Saturday, December 6, 2008

Yad Vashem Visit

On Thursday I visited Yad Vashem with the Overseas Program. We arrived late Thursday evening, with stars over our heads and a sharp chill in the air. Yad Vashem has a confusing entrance, there are several elements to the museum--including one about the homosexuals who were killed in the Holocaust. Having been to the Washington D.C. Holocaust museum several times, this museum was not shattering the way the first two visits to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. were. Every time you visit a Holocaust museum, something new "gets" you, before I was driven to tears by the children's shoe exhibit (in DC), this time, as I entered Yad Vashem feeling a little hungry, I was struck by the guide pressing the fact that even in the ghettos, and especially in the camps, people were living on a few hundred calories today. Imagine trying to survive that horror while starving, I can barely think on an empty stomach, but picture losing everything and being completely disoriented--all while starving. Seeing pictures of starving people was what "caught" me this time, I couldn't handle looking at those stick-like bodies that looked as though they could be snapped like twigs. 

Yad Vashem ends in a room with pictures of biographical information on the ceiling in a cone-shape, with a well also in a cone-shape at the bottom. When you gaze into the well, you see your face reflected as well as the faces and the biographies behind you. It takes a village to raise a child, and historical memory to fill the head of each individual perhaps. 
Then, after walking past this half-filled room (Yad Vashem still does not know the identities of 3 million Jews who died in the Holocaust), you walk out into the Jerusalem air--which almost always has a special zing and chill to it--on account of Jerusalem's height. We went at night, so in the distance lights shimmered--this is the future, the guide said to us simplistically. 

Smelling my own freshly laundered clothes has been difficult this weekend when I think about the story of a little boy--a "snatcher"--who snatched a bag away from a woman as she came out of a supermarket. The boy was so hungry, and knew that he'd probably be caught, that almost immediately he began shoveling the bag's contents into his mouth. "But, he didn't notice that the woman wasn't running after him, just shouting at him to stop eating. And he didn't notice the strange taste of what he was eating--which wasn't food, it was laundry detergent. He poisoned himself." I'm always washing things here, always pouring out detergent, and the thought that I could accidentally put it in my mouth is horrifying. How could someone be hungry enough that they wouldn't notice these things?

Most people, upon first arriving to Israel with Birthright or another group, immediately go and see Yad Vashem, but when I came the first time George Bush wanted to see Yad Vashem, and as a result the museum was closed off to the public. When I came with CAMERA, we didn't see Yad Vashem either. I've been here for several months, and hadn't yet been to the "founding spot" upon which many trips start. Has this affected my view of Israel? I know about the Holocaust, read about it too much probably, it's been jiving in my mind for the past few weeks thanks to a history course I took, and yet I've been able to ignore, to some degree, this museum. The Holocaust signs are all around us in Israel, my best friend's grandfather survived the Holocaust, without his survival my best friend wouldn't be here and I'd probably be bored to tears in Israel, as well as lacking his insights and beautiful friendship. The park where I walked Marco, where the dogs all bark and the children scream (regularly destroying my sleep) but with an incredible fountain and thick pine trees is the "Dora Gimpel Park," given to Tel-Aviv in honor of Dora, who perished in the Holocaust. The Holocaust is ignorable in America, but in Israel, even as the survivors die out, the signs will remain everywhere. 

Later that night, I sat with a few friends in a trendy cafe on King George Street, sipping Limonana. One of these friends works on the Netanyahu campaign, and she and another friend engaged in a lively discussion about Jerusalem and it's boundaries, asking questions like, "Is Jerusalem already divided?" (The Netanyahu-ist cited her freedom of movement, while the other friend cited the demographic split in Jerusalem.) The conversation evolved until one of them asked what I saw at the museum--the usual, I replied, exhibits and photos. They pressed for more, and we began talking about the simplistic "answer": the hills of Jerusalem, that Yad Vashem leaves you with. What kills me, pardon the expression, about most Holocaust museums is their minimization of, "what about the other six million?" 12 million died in the Holocaust, why do we only hear a piece of the stories of 6 million? The head of the Romas, in Romania, is a Holocaust survivor--but how many of us know about him? Why is their pain ignored, their stories, the lessons from the deaths and lives? It's a disservice to all of us. I want to know, how do Queer Jewish Communist Holocaust survivors think? What about Jewish Handicapped survivors? The point is that Hitler was "all-encompassing," he put almost everyone in the ovens of the death camps, so shouldn't Holocaust education across the globe be so all-encompassing? 
The end of Yad Vashem bothered me, as well. Yad Vashem is, of course, a Jewish space--but it's also a space which can be very significant for non-Jews, and should be. Plenty of non-Jews died in the Holocaust, so how is a beautiful view of Jerusalem their future? It's not. It's also not the future for most Israelis and Jews, because to be a Jerusalemite takes a certain kind of brain, stamina, and coping abilities. Most of us will never be Jerusalemites, Zion will never be our home, so where is our future?