Yad Vashem
The Holocaust Memorial


Perhaps the most moving part of the whole week was the visit to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, a mandatory part of the itinerary for all official visitors to Israel. As we approached the park, Hermann explained that he would take us around, but would not enter the Hall of Remembrance because of its impact on him. The map of Yad Vashem shows how the park is set out and contains links to the official WEB site of Yad Vashem.
 
First stop was the Children's Memorial, hollowed out from an underground cavern. While we collected the group together we caught sight of the lizard above, about 12" long hiding in the rocks.

The Children's Memorial is a tribute to the approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust. Memorial candles, a customary Jewish tradition to remember the dead, are reflected infinitely in a dark and somber space, creating the impression of millions of stars shining in the firmament. The names of murdered children, their ages and countries of origin can be heard in the background.


Near the exit from the Children's memorial is a sculpture of the Polish-Jewish educator Dr. Henrik Goldschmidt, known by his pseudonym Janusz Korczak, standing in the center of a group of children, sheltering them with his body and his outstretched, embracing arms.

Janusz Korczak and the children of his orphanage were sent to the Treblinka death camp on August 5, 1942. Korczak is supposed to have led the group with songs to avoid the children being too frightened. 
The Pillar of Heroism commemorates Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. The towering pillar is reminiscent of the chimneys of the crematoria. The inscription on the concrete blocks reads: "Now and forever in memory of those who rebelled in the camps and ghettos, fought in the woods, in the underground and with the Allied forces; braved their way to Eretz Israel; and died sanctifying the name of God."

The Hall of Remembrance is a quiet and dark tent-like structure that allows visitors to pay their respects to the memories of the martyred dead. On the floor are the names of some of the Nazi murder sites throughout Europe, and in front of the memorial flame lies a crypt containing ashes of victims. Memorial ceremonies are held here.
Trees, symbolic of the renewal of life, have been planted in and around the Yad Vashem site, in honor of those non-Jews who acted according to the most noble principles of humanity by risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Plaques adjacent to each tree record the names of those being honored along with their country of residence during the war. 



Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest during World War II.

In the summer of 1944, the Jews of Budapest faced the daily threat of deportation. Over the course of three months, Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports. He chased convoys of prisoners and confronted Hungarian and German guards-even Adolf Eichmann himself-to secure the release of Jews whom he claimed were under Swedish protection, and put some 15,000 Jews into 31 safe houses.

After reporting to Soviet headquarters in Budapest on January 17,1945, all trace of him was lost. Although the Soviets claimed that Wallenberg died in 1947, there have been many testimonies since then that have conflicted with this claim.

The Righteous Among the Nations honor was awarded to Raoul Wallenberg in 1966.

Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German. Towards the end of 1939, he arrived in Cracow and took over an enamelware factory and wholesale distributorship, situated in Zablocie, just outside the city, that had belonged to Jews before the German conquest of Poland the previous September.

Under Schindler's management, the enamelware firm manufactured pots and pans for the German army. Before long it had 900 employees, most of them Jews. In April 1943 when the Nazis liquidated the Krakow ghetto, transferring 6000 able-bodied workers to the nearby Plaszow camp, Schindler persuaded the Armaments Administration to let him set up a branch camp on the factory grounds, arguing that this would increase productivity since the workers would not have to go back and forth to Plaszow each day. His real purpose, however, was to protect them from the exceedingly harsh conditions there.

As the Red Army moved into Poland, the Germans began to relocate vital industries to safer areas. In October 1944, Schindler persuaded higher authorities to re-establish his now-defunct enamel plant in the Moravian town of Brunnlitz and transform it into a munitions plant, producing shell casings for the German army. In an operation unique in the annals of the Holocaust, he managed to take along virtually his entire Jewish labor force, many of whom were in fact too weak, ill or old to be counted as productive workers and would have been killed if left behind. Close to 800 men were transferred to Brunnlitz by way of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, while some 300 women were sent there via Auschwitz.

In Brunnlitz, as in Zablocie, Schindler treated his 1,100 Jews considerately and did everything he could to obtain adequate supplies of food and medicine for them. That winter, when he learned that a train from the Golszow concentration camp had been abandoned at nearby Zwittau, its cargo of Jews left to die in the bitter cold, he went there with some of his workers, broke open the locked doors of the ice-covered boxcars, and rescued the 100 skeletal men and women who were still alive. Under the supervision of his wife Emilie, the survivors were nursed back to health. Those who died were buried in accordance with Jewish rites.

Oskar Schindler was always thoughtful and humane in his dealings with Jews, and thanks to his efforts, most of the workers at his factories survived. One of them later wrote: "He was the first German since the beginning of the war whose presence did not terrify me." What is most remarkable in this story is that Schindler, by his own admission, went to Poland only to enrich himself, hoping to exploit the cheap Jewish labor available there under Nazi rule. To the Jews who met him in Krakow in 1939, he seemed no different from any other German. Yet somehow he underwent a personal transformation, and in the end, undeterred even though arrested several times by the Gestapo, he rescued more Jews than any other German on record.

According to Schindler, his metamorphosis was sparked by the shocking immensity of the Final Solution. In his words: "I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more."

Oskar Schindler died in October 1974, and is buried in the Latin cemetery on Mount Zion, Jerusalem. 1,200 Jews owe their lives to this singular man.

The Wall of Remembrance consists of two sculptures set in a wall of red bricks which symbolize the ghetto walls. 

The first sculpture, entitled "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" depicts men, women and children bearing arms, and fighting courageously against the background of the burning ghetto. In the center stands the leader of the uprising, Mordechai Anielewicz, holding the flame which ignited the spirit of rebellion. The sculpture emphasizes the heroism of the ghetto fighters, and glorifies the image of the Jewish warrior.

The second sculpture, entitled "The Last March", depicts the final journey of the Jews to the death camps.

The same two sculptures can be seen at the memorial site of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland.

Last updated on May 27, 2000