is the Jewish Holocaust museum, comparable to the one in Washington DC. It is the largest of its kind in the world. As part of the tour of the museum, we were split into groups and given a tour guide. Obviously these guides are given instructions on what to say in order to give the Jewish point of view on the Holocaust or as they say it in Hebrew, the "Shoah". It is a fascinating museum, built in the shape of a long prism, cutting into a mountain. You walk along the museum, weaving back and forth from one wall of the prism to another. Inside the walls are rooms dedicated to different events of the Holocaust (for example, the Warsaw Ghetto or the Final Solution), filled with pictures and movies from the time. The museum was packed with student and soldier groups and even a Holocaust survivors group. We were quickly led through the museum by our tour guide and basically spent the whole 2 hours in the museum listening to her speak. She brought up constantly the persecution of the Jews and how the whole world had turned their backs on them during the Holocaust. It was a very biased presentation of history, demonizing the Allies for not stopping the systematic killings in the concentration camps (ex: the Allies knew of Aushwitz, but didn't bomb it because it wasn't a military target. Our guide complained a lot about that.), the Europeans for colaborating with the Nazis, and other things. I loved the museum and because I really didn't like our tour guide and our brisk pace we took in going through the exhibits, I want to go back later. The most memorable part of all for me was in one of the last halls of the museum. There was a video of a Jewish childrens choir singing "Hatikva" which is now the Jewish National Anthem. It was a video we saw at the beginning of the tour. The childrens choir had about 100 kids in it. We were told by our guide that 95 of them didn't survive the Holocaust. As I read the words of this Jewish song, I had tears in my eyes and a voice in my head that just kept repeating over and over, "This is my people and I love them. This is my people and I love them."

"As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And forward to the East
To Zion, an eye looks
Our hope will not be lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem."

I was reminded of another exhibit in which I saw German soldiers cutting off a Jewish man's beard and another where a Rabbi, with his prayer shoal put at an awkward angle and his phalacteries cut open, was forced to stand above dozens of Jews laying face down on the ground and recite their prayer of dedication, the prayer they recite at funerals. I pictured those people I had walked among before the Western Wall, who I had felt such a strong connection with as I had listened to their prayers. It was so hard for me to picture them or any good person like that, be humiliated in such a terrible way, to be treated like vermin. In fact, they killed them like vermin in the end, using rat poison to make the gas in the gas chambers where so many Jews were exterminated. No child of our Heavenly Father should ever be treated in such a demeaning way. It just rips my heart in two to think that someone fell to that level to do such a terrible thing to a fellow human being. Yet God loves them all and sent His son to die for them so that all those wrongs could be made right, so all could feel that love.
My last thought I would like to share deals with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As our tour guide told us about how the Jews were rounded up and forced to move to small Ghettos, cut off from society and treated like second-class citizens, all I could think about were the Palestinians. The Israelis are being so hypocritial!!!!!!!!! Palestinians are not given Israeli passports, they are cut off from society in small cities surrounded by check points. Families are often not allowed to gather for weddings or funerals because of travel restraints. All the Palestinian houses have 3 to 4 large water tanks on their roof because water is often cut off from their neighborhoods (you don't see that in the Jewish neighborhoods). On top of this all, they are being blocked in by a huge separation wall, to keep them contained. The Jews are doing the very same things to the Palestinians that the Nazi's did to the Jews. I am not advocating only the Palestinian side, because I don't agree with bus bombings or rocket attacks and such terrorist acts. I am just so surprised by this unjust world and I pray for the hastening of the day when Christ will come and all things of this nature will be made right. The Jews nor the Muslims believe in Him. But He nonetheless loves them. I have had that impressed upon my thoughts multiple times since coming here. He loves them even though they turn their back on Him. That one experience of listening to that Jewish childrens choir and the voice I heard in my head, "They are my people and I love them. They are my people and I love them," told me much about the love of our Savior. My prayer is that someday the Jews will come to realize that. In the mean time, He won't punish them, but He will just wait patiently and lovingly for the right time, weeping when they weep, rejoicing when they rejoice. I love my Savior.