Exploring Jerusalem and more

Many people thought I was taking a bit of a risk going to Jerusalem, particularly given the problems experienced in the middle of last year in Gaza. However, I figured that the staff at Yad Vashem would give us clear guidelines and do their best to ensure our safety. But I must say, I was rather surprised at just how safe I felt all the time. Our hotel was in a great location- close to the Old City, with all its tantalising little alleys, and different quarters; close to the markets, with their dazzling array of exotic spices and foodstuffs, alongside trendy little restaurants; and minutes away from Mamilla shopping centre for a touch of glamour. We walked everywhere, regardless of the weather, which was a good thing considering the vast quantities of food we seemed to consume everyday. Everyone in the suq was very friendly and bargaining was a lot of fun. Lots of Arab hospitality was on offer - we were always offered a cup of cardamon coffee (so unexpectedly good!) and a lot of banter. We soon became suq rats, easily finding our way around and back to our favourite stalls.
Of course, Jerusalem is known for its holy cites, and it was pretty surreal to be wandering past such landmarks on a regular basis. Religious behaviours are nowhere more apparent than in Jerusalem, with a bewildering array of different types wandering the streets. Juxtaposed with that was going through various checkpoints to ensure that we weren't carrying anything potentially dangerous. We were often accompanied by an armed security guard, which we all thought was a bit amusing, as they seemed to spend most of their time on their phones. Still, I guess when in Rome, etc. Every Israeli has to do military service, girls and boys, and many of them carry rather large weapons around with them all the time, but in the most casual manner. You just get used to that very quickly. Many of the girls look very glam in their uniforms- in a James Bond kind of way.
Our day trips out of Jerusalem were also fascinating, especially going to Masada and the Dead Sea. Each trip deepened our understanding of life in Israel. We drove through the West Bank, surprisingly, and went through a number of checkpoints, where the security seemed pretty bored, until we went up north to the Golan Heights, and one checkpoint there looked like they meant business. Swimming in the Dead Sea was so much fun - I just wish that we had had more time there. Going to the Sea of Galilee was also wonderful- such a beautiful area. Our tour guide was a bit annoying- he felt the need to talk non-stop, and we soon all became experts in drip irrigation.
Anyway, my advice is if you are interested in visiting Israel and are a bit put off by security fears, don't be. It is a spectacular place to visit.

Righteous amongst the Nations

I was really honoured to be asked to give a speech on behalf of our group at Schindler's grave. Our day had been spent studying and exploring the actions of the Righteous Amongst the Nations - a topic that I am really interested in as I am fascinated by the values and motives of people who, despite all the challenges facing them, decided to take a chance to help Jews when most people were bystanders. It is also one of the few inspiring topics that we touch on. We learned that 23,000 people have been recognised as having met the criteria of being a Righteous amongst the Nations. Criteria includes being a gentile, not receiving payment or any other rewards, and testimony from a survivor. Motives varied considerably and actions included hiding Jews, providing false papers, smuggling and helping Jews to escape and rescue of children. Thanks to Steven Spielberg, everyone knows about Oskar Schindler and his incredible actions in saving 1200 Jewish people. But we learned about many other people, communities, groups and also reflected on just what great risks they were taking. It was obviously much easier to turn a blind eye, but these people demonstrated true humanity instead.

We then watched the last 45 minutes of Schindler's List, to get us in the frame of mind to meet one of Schindler's children, Ewa Ratz, a lady who was 8 years old when she was placed on his list.  We headed off to the cemetery to his grave site. It was a powerful moment - almost like stepping into the end of the movie.

Here is the script of the speech I gave:

"Elie Wiesel said 'To listen to a witness is to become one' and so we have all become witnesses during our weeks at Yad Vashem, and we are all very humbled and appreciative of the amazing opportunity that we have been given.

We have been reviewing the darkest period of history; of man's inhumanity to man on an unprecedented scale. We have continually been asking, 'How was the Holocaust humanly possible?' We've explored the human angle - from indifference to hostility; perpetrators, collaborators and bystanders; we have visited a world of moral collapse, of absolute evil - humiliation, exploitation, dehumanisation, brutality, and the ultimate evil, extermination- the very 'Heart of Darkness'.  How could so many people actively and passively embrace such vilification and hatred?

And yet, the light at the end of the tunnel is our focus today - the Righteous amongst the Nations. This is where we can restore some of our lost faith in humanity- from small acts of kindness and compassion to the risk-taking and courageous acts of thousands of people who have been recognised and those who haven't been. They have created for us a way out of the horror; the will to go on and bear witness; to believe that each of us can, and no doubt will, make some small difference to other humans in need. These are examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. So we are grateful today that at a time when the world cared so little, some people cared so much. And as we were told today, 'May we resemble them, if only a little.'

We went back to the hotel where we had the privilege of listening to Ewa Ratz share her childhood experiences in the ghetto, and then her memories of Oskar Schindler and his wife. Very moving and quite surreal.
What a day!!
As it states on Schindler's ring, 'Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.' (From the Talmud)

Humanity Lost .... and Found??

Humanity Lost .... and Found?
I  thought visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum was tough, but today was almost unbearable. Although we are snowed in, and we are bunkered down in the hotel, the course is continuing, and today we had the privilege of listening to two Holocaust survivors' testimonies. We were meant to meet four survivors but the weather conditions were too risky for them to travel. David and Daniel were both young boys caught up in this devastating genocide, yet because they had not lived in the same country in Europe, their experiences were markedly different, yet remarkably the same.

 They both bore testimony to the inexplicable cruelty of ordinary people. As they shared their stories with us, it is obvious that they are still trying to grapple, 70 years later, with how it was humanly possible that people that they had lived alongside with, suddenly turned into predators, with no semblance of humanity, and joined killing squads, humiliating and torturing Jews. They spoke of their terror; growing up without a childhood- of innocence lost too soon. David lost 30 members of his family and was orphaned; never had anyone to turn to or to rely on; had to be totally responsible as his life depended on it. Daniel was 'lucky' as a couple of members of his family escaped the ghetto in Lithuania and they hid underneath a house for 6 months, lying down and squashed with 6 others for 22 hours a day. They were being hidden by a peasant family who took great risks by this act, until they were finally liberated by the Russians.

 But their stories do not end in Auschwitz or in liberation, and nor does the trauma. At the end of the war, there were so many displaced persons, who had no homes to return to, who had no family left, or who had no knowledge of what had happened to their families. They had no documentation and were often deeply traumatised, sick and malnourished. They had lost out on many years of education, something that is so highly valued by the Jewish people. Both of them focused on their education, and both landed up in Israel. As Daniel said, it was only after several years of being in transition, in limbo so to speak, that he finally felt safe and that he had escaped the horrors and distrust of his fellow man as he now lived in a land that he could call home. Return to life after the horrors of a living death has been a slow but steady process. Both men are very high achievers, but are also men who have put service to their communities at the centre of their lives as they tried to forge new identities and a sense of belonging. Volunteering to share their testimonies with us is not easy - apparently most survivors go home and have terrible nightmares- but they are all supported by the team at Yad Vashem. And they are conscious of the fact that they are getting older and soon there will be no-one left to testify.  I'm in awe of their resilience!
I wept silently for them, tears just spilling relentlessly down my cheeks. As a mother, my heart went out to their lost childhoods; but as a human being, I once again felt so deeply shaken by the sheer evil, the systematic brutality and the complete lack of personal responsibility accepted by the perpetrators. We spent the rest of the day in lectures on The Final Solution and the sheer weight of numbers of people perpetrating killings; the callous and careful attention to detail as they maintained immaculate records, the systematic approach that caught everyone in its net; and the broad geography of complicity in mass murder - not just the SS but thousands of career policemen and often just neighbours- ordinary people who had been given permission to become predators- it is just too much to bear.

How can anyone have any faith in humanity when ordinary people can commit such extraordinarily brutal and essentially evil acts? Maybe the answer lies in the survivors who have gone on to live good lives and provide such inspirational messages to us? Maybe it is in the courage of people who chose life in the face of such tragedy? Perhaps those few and far between stories of courageous and humane individuals who risked everything to help those in such dire straits? Also in the generosity of spirit revealed by stories like one woman sharing her breast milk to save another baby's life in the ghetto, when she knew that her own milk could dry up at any time due to malnutrition? And it is certainly true of these passionate educators at Yad Vashem whose life's work is to share their knowledge, expertise and insight to help us all try to fight for a better world that teaches personal responsibility, kindness and compassion; a deep-seated acceptance of all people and an ardent desire for peace and humanity. Tonight, I find it hard to be optimistic about humanity but I guess we just have to keep trying to be a 'mensch'

Day of Reckoning - our guided tour of the new Yad Vashem museum

I've been putting off writing this post as it is too huge to reflect on. But having just returned from attending a Shabbat evening service at the Great Synagogue and sharing a communal Shabbat meal with the Yad Vashem staff members, I thought it was an appropriate time to try to share what was a hugely powerful and unsettling experience. I have seen and read many Holocaust materials so I knew that I would be profoundly disturbed but I have never had the privilege of having an expert guide me like Ephraim, one of our educators. He has 25 years of experience and has an intimate kn
owledge of not only the planning of the new Yad Vashem museum, but many of the people whose stories are represented. He brought it to life by personalising the tour, and telling us some of the endings - some happy but mostly tragic.
We started off with an explanation of the philosophy of the museum - there would not be piles of dead bodies, like in the Washington DC memorial, but instead the focus would be on life and hope - as part of the Jewish narrative. The entrance draws you in with a film of young children singing in a typical Polish village in pre-war years.  The design forces you along a certain path by placing obstacles in your way, and you become herded along (perhaps like Jews were as they were forced into cattle cars). The museum is packed with visitors and it can feel quite claustrophobic. The first obstacle is a pile of Jewish books - representing the book burnings ('where books are burned, later people will be burned'). German culture was one of the centres of intellectual enlightenment and these people are burning books?  What is going on here?
The museum follows a chronology up to a certain point, and represents victims, perpetrators and bystanders. Four ghettos are represented and the focus is on life, not death and from the Jewish perspective, not the Germans. Museums make decisions about how memories will be shared and this is very evident in the Warsaw ghetto rooms showing four different aspects: soup kitchens to help each other; cultural life to keep spirits up - in the shadow of death there is still life; smuggling food (mainly the children); and lastly, the different ways that people utilised their talents and documented events (they hid archived documents in milk can and buried them, hoping that they would be discovered- and they were).
The design of the building is a triangle, which slopes downhill, representing the fall into the abyss. The space narrows, reflecting the idea of impending doom. Persecution of the Jews had been a constant experience but no-one could have imagined the Final Solution, an unprecedented event in history. The museum continues to showcase some of the main events, and perpetrators but also memorialises the Righteous amongst the Nations - those people who had the courage to help Jews in any way possible. This is part of the message of hope and the way to help you to place the evil into a context - that not the whole world is evil, and that good can flourish in the darkest places. That part is very moving and inspirational. For example, on Oskar Schindler's ring was engraved a line from the Talmud, 'He who saves a single life is as if he saved an entire world.'
Up to this point, although I felt deeply disturbed by the collections, it was the second last room that sucker punches you. The emphasis throughout is on the Jews, and attempts to rescue the individual from the anonymity of the millions murdered, and it honours their lives and shows us who they were through the collected stories. But then you are confronted by the most deeply disturbing video footage and we all experienced a deeply visceral reaction. Tears just flowed, and I felt like vomiting. Questions flooded my mind - how did the Jews live after experiencing all that horror and evil? How did they not want to destroy everything and everyone? There was humiliation in life and no dignity in death. Jews were liberated but could never be free of the horror.  And yet the last room is about honouring the individuals in a powerful way, and the exit of the museum opens up and embraces the magnificent view of the shimmering sandy stones of Jerusalem- and therefore hope for the future.
I cannot do it justice - suffice to say that you are left with many more questions than answers. 

Everyday life - pre-Holocaust Jewish society

One of the main educational philosophical approaches advocated by Yad Vashem is that we really need to think deeply about how we incorporate the stories of the victims, perpetrators and bystanders in Holocaust studies. I had never really thought much about the fact that we often teach the Holocaust from the perspective of the Nazis and the German state. One or two lessons, focusing on the horror, and how Nazi ideology brought about this unimaginable and unprecedented event in History. Suddenly, I was confronted by the notion that this was still marginalising Jews, and perceiving them only in the role of victim. Today was about discovering more about everyday life for Jewish people in Poland, where the majority of Jews lived. Stereotypes were realised and discredited (think Fiddler on the Roof) and the wide spectrum of Jewish and religious groups explored. We then engaged in an excellent role play, where an imaginary street in a Polish town was set up based on large photographic panels, overlaid with a number of different sources. We were given character sheets and the facilitator posed questions that we had to respond to, in role. It was a great activity and I wish I could set up such a scene in my classroom.  It certainly reinforced for me that the Jews were not a united, one-dimensional group of people, but had a rich, diverse culture and life that was wholly extinguished by the Holocaust. They were not just victims but human beings like every one of us.  

Closely connected to this concept was our afternoon visit to the Valley of the Communities, which is an extraordinary memorial to the Jewish communities that were destroyed during the Holocaust. It is built out of Jerusalem stone, like everything else in Jerusalem, and is shaped like the map of Europe. It is massive and you could easily get lost meandering around the various countries and areas. The names of the villages are sandblasted on to the rock, and provides a place for people to come to and see their village and community memorialised.  Again, the massive structure and the huge number of names of lost villages reinforced the enormity of the loss. As we made our way back to the study centre, we passed huge sculptures, smaller sculptures, small gardens, thousands of plaques, Schindler's tree - the emotions certainly are building and my mind keeps going back to the question How on earth did this ever happen??  I don't think I will ever understand it, no matter how much I study it.