Anne Frank's memorial in the forest

.

In the final hour of daylight my town's touring group just made it to Ya'ar HaKedoshim, the Holocaust Martyrs Forest.

On the path leading to the new (2011) memorial to Anne Frank were signposts quoting her famous diary.

"The memorial is a sculpture created by designer Piet Cohen, and is the form of a room made of rusted steel. In the corner of the structure sits an uncomfortably high stool, from where the viewer can see an engraved image of the famed chestnut tree which Anne Frank wrote about so lovingly in her diary. The viewing experience is meant to recreate the feeling of imprisonment, isolation and discomfort while looking longingly through a window at the world outside." *

If you are ever in the Jerusalem Hills, look for this sign and follow it into the forest.
It is a moving experience.

* For  very interesting details about the Anne Frank Memorial Park and about the Martyrs Forest with  its six million trees, please see the Jewish National Fund/Keren Kayemet page
http://www.kkl-jnf.org/people-and-environment/kkl-jnf-projects-partners/dfu-2012/holocaust-martyrs-forest-anne-frank-memorial/
especially now, just a day after Yom Hashoah.
.

Our new place to pause on the Israel Trail

.

And now about the February 10 dedication of Mitzpe Noam that I started to tell you about in the previous post.

Many, I think more than a hundred, came to honor Noam Rosenthal and his family.
Noam was a son of Meitar, our town.

Noam was only 20 when mortars killed him along with four other soldiers on July 31, 2014 during the 50-day fight with Gaza.

His mother, father, brother, friend, and his commander,  the mayor, and a representative from Keren Kayemet gave moving speeches.
There was hardly a dry eye in the audience.
Then the red ribbon was ceremoniously cut above the stone compass which shows one of Noam's favorite sayings: "Live always says northward."

His chevreh, a tight-knit group of  fine young men (seen in the photo) who every Friday evening would get together on this hilltop and make music, wrote moving things on the rock about Noam's legacy, how they would always think of him and miss him.

His family wrote these words about memory and memories.

Noam's favorite instrument was the piano; he played mainly classical music.
And so they designed this meeting place in the shape of a grand piano.

I hiked back to the Noam Overlook a few days ago and found it being enjoyed by a few families.

This is the view from the edge of town.
Mitzpe Noam is on top of the hill.
.
(Linking to Our World Tuesday, hoping wars will someday not be a part of our world.
And for ABC Wednesday, the letter G is for a grieving family and a good boy, gone from us.)

UPDATE Jan. 2019:  The place now has a sign:

.

For the Armenians

.

This khachkar cross-stone in Jerusalem's Old City  recalls the Armenian genocide, a painful and complex chapter of history still waiting for wider recognition.

Yesterday, after prayer, eighteen Jerusalem churches rang their bells one hundred times to mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the genocide.
Today, after a memorial Mass at St. James, wreaths were laid at the monastery in the Armenian Quarter.
At noon there were demonstrations at the Turkish consulate in Jerusalem and at the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv.
In the afternoon all the Patriarchs of Jerusalem gathered at the Holy Sepulchre for a memorial Mass.

In Armenia one and a half million victims were yesterday canonized.
There is also a  video of today's ceremony at the monument in Yerevan, Armenia, to which Israel sent an official delegation of several Knesset members.
.
For more about Armenian Christians in Jerusalem see my earlier posts.
May justice be done, as we remember this tragedy.
.
To learn more:
 http://www.timesofisrael.com/imploring-for-recognition-jerusalems-armenians-to-mark-100th-anniversary-of-genocide/

 http://www.newsweek.com/souls-vanished-armenian-genocide-1915-and-so-did-stories-323851

Video of "Face the Shadow," Armenia's 2015 song for the Eurovision contest.
.

Australian Light Horse annual commemoration in Beer Sheva

.
Yesterday I found my way through the streets of Beer Sheva  to the Park of the Australian Soldier.
My first time to see the annual commemoration and to see the new park, and both were very impressive.

The e-mail read "The Pratt Foundation and the Municipality of Be’er Sheva invite you to the commemoration of the 96th anniversary of the Battle of Be’er Sheva, marking the fall of the Ottoman controlled city of Be’er Sheva to ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) and British troops on 31 October 1917."

After morning tea the many guests took their seats and the ceremony opened with a long blast of a long and curling shofar.
The nice new Ambassador to Israel, H.E. Dave Sharma, gave a good speech about the great importance of the Battle of Beersheva.
BTW, he is Australia's youngest ambassador anywhere in the world.

Military representatives  of Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the United Nations were there.
Many Zionist youth movements attended, as did classes of high school students.

Dr. Apple, Rabbi Emeritus of Sydney's Great Synagogue, was expected to give a memorial prayer but he spoke instead about the recent attack on five Jews at Bondi beach.

The Australian youth groups joined in singing Advance Australia Fair and Hatikva.

Please enlarge the sign to read the story of the famous battle, history's last great cavalry charge. 

The U.N. men from UNTSO and MFO  were happy to pose for anyone with a camera.
Israelis are not used to seeing fancy dress uniforms and medals.

Everyone then went across town to the Beersheba War Cemetery.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission says their cemetery contains 1,241 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 67 of them unidentified.

In the Light Horse charge on Beersheva, 31 Australians were killed.
At least 70 horses were also killed in the audacious battle. 

 Again there was the laying of wreaths.

I asked for a poppy and the digger asked  to put it by a soldier's grave.

I found a Jewish grave.
There are many more at the Jerusalem War Cemetery on Mt. Scopus.

 The morning's ceremonies concluded a block away, at Atatürk Plaza, at the obelisk.
Carved in its stone:

1914-1918

THIS MONUMENT IS DEDICATED TO 298 HONOURABLE TURKISH ARMY SOLDIERS FALLEN AT THE BE'ER SHEVA FRONT FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR COUNTRY

The distinguished representative of Turkey spoke (in English) about the martyrs who died defending the then-Ottoman town of Beer Sheva.
He was proud to see the old Turkish train station behind him, part of the famous Hijaz Railway,  being carefully restored as he spoke.

We stood for the Turkish and the Israeli national anthems. 

Wreaths were placed at the foot of the tall obelisk, which was built in 2002.

With the strained Israel-Turkey  relations in the last few years, it was very special to see the two flags flying side by side.

Let's hope Atatürk's motto, "Peace at home, peace in the world," will someday be true for all countries in the Middle East. 
.
For more see Australian blogger-teacher Hels' post http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/australian-and-new-zealand-light.html
. 

Together on September 11

This picture of solidarity is from the Facebook page USEmbassyTelAviv.

The new American Ambassador, Dan Shapiro, who speaks fluent Hebrew, said this at the memorial ceremony today at our September 11 memorial site in the Jerusalem Hills:

אין עם שמבין את הכאב שלנו ואיך להמשיך לחיות עם כאב יותר מהעם בישראל. הקשר המוסרי בינינו מחזק את שנינו.

It means "There is no other people that understands our pain and how to keep living with the pain more than the Israeli people. The moral bond between us makes us both stronger."

He speaks the truth.
.
The Embassy has a short video of the monument's 2009 dedication.
The sculpture has the names and country of origin of all the victims.
.
More about it at the JNF website.
.
We watched, not without tears, the moving commemorations live on Israel TV today from New York and the Pentagon.

Interesting that the young man who designed the powerful monument at Ground Zero is architect Michael Arad, a veteran of an IDF commando squad and son of a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.
In this video tour with him, Arad describes the monument as "the built equivalent of a moment of silence."
.
May America never have need for more such monuments.
.

Victory in Europe Day commemoration in Knesset today

.
At noon today there was a special Knesset Plenum sitting to mark the 66th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
World War II veterans in the gallery (see photo) wore their old uniforms and many medals.
.
These stones in a Tel Aviv park are dedicated to those veterans and their 1,500,000 Jewish comrades who fought in the Second World War.
.
An estimated 300,000 of the Jewish soldiers and partisans were killed in the fighting.
.

Please enlarge and read the plaque.

.
I found this information in a web page about the booklet The Jewish Fighter in World War II:

"The estimated numbers of Jewish men and women who fought in the ranks of the various armies are

USA	550 000
Australia	3 900
Israel (Jewish Volunteers)	30 000
Britain	62 000
USSR	500 000
Yugoslavia	6000 (over 4000 in the Partisan army)
Greece	13 000
Poland	122 000
Czechoslovakia	5 500
France	35 000
Canada	17 000
South Africa	10 000

There are no facts and estimates on the number of Jews in the Belgian, Dutch, and New Zealand armies. A careful estimate puts the number of Jewish partisans in the occupied parts of the USSR at 20 000 - 25 000, and in the other European countries at another 10 000, including the anti-Nazi underground."

.

Trouble at sea

.
For James' Weekend Reflections -- a quiet corner of Israel's national military cemetery on Mount Herzl reflected in the water.

On May 1, 1943 the British troopship Erinpura, en route from Egypt to Malta, was sunk by a German air attack with the loss of 943 lives.

Aboard were 334 Palestinian Jewish soldiers who had volunteered and were serving in the 462nd transport company of the British army.

This memorial is for the 140 Jewish young men who went down with the ship to their death.

.

Photo from http://www.merchantnavyofficers.com/Troopships.html

.

Most of the men were below decks when the Erinpura was hit.

She sank in just four minutes.

.

Up until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the accompanying birth of Israel's own navy, Jews knew nothing about sailing or fighting at sea. The prophet Jonah was the only famous sea-faring man in our history.

.

As I write, a new confrontation at sea is brewing. A so-called Freedom Flotilla of 8 or 9 ships from Europe is approaching Gaza and will try to land and unload 10,000 tons of supplies and thus break the Israeli closure which began when Hamas took over in the Gaza Strip several years ago.

Israel's navy will intercept them and "invite" them to dock in our port of Ashdod instead.

Let us hope and pray that no one is hurt.

It will be a big "media event" for the pro-Palestinian activists on the boats for sure.

.

Please remember that tons of food and fuel and supplies cross from Israel overland through the checkpoints into Gaza every day, but not by sea.
.

If you need more background, try http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-gaza-aid-convoy-can-unload-cargo-in-ashdod-for-inspection-1.292560.

.

Head in the clouds

.
For SkyWatch Friday we can watch the changing clouds and sky through American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's "Modern Head."

Made of brushed steel, the sculpture stands 31 feet (9 1/2 meters) tall.

In the previous post we saw the rock sculpture depicting Abraham's almost-sacrifice of Isaac, his beloved son. On one face of the stone was written in Hebrew pahad Yitzhak, meaning the fear of Isaac, or Yitzhak's terror.

From that "Binding of Isaac" sculpture you see the "Modern Head" as in the photo above. That close.

The two were assembled in close proximity in the garden of Safra Square (Jerusalem City Hall) for a reason.

Following Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's death, Roy Lichtenstein, James Goodman, and Jeffrey Loria donated "Modern Head" to the Israel Museum in honor of Rabin. The museum later lent it to the Jerusalem Municipality.

Together the two sculptures, even though made before the 1995 assassination, create a tacit memorial site to the late Yitzhak (Isaac) Rabin.

.

A tree to remember

.
Mystery from last Sunday's post is solved. A previously unknown to me reader kindly sent the answer in her comment.
So, why is this tree on the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University tilted?

Because on July 31, 2002, a bomb inside the nearby student cafeteria killed nine (including five Americans) and injured more than 80.
It was at the height of the Second Intifada against Israel, which was especially severe in Jerusalem.
.
The terrorist act also injured the Rothberg International School program for a while. Enrollment plunged from 600 undergraduate overseas students each year to less than 100. Many schools in North America banned their students from coming to this "dangerous" place.

To quote the JewishJournal.com link which the reader sent,

"In front of the cafeteria grows an unusual-looking tree: its leaves are hearty and vibrant but its trunk is tilted and its roots jet out of the ground at various angles.
'We have planted a living tree [as a memorial for the bombing victims] which is symbolic,' Hebrew University President Menachem Magidor said. 'Our roots were shaken but, just like the tree, we keep growing and going forward.'

. . . Magidor admitted that the desire to maintain an open and pluralistic feeling on campus, for students of all races and religions, may have blinded administrators to the security risks.
'The first reaction was shock,' he admitted. 'We knew we were not immune, but maybe we thought naively that the campus should be immune.' "

.

Well, now it is 2009. When I came to the Mt. Scopus campus last week, it was a quick X-ray of my bag, and then I entered a beautiful and relaxed world of students--many Anglos speaking English or accented Hebrew, many Arab students, and even Jewish Israelis. All seemed happy to be students, happy to be alive and free.

.