Zachor -- remember

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Even the benches record sad memories in this area of Yad Vashem overlooking Jerusalem.

Yad Vashem this year is putting a special focus on the fate of Hungarian Jewry, “a tragic example of the swift and ruthless efficiency of the Germans and their local sympathisers during the latter period of the war.”

Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2014

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Yom Hashoah  began Sunday evening and continues on Monday.
A heavy day in Israel.
This year the central theme is 
Jews “On the Edge”
1944: Between Annihilation and Liberation

Dr. Dina Porat, Chief Historian of Yad Vashem, writes

 Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance
Day 5754 (2014) is marked by the situation of
the Jews in 1944 – exactly 70 years ago. The
expression “on the edge," taken from Nathan
Alterman's poem “Joy of the Poor," very aptly
expresses the feeling which prevailed that year
among the Jews of Europe, who were in the
throes of a double race on which their very lives
depended. On the one hand, cities from east to
west, such as Vilna and Minsk, Warsaw and
Riga, Belgrade and Sofia, Paris and Rome, were
being liberated from the yoke of Nazi Germany;
the Red Army was advancing, and the western
Allies continued to bombard Germany, their
landing in Normandy tipping the scales still further. 
On the other hand, in the same year,
the Jews of Hungary were sent to Auschwitz,
the Lodz and Kovno ghettos were liquidated,
the last of their former inmates were deported
and murdered, and death marches were initiated
from the liberated territories to the heart of what
remained of the “Third Reich.” It was a year in
which everything depended on the scales of
time, and the Jews remaining in Europe were
asking themselves: will the Red Army from the
east and the Allies from the west arrive before
the Germans come to murder whoever is still
alive? Or, as Alterman wrote, which ending
will come first? Events were occurring fast,
one after the other, raising serious questions
in their wake. . . . 

Dr. Porat's essay continues here, in the Yad Vashem Jerusalem Quarterly Magazine 
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See also some short Yad Vashem videos for the memorial day.
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יום הזיכרון הבינלאומי לשואה

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The entrance into the Holocaust History Museum at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem.

The triangular building is cantilevered at its beginning and at the end.
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In 2005 the United Nations designated January 27 as an annual International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

At the very first U.N. Holocaust Memorial Day in 2006, Israel's Prof. Yehuda Bauer delivered the "Remembrance and Beyond" keynote address at the United Nations.
He concluded his speech thus:

I come from a people that gave the Ten Commandments to the world.
Let us agree that we need three more, and they are these:
thou shalt not be a perpetrator;
thou shalt not be a victim;
and thou shalt never, but never, be a bystander.

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(Linking to Our World Tuesday and  Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)
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Coffee and cake and books at Yad Vashem

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Today I had to meet a friend who works at Yad Vashem, our Holocaust memorial.
Here is the Visitor's Center where we had coffee and cake (one floor below).

Right behind the impressive building is an impressive gift shop; well, actually it is called The Book and Resource Center.
It  is managed by Steimatzky Group Ltd.
The center provides a wide range of current reference books, multi-media, memoirs and Holocaust literature for visitor purchase and fills book orders and visitor requests related to the Holocaust and WWII in various languages.
You can see samples of what's available at the Yad Vashem Online Store website.

Wish I had taken a photo of the book store for blog-friend Petrea Burchard in Pasadena because she just now informed us via Facebook  of a marvelous new ad campaign by this same  Israeli book chain,  Steimatzky's.
Follow the link, you will love the photos about the magic of reading!
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(This post links to Our World Tuesday and to Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)
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Yad Vashem, meaning

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The siren blared at 10:00 this morning, and everything and everyone in Israel stopped and stood silently for two minutes.
Yad Vashem, the Knesset, schools, and TV all had heart-wrenching ceremonies, speeches, and testimonies for Yom HaShoah, the day of remembering the Holocaust victims, heroes, and survivors.
UPDATE:  See a video of the siren and streets.

Did you ever wonder where Israel's Holocaust memorial's name comes from?
I noticed this sign for a little 1928 synagogue in Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem some years ago, and it was an Aha! moment.
It  quotes "Vanatati lahem beveiti uvchomotai  yad  vashem."

So, I found the verse comes from Isaiah 56:5, where God says

I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument [yad] and a name [va-shem], a monument and a name better than sons and daughters;  I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

Everyone should spend some time at Yad Vashem.

The little synagogue with the marble sign is for the Jews of Yanina.
Wiki helped me with this one:
"According to oral folklore Jewish communities inhabited the site of the modern [Greek] city of Ioannina [or Yanina] as early as 70 C.E.
. . .  There was a Romaniote Jewish community living in Ioannina before World War II. The Nazis deported the majority of them (1,860) to concentration camps during the final months of German occupation in 1944.
Almost all of the people deported were murdered on or shortly after 11 April 1944, when the train carrying them reached Auschwitz-Birkenau."
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(Linking to Signs, Signs meme.)
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Making a square from a triangle

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You see this little traffic island in between the trees?

According to the sign (click to read it), this little triangle will become Yad Vashem Square.
The red Calder sculpture to the left is across the street  in Holland Square. 
Interesting, the sign says "Remembering the past -- Shaping the future."
But the Hebrew means more like "Enabling the future," i.e. making sure we will have a future. 

Yad Vashem, our Holocaust memorial, is way back on the edge of Mount Herzl.
(Those white buildings on the left of the photo.)
It is a bit of a hike from the main road, Herzl Street.

Foreign tourists often get off the tram at the last stop which is called Mt. Herzl and look around and wonder where Yad Vashem is.
The signs are not well-placed, so they have to ask directions.
I hope the new square being built  will make it clear that yes, this is the right way toward Yad Vashem.
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(A post for ABC Wednesday  Y day, and also for Signs, signs.)
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Another forest fire, the Jerusalem Forest

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The Jerusalem Forest was burning all afternoon.
Mostly old pines planted by the Jewish National Fund/Keren Kayemet back in the 1950s.
Those who wanted to quickly "redeem the land" in the young state back then surely did not realize that pine trees are the most combustible and dangerous trees.

From my house I could see the smoke rising; the flames were down in the wadi.
At least four little planes buzzed over my house, going back and forth with water and maybe also flame retardant, until the darkness stopped them.
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They say the fire is just about under control now, tonight. Thank God.
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Enlarge the photo to get the lay of the land.

The Har Nof neighborhood is on the left. Its residents were told to stay home and close their windows.
Smoke inhalation sent several to the hospital.
Behind the green mountain is Mt. Herzl, the mount of remembrance.
Yad Vashem, our Holocaust memorial center, came dangerously close to going up in smoke.
Imagine if the archives and artifacts from the Shoah had burned . . . how awful that would have been.
But while Yad Vashem was being evacuated, the director sent his men out with hoses even before the fire engines could get there. He stood firm and would not be moved.
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Our thanks to the brave pilots, fire-fighters and volunteers who saved the day.
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Information in Haaretz is here.
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A day to remember

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Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day is being observed in Israel, from yesterday's sunset until sunset tonight.

Yad Vashem has built a new cantilevered museum.
The skylight roof of the museum sheds light on the dark history of the Shoah exhibited in the long, mostly underground building.

After walking through the chilling exhibits, silent visitors come out of the tunnel-like structure into the fresh warm air of an open porch overlooking the living Jerusalem Hills.
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Only 208,000 Holocaust survivors are left in Israel, and an average of 35 of them die every day.
This makes it even more important to listen carefully to their story today, while we still have living witnesses.
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Across the valley

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From sunset to sunset it has been a long and heavy day. The Holocaust memorial day always is.

All these buildings spread out on Mt. Herzl are Yad VaShem, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
From the looks of the crane, they are adding even more to it.
An impressive aerial photo is at their website.
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I wish there had never been a reason to build such a memorial place.

But my world today, for That's My World Tuesday, was not only the sadness of Yad VaShem and Auschwitz and Yom HaShoah.

I stood at the highest point of Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood to take the first photo. If you turn the camera a quarter turn to the right, this second picture is what you see.
Hadassah Medical Organization, a place of healing, teaching, and learning!
And on the hilltop beyond the hospital--my moshav, a place of new life for the new immigrants who founded the village in 1950!
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Mt. Herzl as a jumping-off place

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This lookout on Mount Herzl has to be the most scenic bus stop in Israel!
You see Yad Vashem on the right, Hadassah on top left, and the village of Ein Kerem in the valley.

Two birds were sitting on what will become the terminus of the new light rail (IF the tram's tracks are ever completed, some year). The train station will be over underground parking, in hopes that Jerusalemites will learn to park and ride.

The bird flew up to sit on the rail. Only in the viewfinder did I realize he had just taken off!

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Shabbat shalom to all. And happy Camera-Critters Sunday, already underway, to all who participate or visit our animal meme.

Sometimes a bench is needed

RuneE, at his beautiful blog Visual Norway, is inviting us all to join in an informal meme on Fridays. The subject is benches.
My friend on this bench is reflecting on a special exhibit at Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Shoah.
We in Jerusalem offer sympathy to the family of Officer Stephen Johns, the guard shot down on Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum--a black man killed by a white supremacist and anti-Semite.
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V mishmash

Vatican flags next to Franciscan flags near the Latin Patriarchate in the Christian Quarter of the Old City.
~~ Vibes.~~ Do you believe certain places and things have a special energy? Like this old baptismal font? Like places much prayed in?
Victims. -- Powerful art at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

Visitors should know.

Vampire repellent? Na, just kidding! But Israel does have vampire bats.

Remembrance Day for the Holocaust and Heroism

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Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, today. The sirens sounded their mournful wail for two long minutes and everyone in Israel stopped and stood quietly in inner silence. A somber day.
 The main ceremonies were at Yad Vashem which is a vast 45-acre complex of museums, outdoor monuments, exhibition halls, archives, a library and other resource centers.



"Cattle car, a memorial to the deportees" by Moshe Safdie.
The Yad Vashem website says, "The cattle-car is perched on the edge of the severed track, paused on the brink of the abyss. Although symbolizing the journey towards annihilation and oblivion, facing as it does the hills of Jerusalem the memorial also conveys the hope and the gift of life of the State of Israel and Jerusalem."


The skylight of the long, triangular shaped Holocaust History Museum. Most of it is underground, inside the mountain.
 After walking through it for hours, trying to comprehend the horrors of the killing of six million Jews, one finally comes to the end of the tunnel.


And suddenly you emerge into the light!
Spread out below the open terrace in panoramic grandeur are the Jerusalem Hills.
 Our own country!
The memory of the victims and the sweat of the new immigrant survivors went into the building of Israel and independence and statehood was achieved in 1948.
We have come a long way.
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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Today our President Shimon Peres, himself born in Poland, stood with Polish President Lech Kaczyński at Treblinka. It was the first of several ceremonies to mark the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which has been called "the first urban mass rebellion against the Nazi occupation of Europe."

I took these photos at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The first evokes the heroism of the 19-year-old who led the escape of roughly 80 fighter-survivors through the Warsaw sewers. They emerged in a nearby forest or in safe houses on the "Aryan side" of the ghetto walls. Most joined up with the Polish resistance partisans.

And lest we forget, or never knew, there WERE several thousand Poles who risked or sacrificed their life to save Polish Jews. They are some of the many Righteous Gentiles honored by this garden and with trees bearing their names at Yad Vashem.