The Synagogue with judaica  from destroyed synagogues.

Photo by Yossi Ben David, courtesy of Yad Vashem.

The cover of the February-March issue of the Esra Magazine shows the original drawing of Srulik by Kariel Gardosh (Dosh). Srulik became an Israeli national symbol. The drawing is now in the My Homeland Exhibition Pavilion of Yad VaShem. This hall displays the work, inventions, discoveries and the commercial and artistic successes of Holocaust survivors in Israel. The exhibition, using scaffolding and wooden platforms, is still in the process of completion. The Esra group was there on January 28.

The bus left Raanana promptly at 8am on a chilly but beautifully clear morning. Forty-five of us split into two groups and, from 10am to 3pm (with a lunch break) we visited some of the halls. My group, with the excellent Hazy as our morning guide, stopped first at the garden of trees dedicated to the Righteous among the Nations. Names of individuals and of families from all over Europe are displayed on small plaques under the trees. Perhaps the most interesting and unexpected are those of Germans who helped, hid and saved Jews. The point is clearly made that noone was obliged to turn away from the Jews of Europe, and many helped their Jewish neighbors and survived the war. Sadly, the majority of Europeans willingly, or at least unresistingly, colluded in the destruction of Jews within their midst.

The Museum of Holocaust Art shows not only the talent that was lost, but the creative urge of people in extreme circumstances to express their experiences in spite of almost insuperable odds. It is hardly believable that the artists fashioned primitive tools and found small scraps of paper on which to depict scenes from their daily life, whether hiding in a bare attic or taking part in a death march through the winter snows of 1944-1945, then finding a method of preserving their work so that we have it today. We saw how the drawings had been folded and folded again, to fit into the smallest space possible. Because of the delicacy of the materials, the art in this section is rotated, so that each picture is kept, on a regular basis, in the dark at the correct temperature for preservation purposes.

The Synagogue, light coming from skylights high above, is airy and calm, promoting remembrance and meditation. Many of the artifacts were gathered from Poland, Greece, Transnistria, Germany, Slovakia and, in particular, Romania, which donated the four aronei kodesh.

The buildings convey a somber mood, moving but not depressing. One has the feeling of a vision for the future, not merely a static presentation of the past. This is reinforced in the Learning Center, dimly lit and quiet. Here, computers present ethical, educational, theological and philosophical questions about the Holocaust. The answers of leading Holocaust historians: Professors Gutman, Bauer, Bankeir and Michman, and historians such as Professors Browning, Hilberg, Bartov, Engel, Jaeckel, Aschheim, Ben-Shishon, and others, can be found. This Center provides the balance to the individual stories that one hears about and sees in the other halls, giving an overview of the Holocaust and asking about ideas of good and evil, what the Christian response was at the time, whether Hitler is primarily to blame, how to remember the history. One of the purposes of the Learning Center is for teacher-training and curricular development, not only in Israel, but around the world.

There were sections, such as the Hall of Names, that we did not visit because of time constraints. All of us from Esra had been before to Yad VaShem. This tour strengthened our resolve to return at a future time to this impressive, important and valuable museum.