6/9/2011
The last place we visited before heading North was Yed Vashem, the holocaust memorial. Almost as powerful as the first time I visited, and like then there just wasn't enough time to take it all in.
Most of the information is housed in this weird triangular prism.
The video testimonies are incredible, and I'll record a few things said that stood out for me.
One guy resolved never to make the same mistake again, the mistake of being 'moral', deciding not to take the bread crust hidden under his father's mattress while his father still clung to life. Next time he saw his father's corpse the crust was long gone.
The same guy spoke of fighting for the safer mid-rank positions in the morning line-up, as they knew the possibility of being singled out and killed for some imagined infraction was higher at the edges.
The same guy again spoke of being forced to stand between electric fences for eight hours in sub-zero temperatures after being caught wearing sack-cloth under his issued shirt.
The woman and man who survived the killing-pits, fainting and being overlooked under the mass of bodies, after a long time buried in corpses she made to move, but his hand stalled her and probably saved her life.
The man employed to drag the bodies from the smoke chambers to the pits, via the 'dentists' who searched for gold fillings. The corpses often gave long sighs as they were pulled out.
I had forgotten, or not really noticed, how reviled and persecuted the Jews have been throughout the ages, long before Nazism and virtually world-wide. So many countries denied access to the flood of people fleeing Germany and countries they invaded.
6,000,000 dead, mostly from Poland.
The other sites at Yed Vashem I hadn't seen before. The children's memorial was very dark and quite effective, with 1,000s of reflected candles like stars and the names of all the known children spoken on a very slow loop as you walk through half-blind.
The last place we visited before heading North was Yed Vashem, the holocaust memorial. Almost as powerful as the first time I visited, and like then there just wasn't enough time to take it all in.
Most of the information is housed in this weird triangular prism.
The video testimonies are incredible, and I'll record a few things said that stood out for me.
One guy resolved never to make the same mistake again, the mistake of being 'moral', deciding not to take the bread crust hidden under his father's mattress while his father still clung to life. Next time he saw his father's corpse the crust was long gone.
The same guy spoke of fighting for the safer mid-rank positions in the morning line-up, as they knew the possibility of being singled out and killed for some imagined infraction was higher at the edges.
The same guy again spoke of being forced to stand between electric fences for eight hours in sub-zero temperatures after being caught wearing sack-cloth under his issued shirt.
The woman and man who survived the killing-pits, fainting and being overlooked under the mass of bodies, after a long time buried in corpses she made to move, but his hand stalled her and probably saved her life.
The man employed to drag the bodies from the smoke chambers to the pits, via the 'dentists' who searched for gold fillings. The corpses often gave long sighs as they were pulled out.
I had forgotten, or not really noticed, how reviled and persecuted the Jews have been throughout the ages, long before Nazism and virtually world-wide. So many countries denied access to the flood of people fleeing Germany and countries they invaded.
6,000,000 dead, mostly from Poland.
The other sites at Yed Vashem I hadn't seen before. The children's memorial was very dark and quite effective, with 1,000s of reflected candles like stars and the names of all the known children spoken on a very slow loop as you walk through half-blind.
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