Sorry for not writing in a while, but I haven’t done anything particularly blogworthy that you all would find interesting. I have been going to class, really enjoying it, and attempting to find motivation to do work (which is rough because I feel like I’m on vacation 24/7 still). However, I am slowly working on checking things off my to-do in Jerusalem list, and slowly but surely getting to them all. Last Thursday I went to Yad Vashem, which is the national Holocaust Museum, and although I’ve been to many Holocaust museums and this one specifically already, it was an incredible experience. I’m not sure there is a single museum out there that is as well put together as this one is, right down to the symbolism of the architecture and placement within the city itself. The grounds of the museum are beautiful: it’s located on Mount Herzel which is also the site of a huge cemetery where people like Yitzchak Rabin, Golda Meier, and Theodore Herzel himself are buried. The Jerusalem National Forest is right next to it as well, so the surroundings are really beautiful. 
On the grounds of the museum are several memorials, including the “Avenue of the Righteous”, where trees are planted in honor of non-Jews who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Probably the most moving memorial is the Children’s Memorial, which consists of a very dark room lined with mirrors and filled with lights. I have no idea how many lights are actually there because the mirrors makes it look like there’s millions of them surrounding you. In the background are voices reading the names of children: Name, age, and home country. They switched off between Hebrew, English, and German (so I understood them all, not that that’s super hard). It was incredibly poignant.
The actual museum itself is very well laid out. You enter under ground and follow the exhibit towards the middle of the building where it slowly gets darker and narrower, until the part about liberation where it begins to open up again. I have a big pet peeve about poorly designed museums, where it’s not obvious what to look at first and where to go next, and this museum did not have that problem at all. It’s very systematic and so so informative. I feel like I could have been there for hours reading every personal story, watching every video testimonial, and fully appreciating all the artifacts.
It’s pretty amazing to me that despite having visited countless museums, reading book after book, and learning both in school and out about the Holocaust for the past 15 years or so, I can still go to Yad Vashem and feel like I’m learning new things. What I found myself enjoying the most this time around were the stories about peoples’ lives inside the ghettos and camps. The way they were able to find joy in such dark times is pretty inspiring. I find it so easy to be a downer because one little thing goes wrong or because the weather sucks or because my favorite team lost AGAIN, but the little things that brought people light within such terrible darkness are amazing. I (naturally) enjoyed a Mickey Mouse cartoon one man drew to depict life in the campus. Another thing that stuck out to me was a quote about the irony of celebrating Pesach, a holiday all about liberation and the freedom of the Jewish people, while confined inside a ghetto. There was also a replica of a monopoly board that some people made inside a ghetto to entertain the children. I saw tons of incredible artwork, including that of Felix Nussbaum and Peter Ginz (look them up) and stories of people writing books, poems, and playing music as a means of coping. One of my favorites was the story of “The Emperor of Atlantis”, a one act opera written by Viktor Ullmann and Peter Kien while they were held at Theresienstadt concentration camp. The cast was composed of various inmates in the camp, and they rehearsed inside the camps walls, but once Nazi officials saw the show and interpreted the main character (Kaiser Overall) as a caricature of Hitler, they banned the show, so they never got to perform. Both Ulmann and Kien were killed in Auschwitz. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Kaiser_von_Atlantis)
I also learned some new things about rescue missions and efforts made to save Jews in various countries. For example, I had always known about the effort of the country of Denmark to evacuate the Jewish people into Sweden, but Bulgaria had a similar kind of action. There were really inspiring stories of individuals from all across Europe who risked so much to come to the aid of their neighbors. Many of these stories were told with video testimonials, which were of course incredible to watch.
I have to say one of the most ingenious parts of the whole museum is the exit: I mentioned that the building gets smaller and darker as you get into the crucial and brutal years, but then begins to open up again at liberation. Well at the end of the exhibit, there are glass double doors, which open onto a terrace with a gorgeous view of the city of Jerusalem. We were there at dusk so we could see the lights of the city below us (because the museum is on a hill) beyond the forest that surrounds the area. The idea is that exiting the museum towards this view symbolizes the resilience of the Jewish people and reminds museum goers of all the Jewish people have accomplished in such a short time: The city of Jerusalem brings hope despite the awful things that go on in the world. It’s truly a beautiful sight to behold. 
Sorry for the downer of a post, but I highly recommend a trip to Yad Vashem if you’re ever in Israel. It’s a beautiful place!!
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